George Osborne proposes employee share schemes in return for rights

This idea is just so ridiculous it is not true! Yet another example that politicians don't live in the real world. I run a small business and - yes - I would like to simplify and scale back the burden of employment legislation. If it was easier to hire and fire people then I would in the past have created additional jobs. But this idea of employee shares cannot work ... most small businesses don't have freely traded shares to give out. How can I create £2,000 or more worth of shares out of nothing to give to each staff member? I had 12 staff at one stage - so I would have had to create £24K worth of shares to hand out. How would I do that? And what use would a share certificate in my business be to anyone? Small businesses are not traded on the Stock Market or AIM, their shares have no external value. I assume the idea is that the employer gives out a piece of paper saying "if I sack you then you can still get a payment of £X"? And what about people who leave voluntarily? Can they still cash in their shares? How? Absurd and unworkable.

Why do I get the impression that Gideon Osborne has not thought this through? Let's trample over workers' rights. You make it easier to fire a worker by turning him into a shareholder. How are you going to fire someone who owns the company? In fact, if you have a beef with your boss, you can keep buying the company stock, until you have enough to outvote him. Sounds great. In fact, the only new thing about this latest drivel is that the worker gives up his rights. There have been workers; co-ops in the past. There are also workers' share schemes. Not that the latter did the workers any good. Often the people who work in the place are the last people to know that the place is going titts up. I know for a fact that RBS has/had an employee's share scheme, how many employees back in 2008 knew that the company was being driven into the ground? The shareholder scheme didn't spare them the redundancies either. If you work for a PLC, you can buy the shares on the market anyway, and hang on to your workers rights. You never know when you'll need your rights.

Just another example of this government being hopelessly out of touch with reality and wanting to drive employment standards back to the dark ages. Half of them have never had a proper job and who do they talk to? Most employers will say this type on approach does nothing for employee relations and in reality if this was about bringing the workforce and the employer together why not do it any way, as I'm sure most enlightened employers would want to do and is doing. It doesn't need this further blatant attack on employment rights - just another example of having a go at terms and conditions What this country needs is investment to create jobs, tax incentives for SME, encouraging the lost youth to have a future - all areas which which this government is failing to do, mainly because it lacks vision. This is a narrow minded distraction to keep the party faithful happy.