Redundancy is generally considered to be a situation where an employee’s position is surplus to the employer’s commercial needs. Employers must be able to justify redundancies substantively (show that they are genuine) and procedurally (that a fair procedure was followed). An employer who fails to carry out a proper restructure process will be potentially liable for remedies such as compensation, penalties, lost remuneration and reinstatement.

The Government has introduced the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. In essence, this is to provide harsher sanctions for exploitative employment practices involving breach of statutory minima relating to wages and holidays. Greater investigative powers for Labour Inspectors and employment institutions will assist in bringing perpetrators to account.

October 21, 2015 The Human Rights Commission has welcomed plans to set up a working group to develop agreed principles on pay equity for all sectors of the economy.

A business that failed to accommodate an employee’s requests not to work Saturdays following his return to the practices of the Seventh Day Adventist Church was found to be in breach of the Human Rights Act by the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

The Employment Court gave some useful pointers on how it arrives at awards of compensation for hurt and humiliation in the context of a case of an employee whose short-lived employment of about three weeks ended with two days of “stressful and traumatic” circumstances.

The new health and safety law comes into effect on 4 April 2016.   A final version of the Bill can be seen here.  In the meantime here are five things you can do now:

Michael Woodhouse, 27 August 2015

On 27 August 2015, Parliament passed the health and safety reform legislation. Introduced on 10 March 2014, the Health and Safety Reform Bill reforms New Zealand’s workplace health and safety system. Its main purpose is to provide for a balanced framework to secure the health and safety system that has already resulted in the establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand. The new health and safety at work regime replaces the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 and the Machinery Act 1950.