In accordance with the Wages Protection Act 1983, an employer may make deductions from wages payable to an employee for any lawful purpose with the employee’s written consent.  Written consent includes consent in a general deductions clause in the relevant employment agreement, or on the employee’s written request.  Under s 5A of the Act, an employer must not make a deduction, however, if that deduction is unreasonable.

As of 1 April 2017 the new minimum wage rates are:

“Migrant workers make a valuable contribution to our workforce and have the same rights as any other worker,” Mr Woodhouse says.

Among other interesting things, in this recent case the Employment Court closely examined remedies, and in particular the effect of s 124 in reducing remedies to account for an employee’s contributing behaviour.  In other words, where the employee’s behaviour or conduct (the actions of the employee) contributed towards the situation that gave rise to the personal grievance, then the amount of remedies awarded may be reduced accordingly.  Actions that would normally result in a reduction in remedies are those which may be categorised as being “culpable” or “blameworthy”.

Our office will be closed from Friday 23rd December and reopens 16th January.  However, there will be people on call so if you need anything urgent over this period please contact:

We’ve had a lot of questions lately about the calculation of annual holiday pay, whether to use ordinary weekly pay or average weekly earnings, and what should be included in the calculations.

This year the recognised Public Holidays over the Christmas and New Year period are as follows:

With Christmas only a few weeks away, we thought we’d do a brief reminder about Closedown Periods that often occur during this festive time.

When employment relationships start to go pear shaped, employers are often faced with very generalised Privacy Act requests, which can be difficult and time consuming to comply with.  We refer to such requests as a ‘fishing expedition’, whereby an individual makes a formal information privacy request for all information about themselves pursuant to Principle 6 of the Privacy Act 1993.

The Government will update the Equal Pay Act and amend the Employment Relations Act to implement recommendations of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity.