Election year generally brings a shuffling of the labour and employment laws within New Zealand and this year has been no different with National introducing changes to both the Holidays and Employment Relations acts during April and July. The left see these as “eroding workers rights” and the right see these changes as “restoring more balance between the employer and employee”. While these changes are both in their early days, there is no queue of employees wanting to cash in leave or employers held to task for enforcing this as a policy, nor do we see companies exiting employees into the street at a whim under the 90 day trial period. The only employment stories to hit the media have been Sonny Bill Williams contract negations with the All Blacks and the handling of the non-disclosure by one of the contestants in NZ Next Top Model; so I guess the changes have been broadly accepted by all parties.
Like all changes in government legislations there is an onus on employers to update all existing documentation and ensure that new job descriptions are brought into line. One thing that the Department of Labour does well on their website is provide easy access to any updates with associated cheat sheets for ease of understanding. An overview of the latest changes can be found here: http://dol.govt.nz/er/actchanges/index.asp. Keys areas that have recently changed include:
- The ability for employees to cash in leave
- Transferring of public holidays
- The extending of the 90 day trial period to larger organisations
- Changes to the personal grievance provisions
- Consent for union access to a workplace
- Retention of employment agreements
If you have any concerns around your compliance in any of these areas or have not updated your position descriptions or employment contracts to reflect the changes, give us a call at Sonata and we would be only too happy to help.
^DB
