The biggest mistake is calling it a charter. A charter is a grant of rights or at least a formal recognition that someone is entitled to exercise particular rights. The ‘Employer’s Charter’ does not do this. It just lists 11 things that an employer can do so long as it acts ‘fairly and reasonably’. Even this is subject to the qualification that ‘individual circumstances may vary and employers should act in accordance with their legal obligations’. In other words, you can’t rely on the rights set out in the charter because employment law is too complicated to be reduced to bullet points in this way.
This is a poor piece of work. Why were these 11 points chosen? Why does the charter go to the trouble of telling employers that they can withhold pay from strikers or ‘talk to employees about their performance’ but completely fail to mention that employers can sack employees for no good reason in the first year of their employment? The Government’s view may be that they are addressing particular myths that have arisen in relation to an employer’s rights. I’m in favour of myth-busting – but why call it a charter? That’s just inviting ridicule.
Badly Written
Even as an exercise in myth busting it’s a failure. It’s not well written – in fact it’s hardly a piece of writing at all. It’s just some bullet points that you can fit onto one side of A4. The only prose used actually qualifies and limits the content of the bullet points. If you are going to bust a myth, you have to explain things – give examples and illustrations. Use words to persuade and enlighten. This is just a seemingly random list of things employers can do, subject to unspecified qualifications and exceptions.
I make part of my living by writing about employment law and it’s a subject I take seriously. This charter shows all the signs of having been bashed out over somebody’s lunch break in time for a meeting. No thought is given as to how the charter is structured or phrased. Bullet points are listed in a seemingly random order and then topped and tailed with disclaimers to cover the back of whoever wrote it.
Actually, if that is how it was written I’d sort of sympathise. We’ve all had to rattle off something quickly when we’ve missed a deadline or been subjected to some random act of management. My fear is that that this charter actually represents the carefully considered fruits of the Government’s deliberations. Perhaps a team of senior civil servants spent many long hours honing the prose and carefully selecting the issues to cover. Maybe ministers considered several drafts before selecting the one that struck just the right tone. Maybe key stakeholders were carefully consulted and their views distilled into the 11 bullet points that make up the charter. Now that is a seriously scary thought. If this is a document that the Government come up with after trying their very hardest then we are all in deep trouble.
And then we come to the small matter of accuracy. Now of course you can’t really reduce complicated employment law issues to bullet point form without glossing over some of the details or leaving out important exceptions and qualifications (a good argument for not putting employment law into bullet points, I would say!). However, even making allowances for considerable simplification there are some problems with the bullet points themselves.
Asking employees to take a pay cut
I could pick apart most of the bullet points on the list, but I think the biggest single problem lies with the statement ‘you are entitled to… ask an employee to take a pay cut’. I know it only says you are entitled to ‘ask’ but in the way it is phrased it gives the impression that by ‘ask’ it means ‘require’. If you say that you are entitled to ask someone to do something – for example you are entitled to ask a police officer to show you his or her identification – then that implies some obligation on the person you ask to comply with your request. As all reading this will know, however, you are entitled to ask an employee to take a pay cut in the same way as you are entitled to ask them to come to your birthday party. You can ask them, but they are entitled to say ‘no’.
Of course if the employer needs to force through a pay cut, there are ways of doing it. But it has to be done right and if it isn’t, then legal consequences will follow. It is just irresponsible for a charter to introduce the idea of asking employees to take a pay cut and then leave the issue hanging there, with no guidance on what to do if the employee doesn’t seem keen.
The Government and Acas publish plenty of information that is well thought out and which gives useful advice to employers and employees. This ‘charter’ adds nothing useful. It is pointless, badly written and misleading. It should be withdrawn
