Employment

Organisations across employment rights sector call on Business Secretary to extend redundancy protection to pregnant women and new mothers

Letter to Kwasi Kwarteng from more than 20 support organisations and unions calls for existing Bill that proposes new legal protections to be expedited into law

Government speed in bringing forward its new maternity allowance Bill is in marked contrast to its failure to act on previous commitments to provide support and protection to pregnant women and new parents

Maternity Action also highlights how the measures in the Bill contrast with the 'ludicrously low' basic rate of both statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance

Government includes jobcentre work coaches in a count of the ‘number of people supported’ through its Plan for Jobs

More than 13,000 recent work coach recruits included in nearly two million 'Brits' being supported into work through 'innovative' schemes

Government’s Covid response continues to overlook ‘specific and well-understood labour market and caring inequalities faced by women’, MPs warn

Women and Equalities Committee urges government to ‘seize opportunity’ to stop repeated ‘skewing’ of its policies towards men as it implements recovery strategies

Employment case law round up

Shadow Chancellor calls on the government to immediately announce extension of furlough scheme beyond April 2021

Anneliese Dodds also calls for 'smart' reforms to the scheme, including tough conditions on employers to stop abuse and new training to support furloughed workers improve skills

Employment case law round up

Number of ‘employments’ furloughed under CJRS stood at 3.8 million at 31 December 2020

HMRC figures also show that total value of claims to scheme since it was introduced in March 2020 exceeds £49 billion

Chancellor urged to extend furlough and self-employment support schemes beyond April 2021

Northern Ireland Economy Minister says schemes are essential and must remain in place until there are clear signs of economic recovery

Fewer than 10,000 Kickstart job placements have been made available for Jobcentre Plus work coaches to refer eligible young people to

DWP Minister advises that remainder of the more than 123,000 placements approved for funding will become available to jobcentres once employers provide job details and start dates

TUC calls on government to urgently extend Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to safeguard jobs

Highlighting correlation between peaks in unemployment and previously scheduled endings of the scheme, union warns of risk to jobs in failing to guarantee continuation of support 'until the eleventh hour'

1.5 million people who are currently excluded from claiming SEISS could easily be supported by government at modest cost, says IFS

New briefing finds that extending SEISS to those with less than 50 per cent of income from self-employment, and some of those with incomes of more than £50,000, would cost just 5 per cent of current spending on scheme

Government issues new Treasury Direction in relation to extension of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to the end of April 2021

Direction sets out the scheme applying for the period beginning on 1 February 2021 and ending on 30 April 2021

Business Secretary reiterates that the government ‘will not reduce workers’ rights’

Responding to Commons motion, Kwasi Kwarteng says 'I do not want there to be any doubt about my or the government's intentions in this area'

Fewer than 2,000 young people have actually started new roles via the government’s Kickstart scheme, despite the ‘creation’ of 120,000 new jobs

In addition, with reports that the DWP has approved 'gateway' companies with little to no trading history or based outside of the UK, the government announces that it is closing applications for new gateways this week

Almost 1 in 10 workers have been ‘fired and rehired’ since start of the Covid crisis

New polling from the TUC reveals that the controversial practice of 'fire and re-hire' has become widespread during the Covid-19 pandemic as has the downgrading of workers' rights

Employment case law round up