From employment rights to wraparound childcare

Employment rights advice is at the centre of the next Mums.Dads.Work podcast, released today.

Hosts Ben Falk, editor of workingdads.co.uk, and Mandy Garner, editor of workingmums.co.uk, talk to Karen Holden, founder of A City Law Firm and a regular blogger on workingmums.co.uk. Karen, who also set up the Female Founders Growth programme to help women founders to scale their businesses, discusses everything from the most common employment rights issues she gets through her door in the current climate, including the rise in redundancies to maternity and pregnancy discrimination. She discusses recent changes to employment law and the employment tribunal backlog.

In addition Ben and Mandy discuss the backlash against flexible and alternative ways of working, including the Government’s announcement that councils pursuing a four-day working week are not providing value for taxpayers and should “cease immediately”. This is in relation to a local authority who took part in a 4-day week pilot. It comes after the Taxpayers Alliance, a controversial right-wing pressure group whose funding is unclear, claimed the trial was biased, based on a Freedom of Information request which they said showed collusion between the council and the researchers. The researchers say much of the claims of bias made relate to corrections of typos and grammar in the press release and that the evidence so far on the 4-Day Week from many employers clearly shows the benefits.

Mandy and Ben talked about how the response from the Government comes amid a general backlash against flexible and alternative ways of working despite huge demand from workers.

They also discussed the allocation of funding for wraparound care – breakfast and afterschool clubs, which has been welcomed by organisations such as the Out of School Alliance who had reported that their members were facing financial crisis amid ever-increasing costs. They also expressed concerns about parents’ ability to pay for the care. If few parents can afford the care and find workarounds that makes it harder to make it economically viable.

• Vote  
• 0
• 0
• You already voted!