Businesses to be 'Named and Shamed' for Employing Foreign Workers?
Immigration was a key theme once again at the recent Conservative party conference in Birmingham and formed a large part of the speech by the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd.
In her speech, Ms Rudd said that the government were considering plans to require employers to reveal how many foreign staff they employ and that they planned to publish lists of companies detailing the proportion of their international staff. Ms Rudd's speech clearly intimated that such lists would be used to 'name and shame' those employers with a higher proportion of foreign staff.
Ms Rudd's speech generated a great deal of attention and attracted accusations that the policy was akin to tattooing workers 'with numbers on their forearms'. Indeed, the government appear to have retreated from this position already, with Justine Greening the Education Secretary, stating that the data would not be made publicly available and instead be used by the government to identify skills shortages.
One announcement in Ms Rudd's speech to the conference which is more likely to be implemented is a tightening of the Resident Labour Market Test which needs to be carried out by employers wishing to sponsor workers under Tier 2 of the Points-Based System. Earlier this year the then Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, announced changes to Tier 2 which are due to be implemented this autumn and in April 2017. No changes to the Resident Labour Market Test were included in those announcements, so it remains to be seen whether any changes to the Resident Labour Market Test will be implemented at the same time as those other changes, or whether any changes to the Resident Labour Market Test will come later in 2017.
Much of the recent rhetoric on immigration has been driven by Brexit and, what the government perceives to be, overwhelming public demand for the imposition of stricter immigration restrictions. This is leading to a great deal of uncertainty for all businesses and their staff but particularly for EEA nationals and employers who rely on skilled workers from within and outside of the EU. We can provide briefings, workshops and surgeries for businesses and their employees who want to plan for the future.