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The Covid-19 pandemic has seen British businesses increasingly resorting to the practice of firing followed immediately by making a job offer on less favourable terms. Unions are protesting, raising public awareness and pressurising the government to intervene. While industrial blackmail is often effective, a few major disputes have demonstrated, at least at a local level, mobilisation capabilities which have sometimes proved partly successful. It does however seem that, in the absence of legislative amendments, effective protection may be too much to hope for.