The next time there's a pandemic, or some other major incident, we cannot have a crucial proportion of the nurses, lorry drivers and other such key people upping and going home, never to return.
It's obvious we can't leave it to employers to be sensible about this. For the last couple of decades, at least, the NHS has preferred to use agencies to strip entire graduating classes out of third-world countries, instead of training UK-resident and rooted people. No adults in charge of recruitment and training there then.
The UK's time in the EU let UK employers get away with egregious recruitment and training policies. The last industry that messed-up that badly was banking, and that is now regulated to within an inch of its capacity for mis-behaviour.
Same thing has to happen with employment.
Bear with me for a moment.
The Employment Regulator would, on an industry-by-industry basis, review the roles and tasks within each industry, and separate them into essential and non-essential. A proportion of those roles judged 'essential' would have to be staffed by UK resident and rooted people, and the employer would need to demonstrate that they had training schemes in place to maintain that proportion. That proportion is the Essential Role Threshold (ERT). Expect it to be around 95%+ of the roles.
Non-essential roles can be staffed by anyone.
What's an essential role? One which is required to ensure the proper functioning of the society and economy. Lorry drivers. Nurses. Doctors. Firemen. Paramedics. Train and bus drivers. The guys who clean sewers. Telecoms engineers. Supermarket workers. Farmers. Policemen. Judges and other Court officials. Electricity, gas and water maintenance guys. Air traffic controllers. Pilots and aircrew. Plumbers. Builders of all trades. Armed Forces, MI5/6 and GCHQ (for which the ERT is 100%).
What's a non-essential role? Anything to do with marketing, sales, accounting, media, entertainment, fashion, cosmetics, restaurants, sports, and general management. Nurses and doctors are essential, but NHS bureaucrats are not. Neither are HMRC staff, journalists, lawyers, local and central government workers and any other bureaucrat.
It will get subtle. I'd say the people who run the BACS and other banking payment systems are essential, but the people who run the management information systems are not.
Anyone can do a non-essential job. Important to understand that point.
A company with essential roles would need to meet the ERT for those roles. Only legal UK residents with roots here would count towards a company's meeting its quota. The company can hire who it likes to do what roles it likes, but a multi-lingual renting bachelor who speaks three languages and has a readily transferrable skill doesn't count towards the 95%. Neither does anyone with dual (or more) nationalities or foreign partners. Or who has a property for personal use outside the UK.
Outsourcing not allowed for essential roles. Onshore only. (Details to be clarified.)
Companies with over a certain number people in essential roles would need a training scheme in place for those roles. The NHS has to have training. A small firm of plumbers does not. People could do the training on spec and pay for it themselves, as lorry drivers do now, or companies could pay for someone to train, in a refund-or-work arrangement.
For these purposes "employing" includes "using subcontractors", so Pimlico Plumbers, which does not employ plumbers, would need to demonstrate that it has training scheme in place to replace its subcontractors as they leave. Swiping other people's staff does not count. (Details to be clarified on this one. Courier companies have the same problem.)
An organisation looking to make staff cuts would not be allowed to cut essential workers unless it could demonstrate that it had cut all the non-essential workers that it could.
Companies that could not reach the Essential Role Threshold within, say, five years of the Act coming into force, would be required to close down that part of their business.
The whole thing is monitored by the Employment Regulator.
The effect would be to restrict employment in essential roles to legal UK residents. People from other countries would still be able to work in market research, banking, advertising, women's fashion, non-food retail, manicure and personal care, restaurants, and a scad of other industries and roles.
It's a thought.
People talk about 'the NHS' as if it is a single organisation. Of course it is comprised of hundreds of different organisations: National bodies that oversee and regulate NHS services; Clinical Commissioning Groups that plan and commission care for local populations; primary care organisations – independent businesses offering NHS services, including GP practices, pharmacies, dental practices, opticians; acute (hospital) trusts; mental health trusts; community trusts – providers of community-based services, such as district nursing, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy; ambulance trusts, and charities and social enterprises which provide support services to the NHS.
ReplyDeleteEach has their own management and administration. It's a wonder anyone gets treated at all.