Re: This was in the UK. In the US …
The 1 year thing predates New Labour and Tony Blair by quite some time. IIRC, up to a year and you were still classed as temporary labour. If you were on a temp contract and you worked past the one year anniversary with out starting a new one, your contract was, by default, a permanent contract with all the attendant rights. My father was at Reyrolles on a rolling contract like that.. They were effectively "sacked" every 364 days and then, in the main, re-hired the following day. Although IIRC, anyone reaching the end of the second year were taken on permanently anyway. One of my first jobs was dependant on the as then Manpower Service Commission funding, supposedly on an annually renewable employment contract, but 12 years later, long after the MSC had been reformed and renamed twice and I was made redundant, I still got full rights as a permie because no one at the local council had bothered to keep up with the contract details (Likewise, we were always treated as permies after year one and got the usual incremental pay rises on the scale as well as the negotiated ones and the additional long service extra days holiday each year)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
