Important changes to Employment Law from April 2011

As you may be aware from recent media reports, changes to the Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) and Holidays Act 2004 (HA) have now been passed into law and, for the most part, came into effect on 1 April 2011.

These changes will affect both employers and employees. Changes include:

   
• Extending the 90 day 'trial period' to all employers;
   
• Giving employees the choice to cash in their fourth week of annual leave, on agreement with their employer;
   
• Allowing employees to negotiate the transfer of a public holiday to another day;
   
• Adjusting the calculation of Relevant Daily Pay with a new equation being Average Daily Pay;
   
• Checking for sick leave by medical certificates for any day of absence; and
   
• Doubling the penalties for breaching the ERA or HA.

It is now a good time to review your employment agreement and ensure that it continues to comply with the new legislation, especially given the penalties for non-compliance with either the ERA or HA will double from $10,000.00 to $20,000.00 for companies and $5,000.00 to $10,000.00 for individuals!

How the Changes Affect You

Make sure that you are aware of, and plan for new developments allows you to take advantage of the changes, and to help you avoid problems down the line.

How We Can Help

We do a lot of great work in employment law. If you want to make use of the changes then we recommend that you contact us for a 'health check" of your existing employment agreements and to review and update them to add new provisions and to keep them current. Our employment team at our North HarbourOffice welcomes your enquiry.

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Employment Law

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 © McVeagh Fleming 2011

This article is published for general information purposes only.  Legal content in this article is necessarily of a general nature and should not be relied upon as legal advice.  If you require specific legal advice in respect of any legal issue, you should always engage a lawyer to provide that advice.