How redundancy in New Zealand should be handled.
With wonderful timing, theres a really great blog on the Herald Website from employment lawyer Bridget Smith. She went to see the film Up In The Air with George Clooney – which funnily enough we also went to see the other day. Its about a guy who fires people for a living as a consultant, because the bosses are too cowardly to do it.
In it she highlights the important points you need to know about how the process should work here.
Which is different in every way to what happened to hubby last week oddly enough.
While there is no set process for a redundancy, the Employment Relations Act 2000 requires consultation with potentially affected employees about a proposal, before any final decisions are made.
In addition, the common law makes it clear that consultation is more than notification and the process must not be a sham.
Basically, the process under New Zealand law requires an employer to provide potentially affected employees with a memorandum which outlines what is proposed and why.
The employees should be provided with sufficient information in order to be able to provide feedback on the proposal, including possible alternatives and this feedback, including any possible alternatives, must be considered by the employer prior to any final decisions being made.
Hmmm – mustn’t be a sham.
A memorandum explaining what is proposed and why? Nope – didn’t get one of those.
Sufficient information provided? Nope – not yet.
So, New Zealand employees can breathe something of a sigh of relief. The chances of a Corporate Downsizing Expert (or Mr Clooney for that matter) beaming into your office, out of the blue, via video conference, and advising that you have been made redundant, are slim to none.
Not so slim it seems.
Certainly if your employer has any familiarity with employment law in New Zealand and wants to avoid litigation in the form of a personal grievance. Because the reality is, in that situation, even George Clooney would struggle to soften the blow.
I agree: the people in charge of these redundancies (and hubby hasn’t actually been told who was going to make the decision) should have spent a bit of time asking a lawyer what they needed to do instead of messing it up so badly. I cant help but hope they lose their jobs when the next lot of heads have to roll.
It seems management hasn’t quite figured out that if you get rid of all the staff that actually do teh work and make the money, they won’t need managers.
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Related posts:
- Three Month probation for new employees comes to New Zealand.
- IBM New Zealand redundancies – they are not rumours.
- Redundancy Tax Credit – make sure you know about it.
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