Centre for Labour, Employment, and Work Te Puna Mātauranga Mahi

Seminar and workshop programme

Keep up to date with upcoming seminars and workshops in the Centre for Labour, Employment and Work.

Trends in employment agreements and employment law update seminars

The Trends in Employment Agreements and Employment Law Update seminars provide participants with a comprehensive overview of bargaining and case law developments over the last 12 months.

These annual seminars are presented in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington each July/August. We also offer them in webinars for those who cannot attend the in-person sessions. CLEW will present the next series in late July/early August 2022.

CLEW 50th Anniversary Seminar

CLEW celebrated its 50th anniversary in April 2021 with a seminar that included key players in the employment relations area in New Zealand. The seminar focused on a key question in 2021 - Is it time to reset our Employment Relations systems? The seminar, held on 14 April 2021, was originally planned for April 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

The programme included an opening address from the Hon Michael Woods, Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety; Professor Gordon Anderson on 'Rethinking the legislative Architecture' for employment relations; and Professor David Peetz from Griffith University in Queensland looked at the role of collective bargaining and unions and assessed if they were still an effective too for determining wages, hours and conditions.  The discussants of these papers represented the broad range of players in the employment relations field - Chief Judge Christina Inglis of the Employment Court of NZ; Peter Cranney, prominent Wellington employment lawyer who has led a number of ground-breaking legal cases; John Ryall formerly from E tu, the largest private sector union; Kerry Davies, General Secretary of New Zealand's largest public sector union, the Public Service Association; Judy Dell, the Principal Mediator; Paul Mackay from Business New Zealand; Melissa Ansell-Bridges from the NZCTU; and Dr Rose Ryan from MBIE.

The keynote papers for each session are included below along with Chief Judge Inglis's paper.