The Employment Relations Amendment Billl—effective the day after royal assent—sets a $200,000 income threshold, barring higher earners from personal grievances over unjustified dismissal.
It introduces a new four-part “gateway test” for distinguishing employees from contractors, ends payouts for dismissals due to “serious misconduct,” and scraps the 30-day rule auto-extending collective agreements to new hires.
“This government is committed to maximising business confidence and accelerating business growth, and today’s changes advance both,” Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden said, highlighting that the reforms will back “business to hire with increased confidence.”
“When employers can hire and grow their business with confidence, more people get opportunities. That means more jobs and higher-paid jobs.”
“Rebalancing the employment relations settings, as this law does, brings more choice for businesses and workers to create and enter working arrangements that suit their individual needs.”
Current employees meeting the $200,000 threshold on existing agreements get up to 12 months to renegotiate before the dismissal rules kick in.
For E tū union national secretary Rachel Mackintosh, the bill is “one of the most anti-worker pieces of legislation in decades.”
“Rather than building fairer workplaces, this government has legislated to weaken the rights of workers and embed a new class of low-rights contractors.”
She said it opens a path for employers to exclude workers from “core employment protections – even when they are employees in all but name.”
“After the Uber drivers fought for their rights and won, this government has changed the law so employers can sidestep that decision.”
“Workers who should be employees will be denied basic entitlements just because a company wants to call them a contractor.”
Green Party workplace relations spokesperson Teanau Tuiono calls the bill’s passage “a dark day.”
Tuiono accused the government of siding with “big corporates” over workers. He said workers have a basic right to seek remedies for unjustifiable and unlawful dismissal, but this law effectively destroys that right, leaving them completely exposed to abuses of power by their employers.