Here's what I have learnt after being in the workforce for 37 years - getting rid of useless people is too hard.

And when you make things too hard, people don’t bother, people make do with what they have, people don't take risks. And so it was with the 90-day trials, which are now for medium and large businesses a mechanism that vanished as of this week.

It's a win for the unions who make it their business to protect the useless. But the sad downside is that those on the fringes of jobs, whether by age, experience, or background will find it harder, if not impossible, to get work.

If you come with baggage, you are up against it from day one. You need an employer to take a punt, and to believe in you. It costs money to employ people, it costs money to train them, and sadly it costs, even more, to get rid of them. And if it doesn't look easy, then why would you bother? And so they won't.

The 90-day trials worked, which is the sad indictment on the Labour Party and the Greens. There was no question the law worked. It got people in jobs, research showed it to be the case. Any number of employers said so, and gave tangible examples of how they had taken people on given the risk was mitigated.

And further, despite all the union warnings early on about these dastardly abusers of the downtrodden, hardly anyone got shafted and certainly next to no one who didn’t deserve it.

Was it perfect or a magic bullet? Of course not. But it was a law that provided flexibility and flexibility when you are running a business is key.

Once again, one suspects something the bulk of this Government, especially the Labour Party, didn’t understand given virtually none of them have ever actually owned a business. New Zealand First can be held partially accountable, to the extent they deserve credit for saving the small business from its demise. And New Zealand is a land of small businesses, and New Zealand First should have held out for all businesses, instead of caving.

Why? Because logic is lacking, a good idea is a good idea. And the counter argument was medium and large companies have HR departments that can handle disputes. Well yes, they do but it all costs money, takes time and is draining.

Which brings me back to the start, I have seen how the law protects the useless, lazy, unprofessional, dishonest, and the incompetent. The law favours them more than the employer. The effort to unburden yourself from an employment mistake is too cumbersome.

The 90-day trial, in a small way, was a step in the right direction but this lot took a good thing and made life harder. No government that understands business would have done that.