Read news releases and research updates from the April 2017 newsletter.
Do union activists need to keep their heads below the parapet?
Carol Jess, Sue Ryall, and Clara Cantal.
'I don’t discuss the union with my line manager. If you stick your head above the parapet your career is over.'
This discussion I had with a fellow union member in the UK is a common perception, particularly strongly held by active trade unionists. Indeed, research carried out by Personnel Today and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2007 substantiated how widespread this perception was. They surveyed 583 Human Resource (HR) professionals and 524 union reps (union delegates), and discovered that 92% of the union reps believed their careers had been damaged by their union involvement. Further, 36% of the HR professionals agreed that union reps careers may be harmed.
Similar questions were put to members of the Public Services Association (PSA) in New Zealand in a survey of union members carried out in 2016 in partnership with CLEW. In that research, four category of membership, reflecting different levels of involvement, were identified – inactive, active member, workplace delegate member, or ‘Other’ such as PSA network, national delegates, or runanga member).
The data from the 2016 Survey pf PSA members suggests that while active members and workplace delegates believed that they were disadvantaged for promotion and career advancement that this is not what appears to happen in practice.
Due diligence: a panacea for health and safety risk governance?
This article is abridged from an article co-authored by Chris Peace, Vicky Mabin and Carolyn Cordery of Victoria University in Wellington Business School, to be published in Policy & Practice in Health and Safety.
The failure of boards and individual directors to engage with and accept accountability for work health and safety (WH&S) has frequently been commented on as a contributory cause of high injury and fatality rates.
This article and the longer published version explore some of the options for compliance and will contribute to debate about measures to improve standards of governance of WH&S-related risks in New Zealand and other jurisdictions. The increased responsibility on directors for ‘due diligence’ in complying with their health and safety obligations aims to greatly improve the health and safety environment for those for whom they are responsible.
Legal update: enforcement of a foreign employment agreement—New Zealand Basing Limited v Brown [2016] NZCA 525
Review by Peter Kiely, Partner. and Hannah King, Solicitor, KielyThompsonCaisley.
This case concerns enforcement of a foreign employment agreement. The Court of Appeal overturned the Employment Court judgment and found that the proper law of the employment contracts was Hong Kong law and the contracts were not affected by New Zealand’s employment legislation.
The report on the Employment Court decision was included in 'Employment Agreements: Bargaining Trends and Employment Law Update 2014/2015' (pg 133).
Time for mandatory gender equality reporting in New Zealand?
Amanda Reilly and William Townsend.
New Zealand women are paid 12% less than men on an hourly basis and, far from improving, the gap is widening (Statistics New Zealand, 2016). Dr Jackie Blue, the Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission (HRC), has called for mandatory gender equality reporting as one intervention that might narrow the gap (Human Rights Commission, 2016).
New Zealand is lagging behind both Australia and the United Kingdom in its failure to implement such gender reporting.
