Tag: Employment law

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Test case clarifies law on leave payments for employees paid on commission

Tauranga-based company GD (Tauranga) Ltd has been successful in the Employment Court, with the judgment in their test case GD (Tauranga) Ltd v Price & Others [2019] NZEmpC 101 confirming the legality of their decision to switch to paying their employees their “relevant daily pay” under the Holidays Act 2003…

Barriers to participation in the employment institutions

Community groups, academics, policy makers, senior legal practitioners, representatives from unions, Business New Zealand, the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, Employment Mediation Services, the Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court gathered in Wellington in May to discuss barriers to participation in the employment institutions and how those barriers might be…

Default union enrolment widely supported

Nearly two-thirds of New Zealanders support automatic trade union enrolment for new job starters, provided they also have the right to opt out afterwards, according to research conducted as part of a Law Foundation-backed study. What’s more, support for a “union default” policy extends across society, regardless of political, occupational, income…

Public drinking-water fluoridation and the right to refuse medical treatment — the Supreme Court wades in

The fluoridation of public drinking-water supply has long been a topic of debate in Aotearoa. Although there is broad support for fluoridation from the Ministry of Health and the New Zealand Dental Association, the practice has remained controversial, particularly in the context of our express recognition of the “right to…

Will employees and contractors survive in the gig economy?

The employee/contractor distinction is nearly as old as work itself in New Zealand. Even the concepts of a “contract of service” and a “contract for services” have the quaint ring of another era. More recently, the increase in “on-demand” app-based service providers such as Deliveroo, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Lyft are changing…

Compensating what?

Employment law is emotional. Whether we work with employees, unions or employers, we cannot escape the demanding nature of dealing with feelings about an employment relationship problem – the phrase “personal grievance” seems especially apt. So too does the wording of the section used to compensate for feelings of “humiliation,…

Balancing contractual intention and legislative rights: The case of the peripatetic pilots

Pilots win age-discrimination case as the Supreme Court finds that non-discrimination rights are not contractual – Brown & Anor v New Zealand Basing Ltd [2017] NZSC 139. Cathay Pacific’s Hong Kong subsidiary, New Zealand Basing Ltd (NZBL), employed two airline pilots. The pilots were ultimately based in New Zealand, although their…

Do we have a consistent approach? Sexual experience and reputation evidence in civil sexual harassment claims

The Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) and the Human Rights Act 1993 (HRA) both have legislative mechanisms governing the evidence of the sexual experience and reputation of a claimant in a sexual harassment proceeding. The wording of s 116 of the ERA and s 62(4) of the HRA are almost identical.…

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