Read news releases and research items from our April 2018 newsletter.
Research update: PhD research explores interesting subject matter
CLEW has established a post-graduate research student network to bring together students, across a range of disciplines, involved in research on aspects of labour, employment and work. We hope that the network will help the students to understand different perspectives on their topic and to draw on different approaches in their research.
It is our intention to publish a short article from at least one of the PhD or Masters students each edition of CLEW'd IN so that our subscriber community has the opportunity to understand the new research happening at Victoria University of Wellington and associated with CLEW.
Our first article is from Esme Franken, a student in the School of Management, specialising in Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations. She is part way through her research and has found some interesting preliminary results on 'The role of managers in developing resilient employees, and resilient organisations in the public sector.'
Legal update: employment court endorses banning order
Peter Kiely, KielyThompsonCaisley
In 2016, Parliament passed a series of employment law changes which related to the stricter enforcement of minimum employment standards. One of these changes was the introduction of banning orders and pecuniary penalties for employers who had persistently breached minimum employment standards.
Last month, the Employment Court in Labour Inspector v Victoria 88 Limited T/a Watershed Bar and Restaurant endorsed orders under these new provisions. As a result of the judgment, the employer company and its director are now banned from hiring employees for three years, in addition to paying a heavy financial penalty for persistent breaches.
Collective agreement data still sought after
In late July this year CLEW will embark on its 24th year of presenting the 'Trends in Employment Agreements and Employment Law Update' seminars that include the findings from its annual survey of collective agreements. The information that is presented has changed in the last two decades but the areas of interest and their importance has not.
The first of these seminars were presented in 1994 in Auckland and Wellington in response to the changes brought about by the Employment Contracts Act 1991. As the brochure at the time noted 'traditional relativities have totally collapsed and employers, employees, unions and bargaining agents have been left to establish new benchmarks.’ This has not changed in 2018, eighteen years after the replacement of the ECA with the Employment Relations Act under the Labour-led government in 2000.
The 2018 Trends in Employment Agreements and Employment Law Update seminar series starts in Christchurch on July 26, followed by Dunedin (July 27), Auckland (August 2), Hamilton (August 3) and Wellington (August 9). This year we will also be presenting the seminar as a webinar (August 10) for those who cannot make it to the 'in-person' sessions.
Seminar series proves popular
CLEW has had a busy start to the year with two well attended seminars and a third due on April 24.
Our first seminar of 2018, held on 19 February, discussed 'Bullying and Violence in the Workplace—Intervention and Prevention' and featured two presentations.
Our second seminar, 'Transforming workplace relations—learning from the past and looking to the future' was held on 1 March. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Iain Lees-Galloway, opened the seminar and gave an excellent overview of the Labour-led Government priorities in employment relations regulation.
Our third seminar 'Who benefits from productivity growth? The share of national income going to labour in New Zealand' to be held on Tuesday 24 April (next week), 12.30–2 pm is also proving very popular with government policy people and others concerned with this issue.
