Author Archives: wonkypolicywonk

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About wonkypolicywonk

Wonkypolicywonk is a recovering policy minion, assigned wonky at birth.

71% of Acas research is rubbish

Posted on May 26, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

So, this week Acas published yet another ‘independent’ research report purporting to show how wonderful Acas is. It’s a dense and lengthy tome – 106 pages, not including the copy of its survey questionnaire – and, to convince you of … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

NMW enforcement: has BIS kissed goodbye to £4m in financial penalties?

Posted on May 13, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

As noted on this blog in February, something very unusual went on with enforcement of the national minimum wage (NMW) in 2015/16, with both the total amount of NMW arrears recovered by HMRC and the number of workers benefiting from … Continue reading →

Posted in Workers' rights | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

ET fees: Who said what to the Justice committee of MPs

Posted on May 4, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

With the report of the Ministry of Injustice’s internal review of the employment tribunal fees introduced in July 2013 having now been sitting on the desks of justice secretary Michael Gove and his intellectually-challenged junior minister, Shailesh Vara, for seven … Continue reading →

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Lies, damned lies, and co-authored articles in the Guardian

Posted on April 29, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

In “The Truman Show” – the film in which the eponymous hero comes to realise he is living in a constructed reality television show – Truman Burbank first suspects his marriage is a sham when he finds a wedding photo … Continue reading →

Posted in Equality, Workers' rights | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NMW enforcement: curiouser and curiouser

Posted on April 19, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

To their credit – and that is not something I tend to say very often – Tory ministers appear to have been stung into action by revelations that large, profitable companies such as B&Q, Morrisons, Tesco and Caffe Nero are … Continue reading →

Posted in Workers' rights | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Brexit and workers’ rights: Give me a break!

Posted on April 16, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

The already hyperbolic ‘debate’ around the likely impact of Brexit on UK workers’ rights got significantly sillier this week, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn using his Big Speech on Europe to warn of a “bonfire of [workers’] rights” should Britain … Continue reading →

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New research: 95% of journalists don’t know their **** from their elbow

Posted on April 7, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

Confirmation bias was much in evidence earlier this week, when a small tsunami of press and media reports of a new ‘research’ report by My Family Care on the little-loved Shared Parental Leave – and in particular the report’s headline … Continue reading →

Posted in Equality | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Putting Shailesh Vara in context (condensed)

Posted on April 6, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

I’ve been feeling bad that my last post was a tad, well, unreadable. So this is the condensed version. With charts (see, I do love you, Gem). So, the question is: Has the introduction of Acas early conciliation been (a) … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice, Workers' rights | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Phantom menace: ET fees & Acas early conciliation

Posted on April 4, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

As previously noted on this blog, I have been resisting the urge to write about the feeble performance of the imbecilic junior injustice minister, Shailesh Vara MP, when giving oral evidence on the impact of employment tribunal (ET) fees to the Justice … Continue reading →

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ET cases: going down. ET awards: going up.

Posted on March 31, 2016 by wonkypolicywonk

A new Acas research paper – Managing conflict in the contemporary British workplace, published this week – includes some interesting, if not entirely surprising, findings on the impact of the hefty employment tribunal (ET) claimant fees introduced in July 2013. … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment