Is the Coalition Government waging a 'war on how we work'?

The Coalition Government is proposing widespread change to the employment law system, ostensibly as part of its strategy to boost growth.

However, its approach to employment law reform could also be viewed as a "war on how we work", argues Sunday Telegraph Business Editor Kamal Ahmed.

Ahmed says that these reforms are ultimately intended to enshrine a view that - at its simplest - "employers should be allowed to get on with managing their companies."

Here we take a look at recent employment law reform proposals and consider how they relate to Ahmed's theory and assess the potential impact of some of these proposals on economic growth.

Overview of recent employment law reform proposals
Recent weeks have seen a number of major announcements on employment law reform:

• The Queen's Speech included a raft of business legislation, which the Government said was aimed at "creating the right conditions for businesses to grow and succeed". These include measures to "overhaul the employment tribunal system, cut unnecessary red tape for businesses and reform directors' pay." XpertHR provides detailed guidance on the Queen's Speech and its implications for employment law and on the specific reforms relating to employment tribunals.
• Venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft's Report on Employment Law, which proposes many radical reforms intended to boost growth (and from which the concept of compensated no-fault dismissals originated) finally saw the light of day. The report generated widespread controversy, including upheaval within the Coalition Government.
• The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill included details of proposed measures aimed at "improving the employment tribunal system". You can read analyses of the Bill from XpertHR, Personnel Today's Laura Chamberlain and from lawyer Laurie Anstis.
• Unfair dismissal compensation could be slashed. Barrister Anya Palmer argues that one proposal within the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, if enacted, would pave "the way for a major reduction in employment rights" in the future. Palmer points out that the Bill "contains a provision that would give the Government a very broad power to slash compensation for unfair dismissal to a third of its present level at any time in the future, without further debate." She says that this provision may not come into effect in the near future, but notes that "it's not unreasonable to suppose that if the Conservatives won the next election they would promptly reduce the limit across the board." Palmer has also written a related article for Solicitors Journal, entitled Stealth tactics: making unfair dismissal worthless. Here, she notes that "the Government is consulting on a wide range of measures as part of the employment law review, but there has been no consultation on changing the level of compensation. The proposal to reduce compensation simply appeared unannounced in clause 12 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill."
  
• 'Settlement agreement' proposals: The Guardian reports that today's second reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill in the House of Commons will additionally include a proposal to introduce 'settlement agreements' for all employers. It says that the proposed 'settlement agreements' will make "it easier for companies to sack their workers by offering them immediate payouts if they agree to leave without any fuss." However, legal expert Darren Newman argues that the 'settlement agreement' proposals represent nothing more than a "cosmetic change" to employment law. He says: "As currently drafted, the only the change that the Bill makes to  the current system is to change the name of  'compromise agreements' to 'settlement agreements' - which is the absolute epitome of a cosmetic change. It has no practical or legal impact whatsoever." (See Update 19 to my Beecroft post and Government to unveil 'settlement agreements' for dismissals by Personnel Today's John Eccleston for further details).
  

The legacy of the Coalition Government
The Guardian's Phillip Inman argues that the proposed employment law reforms set out in the Queen's Speech can be viewed as part of an ongoing project shared by a number of European governments to pursue "growth built on cuts in workers' terms and conditions".

This view would appear to be borne out by William Hague's statement in a May 2012 interview with the Daily Telegraph that radical reform to the labour market and the welfare system will be the legacy of the Coalition Government:

[W]e are recreating the work ethic for everybody in Britain. I think that these reforms will be seen in the 2020's as being as important to this country as the trade Union reforms and privatisations were of the 1980s. This is as fundamental as that. This is the purpose of the Coalition Government.

Will renewed growth result from radical employment law reforms?
The Coalition Government argues that a general reduction in 'red tape' is essential to promote growth. This narrative was particularly strongly argued with relation to the Beecroft report.

So does this mean that if the proposed radical reforms to employment law were enacted, strong economic growth would be inevitable?