When a business is sold, staff must be clearly told what is to happen to their jobs. If employment is to end, the vendor employer must carry out a proper redundancy process. If the purchaser wishes to employ existing staff, it must enter into new employment agreements with those staff. A failure to tell employees exactly what is intended may result in both employers having to pay compensation and lost wages to any misled employees.

An employer who wanted to contest the truthfulness of an employee’s stated reason for taking sick leave successfully applied to the Employment Relations Authority for permission to put the employee’s Facebook pages recording the employee’s activities on the relevant dates into evidence. The Authority concluded that the evidence (although not available at the time the employee was dismissed) was relevant to the assessment of remedies, including the possibility of reinstatement, and allowed the evidence to be admitted.

In this article, we will address the following questions:

The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal from an aged care provider that sought to deduct KiwiSaver compulsory employer contributions from the minimum wages it paid its caregivers.

The New Zealand Law Society has recommended clarification of proposed changes to clauses in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill.

Man finds edited agency profile still available in Google

Farms continue to have one of the highest levels of injury of any workplace in New Zealand, with an average of five quad bike-related deaths annually.  With the arrival of Spring and longer working hours, the chances of an accident on a quad bike rise significantly, and farmers, their families, and farm employees must keep quad bike safety high on their safety priorities list.

There is no provision in the employees’ employment agreements that covers this exact event but there is a provision in our sick leave policies requiring the employee to contact the employer if the employee is unable to work. Do I have to pay the employees who did not come to work?

The Employment Relations Act 2000 (the Act) makes provision for hiring employees on trial periods for up to 90 days. If the employee proves to be unsatisfactory, provided the requirements of the Act are met, the employee can be dismissed without following the normal performance management process. Despite this very useful provision, employers continue to ask prospective employees to “do a half day” (or whatever time is agreed) to “see how they get on”. If the worker is not engaged following the test, trouble can follow because the disappointed worker may be motivated to raise a personal grievance claiming he or she was an employee and has been unjustifiably dismissed. If the Employment Relations Authority accepts that the worker was an employee then the employee will undoubtedly win the case.

The Court of Appeal has found in favour of two companies which challenged a finding that they could be required to reimburse their successor to airline catering contracts for the previously accrued leave entitlements of 40 staff who transferred to the successor as Pt 6A of the Employment Relations Act 2000 permits. This is a result that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill currently before select committee would apparently seek to address.