rehctub
Your example about your employee's late arrival for attending to his horses is valid from an employer's point of view. Without knowing the full story - perhaps his horses escaped, or was he a victim of flooding - I don't know. These things sometimes happen as part of real life, work commitments don't reign supreme over an emergency situation.

If his late arrival was other than for an emergency, Rstuart is correct about documenting unacceptable behaviours. As his employer you can sit down with him, document the incident and explain that punctuality is his responsibility and not conducive to good employer/employee relations or obligations. If it was me, I would offer to work an hour extra for three days to make up for it but maybe he won't see it like that. Give him the opportunity.

This may be a one-off incident on the employee's part due to unforseen circumstances, and probably won't happen again, but if it does you have previous documentation of your counselling session.

Yes pelican, it was a 'one off' and was due to flooding. I have no problem with it, nor did I dock his pay.

No one gets my point though.

If I was late due to tending to my horses, why then should I have to pay wages for staff who had to sit and wait for me to tend to my problems.

This is where the system fails.

All parties must have equal rights or you have an inbalance.

rstuart
I imagine you are uninterested in the answer

I would love an answer it's just that no one has given one. After all, my question is on 'fairness' and balance, you have not answered this, rather you say there is no fairness in business. Well that's fine if your staff have numbers, but mine, along with many others, have names.

What you have to do is pretty straight forward. You write a simple letter saying the behaviour is unacceptable.

Remember, many small business people did not finnish school, can't read or write properly and most certainly can't write a decent letter. So then what!

You end up better employees and less staff turnover. And less reason to whinge, which probably kills it for you.
My staff are great and I am a great boss. I fear for others here as I have been through it all before and IT WILL COST JOBS.

Many small business owners will avoid the laws and confusion by not expanding and not employing! It happened last time and it will happen again.

This thread is called 'toxic law for small business' and it is just that!

Now is not the time to go puting 'red tape hurdels' between employers and employees.

With unemployment surging towards 10%, this may well break our backs.

rehctub: "Remember, many small business people did not finnish school, can't read or write properly."

If that is the case, the unfair dismissal laws are the least of their problems. The rest of your post consists of assertions of convenient "facts", but without references to back them up and unfounded assertions. It is probably best to leave it there.

rstuart, I am happy to leave it at that with just this last exiting post.

I am willing to go on record to openly state that the reintroduction, or tightening up' of unfair dismisal laws WILL COST JOBS.

Are you willing to state on record that these laws will not cost jobs?

rehctub: "Are you willing to state on record that these laws will not cost jobs?"

Obviously I don't think it will. The number of people I hired was the minimum I could get away with. I always took the attitude that if I didn't hire them and do the work on offer, someone else would. There were a whole pile of factors that made think twice about taking work on of course, but I don't recall scaling back the workforce if things went bad was one of them. Making people redundant isn't a pleasant task, but if there wasn't work around there are lots of unpleasant things going on.

However, regarding your challenge, the problem isn't making the statement, the problem is holding me (or you) to it. I don't see how you could possibly measure whether it cost jobs or not, there being so many other factors involved. On that level it is just an empty statement.