Switched on Gardener will stay open despite the business playing a central and pivotal role in 106 cannabis operations.

The owner of the Switched on Gardener chain of hydroponic shops has been sent to jail for four years three months, while the general manager got three years nine months.

There are few things more Italian than a freshly-baked pizza emerging from a wood-fired oven, but Italy is now facing an acute shortage of pizza makers.

Capital projects worth more than $1 billion are either under way or on the drawing board as the dairy industry gears up for increased demand from Asia for our milk powder.

Employment law experts have expressed concerns about plans to fast-track decisions on disputes before the Employment Relations Authority.

In the last quarter of 2012, there were 461 mortgagee sales, 11 per cent down from the previous quarter and 24 per cent less than the same quarter the year before, according to statistics released today by Terralink International.

Almost 200 Christchurch businesses have been opened or reopened since January and the population is growing as the Canterbury city continues its recovery from the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.

The onus is on those calling for radical, disruptive change to something as important as the electricity sector to demonstrate that it is broken and needs fixing.

A fish processing company has been ordered to pay $22,000 after two of its employees suffered frostbite while unloading fish from a vessel last year.

"While there's been much hand-wringing over housing prices, is intervention by the Reserve Bank really the answer?" asks David Tripe.

"What just happened?" asks Brian Rudman. "Bland, colourless Labour leader David Shearer has suddenly been transmogrified into a working-class hero."

Job security was workers' No 1 priority last year. Now Kiwi employees are seeking better pay and improved workplace perks.

An "agitated" Air NZ hostess, angry at how she was woken during a flight, was ordered to take anger management lessons because she shook the colleague who woke her.

But the gap between the best and worst-performing states in the country appears to be widening, CommSec's quarterly State of the States economic performance report says.

My wife works in a rest home and like many of her low paid fellow workers has an individual employment contract.