The permament probabtion period

Darien Fention announced:

Staff for Members of Parliament will now face the 90 day no rights trial period, unless they are employed to work for Labour, says Darien Fenton, Labour’s spokesperson for Labour Issues.

“Labour does not believe that 90 day trial period is fair, justified or needed and our caucus has unanimously resolved that no Labour MP or manager will accept a 90 day trial period as part of the employment of any new staff member,” Darien Fenton said.

This is hilarious hypocrisy, because Darien has forgotten to mention one key thing.

All parliamentary staff who work for an MP or a parliamentary party (even if they have worked there for 20 years) are effectively on a permament probation period where they can be dismissed at any time, regardless of performance.

In every employment contract there is a clause called “irreconciable differences”, which states that if your MP or Leader declares they have irreconciable differences, you lose you job in return for a payout.

So Labour trumpeting that their staff are protected from the 90 day probation period is meaningless, as Labour MPs can (and have) sack their staff at any time without any need to prove it is a justified dismissal.

The question that should be asked of Labour is why do they campaign to deny other employers the same rights they have as MPs to dismiss their staff purely because they no longer have confidence in them.