New Zealand Employment Law

Facebook can also bite employers

2012-01-19T13:49:00.000+13:00

It appears that it is not only employees that may find Facebook causing problems in an employment relationship. A recent Employment Relations Authority decision (Kloeten v Combined Tanning Supplies Ltd [2012] NZERA Auckland 9) indicated that facebook comments may prove counter-productive when defending an allegation of unjustified dismissal. In this case the dismissal (by the employee's aunt)

Labour Law and Human Rights: an interesting Australian development

2011-12-16T10:50:00.000+13:00

Those damn Aussies always try to go one better-and in one respect have succeeded. The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 will commence on 4 January 2012. The new Act will is intended to improve parliamentary scrutiny of legislation for consistency with Australia’s human rights obligations through two measures: requiring that all new bills and disallowable legislative

How Inflexible is New Zealand's Labour Market?

2011-09-18T11:56:00.002+12:00

Last week Andrew Scott-Howman in his Workface blog posted on New Zealand's ranking in the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum. This body is a conservative think tank whose New Zealand partners are Business New Zealand and The New Zealand Institute. The latter has an excellent commentary on the overall New Zealand report on its website. This post will focus purely

Workers as Commodities.

2011-09-13T10:53:00.007+12:00

In 1944 the International Labour Organisation, at its meeting in Philadelphia, declared that "labour is not a commodity" a declaration intended to reassert the ILO membership's commitment to the achievement of social justice .In Sunday's New Zealand Herald Damien Grant asserted that "Economically, the unskilled are irrelevant. They are a commodity." Roger Kerr's comment to the Dublin Economic

Employment Law and the Election

2011-08-26T15:47:00.005+12:00

Apparently today is the first day of the three month 'regulated period' during which political parties are required to spend their own money on electioneering. With a little imagination that makes today a good day to begin commenting on the implications of the election for the future of employment law. Three years ago all seemed reasonably quiet on the employment front. National's minimal

NZ Labour Law Association Inaugural Conference

2011-07-09T14:41:00.003+12:00

The New Zealand Labour Law Association Inc will, in association with Victoria University's School of Law, hold its inaugural conference on Friday 2nd December this year. The final programme is yet to be confirmed and papers may be submitted for possible presentation. One theme will be issues from Australia. Prof Andrew Stewart of the University of Adelaide will provide an account of current

Domestic Workers in Singapore

2011-07-09T14:32:00.003+12:00

In my last blog I mentioned the ILO convention on domestic workers. This article from The Guardian is a useful account of what is probably the better end of the problem. Singapore does tend to have a sound legal system and in comparative terms is likely to be one of the better places to be employed - although it, like the UK, has refused to ratify the convention. Nevertheless it provides a

ILO Convention on Domestic Workers

2011-06-21T12:45:00.005+12:00

On 16th June the International Labour Conference voted overwhelmingly to adopt the Convention concerning decent work for domestic workers and an associated recommendation. Readers might recall that when this item arose last year the New Zealand government and employer representatives at the conference were criticised for their failure to support the proposed convention. At the time the Minister

Employment and the Minimum Wage

2011-06-17T09:19:00.006+12:00

Two Australian academics have recently published an article on the minimum wage and its employment effects in the British Journal of Industrial Relations [

Is it that time already?

2011-06-13T12:24:00.005+12:00

Union bashing raising its ugly head again - it must be an election year. Time just rolls on as you get older and the same old continues to be the same old. Old timers like me will recall union bashing has pretty much been standard National party fare since at least the days of the Muldoon governments who turned it into something of an art form-even if it backfired after the election it had

The Whitcoulls Saga

2011-06-02T12:07:00.006+12:00

Posts have been a bit irregular for various reasons but the current row relating to the employment contracts being offered to Whitcoulls' employees has stirred me into action.What is most disturbing about this matter is the total garbage that is appearing in some newspaper comments sections and in the comments section on websites such as David Farrar's Kiwiblog. In many of these comments there

Mine Disasters and Inquiries

2010-12-04T11:43:00.004+13:00

During the recent Pike River tragedy I looked up Wikipedia for a reference to the Miners' Hymn written after the Gresford Disaster where 266 men died after explosions in the mine. The section of the entry on the subsequent inquiry makes interesting reading - some extracts belowEvents after the accident The wage packets of the dead miners were docked quarter of a shift's pay for failure to

Back to the Bad Old Days?

2010-10-29T01:30:00.002+13:00