Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has announced that workers will be offered shares in their companies in return for giving up their legal rights at work.
From April next year, companies will be able to offer existing staff between £2000 ($3902) and £50,000 ($97,550) in tax-free shares if they surrender their rights to claim unfair dismissal, to redundancy pay, to request flexible working and time off for training. Women on maternity leave would have to give 16 weeks' notice of returning to work, rather than eight weeks as at present. In return, these workers would not pay capital gains tax on any rise in the value of the shares when they sold them.
New firms could make such contracts compulsory. People working for existing firms could not be forced to sign them - but new recruits could be made to, under legislation to be rushed through Parliament. Workers who gave up their employment rights would not be able to change their minds and exercise them in future unless their employer agreed.
The chancellor hopes that hundreds of thousands of workers will become "employee-owners", mainly in fast-growing small- and medium-sized businesses which want a motivated and flexible workforce.
The plan is a variation of a proposal advocated by Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist and Tory donor, whose idea of allowing firms to "fire at will" without fear of an unfair dismissal claim was blocked by the Liberal Democrats. They now support the revised plan because it is voluntary and advocates employee share ownership.
