Workplace Wellbeing Guide 5: Employment Rights

View Guide as a PDF: Guide+5

Employers must ensure that employment agreements include all the minimum rights stipulated in law. However, increasingly, sector organisations are recognising the value of offering employment conditions which are over and above the legal minimums.

In acash-poor sector such as ours, this can help retain valued staff. What’s more, it recognises the valuable work undertaken in our sector and supports the strong philosophical base the sector operates on. Such ‘good practice’ terms and conditions could include extra annual leave, term leave, paid days off for voluntary work, allowances for personal use of work cars, and other flexible arrangements.

1. Minimum Wages

Minimum wage levels change over time and it is important to check the Department of Labour website for any updates.

The employer generally needs to get the employee’s written consent to make deductions from their pay, or to pay their wages in a form other than cash.

2. Equal Pay& Equal Rights

Employers cannot differentiate in pay rates between employees on the basis of gender. In most cases, the employer cannot discriminate in hiring or firing, training or promoting because of the employee’s race, colour, national or ethnic origin, sex or sexual orientation, marital or family status, employment status, age, religious belief or political opinion, or if they have a disability.

3. Union Membership Rights

Employees have an absolute right to make their own decision about whether they want to join a union and, if so, which union. It is illegal for an employer to put unreasonable pressure on them to join or to not join a union, or to discriminate against them because they joined or didn’t join a union.

It is also illegal for anyone else to put unreasonable pressure on an employee to join or to not join a union. Union members may be nominated by their union to undertake employment relations education on paid leave. Employees can ask their union about this.

4. Labour Inspectors

Labour Inspectors can enforce the laws that relate to certain statutory minimum entitlements, such as annual leave, sick leave, public holidays and minimum wages. If it appears that an employer has breached any of these laws, an employee can ask a Labour Inspector to investigate the matter on their behalf, or they can take action themselves or through their union.

5. MINIMUM LEAVE ENTITLEMENTS

Annual Leave

• 4 weeks paid annual leave, including 2 weeks annual leave taken in one block, if that is what the employee requests
• 8% of gross pay for casual or fixed term workers with a period of employment of less than a year
• Payment of outstanding leave when an employee leaves employment
• Payment for annual leave is an employee’s ordinary or their average pay for the year, whichever is the greatest.

Public Holidays

• Employees are entitled to 11 paid public holidays if they fall on days they would normally work, and to be paid time and a half for working on that day
• Employees can be required to work if the day falls on a day they usually work, provided they have agreed to do so in their employment agreement.

Alternative Leave Entitlement

• If an employee works on a public holiday and that day is a normal working day for them, they are entitled to a full day’s leave on an alternative day if they work for part or all of that day, in addition to time and a half for the hours they work
• An employee has the right to take the alternative day within 12 months, and if the employee and the employer can’t agree on when the alternative day should be taken, the employee may take the alternative day on 14 days’ notice to the employer
• Employees that are on call on a holiday are entitled to an alternative day’s leave, whether they are called in or not.

Sick Leave

• 5 days paid leave after six months service
• For use when the employee, or their spouse or partner, or a dependent, is sick or injured
• Can accumulate if not taken to a total of 20 days a year.

Bereavement andTangihanga Leave

• 3 days paid leave entitlement for every loss of a spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild or parent in law
• 1 day paid leave for another person if the employer accepts there was a close relationship or the employee has cultural or other responsibilities.

Parental Leave

• An employee or their partner can apply for parental leave either on the birth of a child, or the adoption of a child under 5. They must have worked at least an average of 10 hours each week, including at least one hour per week or 40 hours per month, for the same employer for either 6 or 12 months before the expected date of birth or adoption
• It is illegal for an employer to either dismiss or discriminate against an employee on grounds of pregnancy or for taking parental leave under the Act.

Paid ParentalLeave

• Employees are eligible for paid parental leave if they have been employed by the same employer for six months for at least 10 hours a week. The leave can be taken by one parent, or shared between two eligible partners
• Their jobs must remain open to them for up to a year (unless there is good reason not to do so).

Special Leave

• A female employee who is pregnant is also entitled, before taking up maternity or extended leave, to take a total of up to 10 days’ special leave without pay for reasons connected to the child.

Maternity Leave

• Maternity leave is unpaid leave of up to 14 weeks available to a woman and may start up to six weeks before the due date. It is available to both pregnant women and adoptive mothers (who may commence leave up to 6 weeks before care is first assumed for a child under five years).

Paternity Leave

• Paternity leave is unpaid leave of up to 2 weeks, available to the male partner about the time of birth or adoption.

Extended Leave

• Extended leave is unpaid leave and can be taken by either partner or shared by partners either concurrently or consecutively to care for a child after birth or adoption and may last up to 52 weeks where employees have at least one year’s service.
• When a female employee who is entitled to both maternity leave and extended leave takes maternity leave, the period of extended leave to which she and her partner are entitled to should be reduced by the total period of maternity leave taken up to a maximum of 14 weeks. Any special or paternity leave taken shall not reduce the period of any entitlement to extended leave.

Other Leave Rights

Employees may also be entitled to other rights in some situations. For example:

• Employees who are injured as a result of an accident at work or somewhere else will be entitled to accident compensation.
• If employees do full-time voluntary training in the armed forces, they may be entitled to unpaid leave.

Information

Go to theDepartment of Labour website, www.ers.dol.govt.nz for current minimum wage levels, more information about employment rights and leave entitlements, and an on line tool to calculate employees’ public holiday entitlements.