The NZCTU opposes the Employment Relations Amendment Bill 2025 (the Bill) in the strongest possible terms.
The Bill is nothing more than a ‘multi-pronged’ attack on the rights and dignity of working people.
Taken together, these amendments follow a plain legislative agenda, designed to strip working people bare of their rights, while giving a broad license to employers to abuse imbalances of power and fire at will. These attacks are couched in the confusing rhetoric of ‘balance’ and ‘certainty’. Yet this is a Bill that abandons any sense of balance by completely trashing the interests of working people.
In terms of ‘certainty’, one thing is clear. If passed into law, this Bill will leave abusive employers certain of the fact that they may avoid accountability in most situations when they trample the dignity of workers, deprive them of justice, and sack them without reasonable cause.