Latest / Best of Business / Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on the Government reducing the compensation aggrieved employees can get from employers

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Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on the Government reducing the compensation aggrieved employees can get from employers · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. There'd be
• 0:12
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• 0:17
  Speaker 2: So Janative Shrenni is The Herald's Wellington business Editorncy's been
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  Speaker 2: looking at the story.
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  Speaker 3: Hello, Hi Andrew, how are you doing?
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  Speaker 2: Very good? So to zero? So, so the minister is
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  Speaker 2: wanting to reduce your money that an employee can get.
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  Speaker 2: But what if the complaint has been upheld, you know,
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  Speaker 2: and you BORI decided it's zero. Do they not get
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  Speaker 2: money even though their complaint has been upheld? This seems weird?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So basically, if you're an employee, you
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  Speaker 3: can take your employer to the employment relations authority or
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  Speaker 3: the employment court and you can bring forward a personal grievance.
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  Speaker 3: So that's if you think you've been unfairly dismissed or
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  Speaker 3: you know, harassed or humiliated or something like that in
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  Speaker 3: the workplace, you can take take your complaint forward. Now,
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  Speaker 3: the authority or the court could uphold your complaint. They
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  Speaker 3: could say, yes, jenay, that's fine. You know you have
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  Speaker 3: been treated badly by your employer. But what Brooke van
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  Speaker 3: Valden is saying is that she reckons the authority in
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  Speaker 3: the court should be able to discount the amount that
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  Speaker 3: you get paid out if you've actually done something bad
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  Speaker 3: as well in the process. So currently that's the case.
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  Speaker 3: Let's say I'm dismissed because I perform really poorly. Currently
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  Speaker 3: they can say, well, you're not going to get the
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  Speaker 3: full pay up because you actually haven't been a very
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  Speaker 3: good employee. What she's saying is that if you've done
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  Speaker 3: something really bad like stolen or hurt somebody, your employer
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  Speaker 3: doesn't need to pay you out at all. So the
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  Speaker 3: authority in the court can say, yes, actually you're you know,
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  Speaker 3: you've been unfairly dismissed, but you've acted so badly your
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  Speaker 3: employer doesn't need to pay you anything.
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  Speaker 2: So, as the idea, will she have to will Brook
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  Speaker 2: have to therefore schedule all the various complaints that employee
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  Speaker 2: employees can have off employers and vice versa, so that
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  Speaker 2: we know exactly whether you're a zero, you're whether you're
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  Speaker 2: a ten buck, or whether you're a one thing.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, good question. So currently the court and the authority
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  Speaker 3: has some discretion to discount the amount that you get
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  Speaker 3: paid out. But she wants to tweak the law to
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  Speaker 3: say that actually if the employee employee has engaged in
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  Speaker 3: serious misconduct, now that has some sort of legal definition
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  Speaker 3: serious misconduct, then you get nothing. There's another thing that
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  Speaker 3: she wants to change here, whereby if reducing the sort
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  Speaker 3: of compensation you might get for hurt and humiliation again,
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  Speaker 3: if if your behavior contributed towards the dispute. So there's
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  Speaker 3: already a bit of a scale here where, you know,
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  Speaker 3: because these things are never clear cut right. Often it's
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  Speaker 3: you know, a bit of give and take, and it's
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  Speaker 3: a bit of this and that, and the court and
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  Speaker 3: the authority can already use that scale. But she wants
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  Speaker 3: to tip things very much in favor of employers because
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  Speaker 3: she thinks people are sort of taking the mickey a
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  Speaker 3: little bit. And you know, and this is creating uncertainty
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  Speaker 3: and hurting businesses and people.
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  Speaker 2: Whenever people make these sorts of accusations and they say
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  Speaker 2: we're doing this, you say, well, have you got evidence?
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  Speaker 2: Has Brook van Alden van Velden got evidence of employees
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  Speaker 2: exploiting personal grievances because there's money tree at the end
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  Speaker 2: of it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's that is a good question. And you know,
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  Speaker 3: she's just referred to some anecdotal evidence. For example, she
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  Speaker 3: said there was a case where you know, no names
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  Speaker 3: or anything, just where someone worked in healthcare, they abused
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  Speaker 3: a patient and then they got their job back at
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  Speaker 3: the end of it. She said, well, that's that's not on.
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  Speaker 3: But the thing here is that, you know, if you
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  Speaker 3: do have a personal grievance, it still costs you money
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  Speaker 3: to take it forward in most cases, depending on you know,
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  Speaker 3: sorts of legal services you have access to. So I
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  Speaker 3: guess the unions would argue that actually, as an employee,
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  Speaker 3: you might already be on the back foot. You don't
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  Speaker 3: want to cause a saga and go through all that
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  Speaker 3: stress and everything unnecessarily. So the unions say, well, there's
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  Speaker 3: already empower power and balance. But then the employers groups
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  Speaker 3: they say, well, you know, an employer and employers shouldn't
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  Speaker 3: be penalized if they just did their paperwork incorrectly or
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  Speaker 3: did something minor, but the employee actually did the bad thing,
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  Speaker 3: like the employee actually didn't turn up to work or
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  Speaker 3: punch somebody at work or or stole So it's a
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  Speaker 3: pretty it's a pretty heated debate. I think it's actually
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  Speaker 3: it's quite complicated.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, very abstract and very hard to actually quantify.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, the employers feel like sitting ducks and
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  Speaker 2: they feel that they're being exploited and the employees feel
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  Speaker 2: like they're just pawns at the end of the day
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  Speaker 2: again getting exploited. And so there we go, an interesting story.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you Janee Jeannet de Breshani, who is our Wellington
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  Speaker 2: Business editor.
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