Editorial: Teabreak law change least impressive

Labour Minister Michael Woodhouse said the move was aimed at providing flexibility, not taking away rights. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Opinion

It is a pity that almost the first legislative act of the Government's new term is an act abolishing mandatory "tea breaks" for workers.

Certainly the previous law was dated, though it was enacted under Labour as recently as 2008. It was an echo of an era when most work was menial, repetitive, tedious, sometimes exhausting, and most people were employed on terms negotiated collectively. Today a minority of the workforce belongs to unions and those who do are mostly in state employment. They are in desk jobs or professions and hardly need rest and meal breaks specified in law.

In fact most might have been alarmed to be permitted just one paid 10-minute break in a period of two to four hours, or two 10-minute breaks and a 30-minute meal break in a six to eight-hour working day. The Government has replaced those provisions with a less precise requirement for rest and meal breaks to be agreed between employers and staff. It is a sensible change but was it necessary? The previous law operated as a statutory minimum, a safety net for anyone with an unreasonable employer, but it hardly intruded on normal workplaces. Few were probably aware of it.

National's amendment to the Employment Relations Act does more important things. It allows bargaining to end with no agreement rather than go on indefinitely, like the Auckland port dispute, for fear of breaching a requirement of "good faith". From now on, when negotiations are getting nowhere one of the parties can seek a declaration from the Employment Relations Authority that bargaining has concluded. At that point industrial action by either party becomes lawful. The possibility should be a spur to agreements.

The new law also ensures strikes and lockouts cannot continue indefinitely. Employers or unions must give written notice of their action as well as a start and finish date. A notified finish date will obviously blunt the weapon but it can still be effective and, if not, it allows the action to end without defeat. All of this sounds like a hangover from last century, as does the new law's reference to multi-employer agreements.

Those were industry-wide wage agreements once forced on all employers in an industry at a union's behest. They were obsolete as soon as the economy was opened, industries were deregulated and all companies had to be competitive. Multi-employer agreements had largely disappeared by the 1990s but the law allowed an employer to be forced by a vote of its workforce to enter into an industry-wide negotiation. That power has gone now.

Employment law has been the defining battleground of politics, its balance favouring whichever side is in power. This Government's most worthwhile contribution has been the introduction of 90-day trials in which new employees could be hired without personal grievance rights against dismissal. Now the Government has removed an obligation on employers to extend union terms and conditions to them for 30 days, which seems unfair. The 30-day protection gave them time to consider their bargaining position, a reasonable balance to the 90-day trial.

In one sense at least, the law has been changed in favour of employees. The right to request more flexible working arrangements is no longer confined to those with caring obligations. Any employee may now make a request and the employer is obliged to respond within a month. Flexibility in employment is a virtue often invoked by and for employers, this law will help it work for employees too.

Employment is a mutually beneficial contract, as legislators need to remember if their work is not to be reversed by each change of government.