Suddenly Swinging to the Left

It's not often I have many left-wing thoughts these days. But unlike most of the tents in St Paul's churchyard, I sometimes realise there's a class-warrior lurking in me somewhere.

But still. And I realise this is probably one of those policy kite-flying exercises that Governments of all colours - Red, Blue and the current rather sludgy Brown - indulge in. All "leaked reports" contain radical proposals that never see the light of day.

It's in the Telegaph. The Beecroft report recommends enabling companies to sack employees - with no given reason - albeit with minimum redundancy pay. Which first up makes me wonder why they asked for a report at all, and didn't just wander into the lounge bar of any pub in Dunstable.

Now, it's not going to happen. First up, it would  end up with a rash of equal rights legal claims. Nobody would use this process against ethnic minorities, nor against women, nor especiallly against pregnant women from ethnic minorities.

Even Mr Beecroft seems to recognise the silliness of his idea. He recognises that being able to sack people because you don't like them is "unfair". I'm surprised he didn't continue with the reflection "but then Life's not fair. Get used to it."

And in practice this could be a disaster.  In effect short-term expediency would be a business rule. People could be thrown out for validly pointing out problems with their managers' pet ideas.  Instead of making businesses slicker, they would be at risk of falling to pieces as people were randomly fired at the whim of the management.

There's a passage in Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge where Abel Whittle is always - through no fault of his own, but then also no fault of his employer's - late for work. After a series of warnings that would actually do a modern HR department proud, Mayor Henchard comes down and drags him out of bed and sends him off to work in his underwear. I'm not advocating this as a valid employment method, but it's interesting to note that a fictional 19th Century alcoholic with no people skills has a generally more humane attitude to employment disciplinary methods than a Government advisor. Under the Beecroft proposals the unfortunate Whittle could have been sacked first time.

And there's a practical side for me. If I sacked everyone just because I didn't like them, i'd have no-one running the place. And then I might have to pay their replacements.