Industrial Relations

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• Remove crippling regulations that benefit those with jobs at the expense of those without jobs and that cause involuntary unemployment.
• Repeal the Employment Relations Act 2001.
• Abolish all minimum wage laws and cut taxes significantly.
• Abolish the specialist Employment Court which has been an abject failure, and all other specialist employment authorities, tribunals and courts.
• Restore the common law freedom of contract between employers and employees.
• Restore common law freedoms of association and of speech in hiring labour and in communicating with staff.
• Replace all other regulations affecting employment with common law remedies.
• Introduce a work test and a 40-hour work or training week on eligibility for the unemployment benefit and those on the DPB with children older than five. (more here)

• Create 100,000 new green jobs.
• Increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour immediately, and commit to future increases until it reaches 66% of the average wage.
• Strengthen collective bargaining rights — as recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the International Labour Organisation — recognising collective bargaining as one of the key ways to reduce income inequality and, as a result, high levels of private debt.
• Raise the cap on apprentice numbers and provide specific incentives for clean technology industry training;
  Implement international standards on the right to strike, worker accident compensation, pay equity, flexible working hours, and breastfeeding breaks.
• Remove the 90-day probation period for new employees.
• Facilitate greater worker participation on company boards, as has been successfully implemented in Germany, and encourage employees to take an ownership stake in their companies.(more here)

• An Industry Standard Agreement will be a collective agreement representing the employment „standards‟ in the particular industry, agreed in the first instance between unions and employer organisations in the defined industry. Through the Industry Standard Agreement, these standards would be „extended‟ to all workers in the industry, providing a set of minimum pay and conditions, based on genuine negotiations in other parts of the industry.
• Labour will repeal the National Government‟s unfair laws where workers can be fired without cause in their first 90 days of employment, and the restrictions on the access for workers to their unions in the workplace.
• Labour will restore reinstatement as the primary remedy when an employee has been unjustifiably dismissed, along with the test of justification.
• Labour will amend the Holidays Act to 2008 settings to protect the rights of workers to time off for rest and recreation and ensure that all NZ workers have access to 11 days off on pay for recognised public holidays, including Anzac and Waitangi Day.
• Labour will strengthen collective bargaining by amending the Employment Relations Act to provide greater legislative support, including multi-employer collective bargaining.
  Labour will enable unions and employers to set up systems in which all workers contribute to the benefits of enterprise and multi-enterprise bargaining.
• Labour will defend decent jobs against outsourcing and reduced terms and conditions by providing for the right to strike when a collective agreement is in force where the employer makes a significant proposal for restructuring or outsourcing that in effect renders the collective agreement ineffective.
  Labour will provide certainty for employers and employees in situations of redundancy by implementing the recommendations of the 2008 Ministerial Advisory Group report on redundancy and restructuring.
• Labour will ensure that workers employed in precarious forms of employment (such as labour hire, casual employment and contracting) are given similar rights to those in more traditional forms of employment.
  Labour will also investigate and implement best practice statutory support and legal rights for dependent contractors, including minimum wage protection and other rights.
  As a minimum, Labour will extend the right to organise and collectively bargain to contractors who are primarily selling their labour, as well as ensuring an effective and cheap disputes resolution procedure.
  Labour will repeal the National Government‟s changes to the Employment Relations Act in regard to workers in the film and video production industries. (more here)

• Support changes to employment relations laws that give workers greater bargaining power to negotiate wages and conditions with their employers, and oppose changes that reduce the bargaining power of workers and unions. (more here)

Not set out on their website.

• Remove the ‘requirement to conclude’ collective bargaining.
• Remove the requirement that non-union members are employed under a collective agreement for their first 30-days.
• Allow employers to opt out of negotiations for a multi-employer collective agreement.
• Take a close look at how allegations of constructive dismissal can be better managed. (more here)

• Improve workplace literacy.
• Review employment law to ensure that it reflects the reality of workplace relations in small businesses.
• Ensure that advice and information is available to businesses to support them in hiring migrants to fill skill shortages.
• Support the Seasonal Migrant Worker Scheme.
• Support the continuance of the 90 day probationary period, as it gives the opportunity for people, particularly youth and new migrants, to enter the workforce. (more here)