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New Zealand

Aug
24
2018

New Zealand: Domestic Violence – Victims’ Protection Bill passed to enhance legal protections in the workplace for people affected by domestic violence

The Domestic Violence – Victims’ Protection Bill (“the Bill”) allows employees who are affected by domestic violence to take paid domestic violence leave and to request a short-term variation of their working arrangements (up to two months). The Bill also prohibits adverse treatment of employees affected by domestic violence

Jul
27
2018

New Zealand: Unpaid pre-work meetings conducted by an employer in New Zealand have been held to be ‘work’ for which employees are required to be paid

A recent New Zealand Employment Court decision has held that where an employer conducted unpaid meetings with its sales employees before their rostered hours of work/store opening hours, that it was required to pay the employees to attend these meetings. This was because the pre-work meetings were considered to be ‘work’ and the employees were entitled to be paid their hourly rate for that work. A further argument about the ability of the employer to offset the cost through its payment of commission and incentive payments was rejected and the Court held that those payments could not cover payment for this time

Aug
29
2017

New Zealand: McDonald’s Restaurants New Zealand successfully defended the first “zero hours” test case

In 2016, legislative changes were made to prevent “zero hours contracts”, i.e. the practice where employees did not have guaranteed hours of work, but were required to be available to take on any work their employer made available, making it hard to plan their finances and personal lives.
In the first test case since the legislative change, McDonald’s has now successfully defended the union’s claim that McDonald’s employment agreements contained an “availability provision”. The union argued that McDonald’s had an availability provision in its employment agreement and that it did not provide for reasonable compensation for the requirement to work additional hours. The union’s claim was rejected, because employees were not “required” to work additional hours, instead, any request that an employee work additional hours could be turned down.

Jun
29
2017

New Zealand: Amendment Bill to allow higher earners to contract out of the personal grievance provisions

A bill is currently being considered by the New Zealand parliament, which would allow high income earners to contract out of the personal grievance provisions of the Employment Relations Act 2000. This intention behind the Bill is to remove the threat of costly personal grievance claims for employers on the basis that high earning employees should arguably have the skills and bargaining power to be able to negotiate the terms of their employment and do not require the protection of the personal grievance regime.

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