The introduction of a 90-day trial period for new workers at businesses employing fewer than 20 people on April 1 is proving a major issue for employers and unions.
Otago-Southland Employers Association chief executive Duncan Simpson and Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly are both concerned about the trial period - but for different reasons.
Mr Simpson said no-one knew how it would work, given that the legislation was passed quickly (and under urgency) before Christmas.
"There are potential pitfalls in the thing," Mr Simpson said.
Among the pitfalls, as he saw them, was the disputes procedure.
While workers in the trial period were prevented from taking a personal grievance claim if they were found to be unsuitable, they could take a "disadvantage claim", something which was heavily skewed towards employees, Mr Simpson said.
Under current legislation, personal grievances were often thrown out of employment hearings.
But employees often had a hit on the disadvantage claims, which were very difficult to defend.
Also, Mr Simpson hoped the trial period would be extended to other enterprises.
"If taking people on around the place is designed to help grow the economy, why restrict it to businesses with 19 or less workers. There could be a move to revisit that to give it some teeth."
Ms Kelly was concerned there was no requirement for employers to tell staff why they got fired in the trial period.
"If a young worker is late every day, what's wrong with saying, `listen, sunshine, you need to come to work on time' so he knows for his next job."
All of the Government employment changes were being sold as "moderate", but that was unlikely to be the case, she said.
The CTU had been invited to participate in reviews of legislation and would do so.
But it would also campaign against changes it regarded as not in the best interests of workers.
Unions were meeting this month to discuss tactics and a campaign would be held next month against what the CTU saw as excessive changes to employment law.
The campaign would last as long as needed, she said.
The second issue concerning Mr Simpson's members was dealing with redundancies during the economic downturn as it was a hard issue to address correctly.
The Employment Relations Authority's rulings were going 80% against employers, who were having to give a payout to their redundant workers as well as pay the associated legal costs.
Redundancy was a difficult issue for small to medium businesses to deal with, particularly in times of an economic downturn when one or two people might have to lose their jobs to save a business going under, he said.
Mr Simpson worried there would be a return to the days when the first instinct was for a personal grievance to be filed with the authority.
In the past, he said, it had become part of a check list, with Work and Income officials asking the redundant worker had they filed the PG as a way of seeing them through the stand-down period.
Redundancies had been increasing in the South in the past nine months and took up much of the association's staff time in the final two weeks of last year.
The Holidays Act review would not have an immediate impact but it should be helpful to employers by simplifying the "relevant daily pay" calculation, he said.
It also was likely to give employers and employees the right to cash up the fourth week of annual leave introduced by the last Labour-led government, Mr Simpson said.
Unused leave had grown substantially since the fourth week was introduced to an average of 18 working days of untaken leave per employee - up five or six working days in the past 18 months.
"Many people don't know what to do with an extra week. It may be related to the requirements of the business but even the three weeks may not have all been taken down here."
Smaller businesses often ran into production difficulties when two or three people took their holidays at once.
Untaken leave had cash flow implications for businesses and also had to be taken out of the equation when bank finance was being sought, he said.
Ms Kelly said the sale of the fourth week would be opposed by the CTU.
"Four weeks leave is an absolute minimum. No-one knows what the statutory minimum payout will be and there is no guarantee employers will have to pay a week's wage."
The relevant daily pay rate should also be protected to allow workers to take sick leave without losing up to $30 a day in pay by losing shift or other allowances, she said.
Many employers would push to pay the minimum hourly rate, forcing sick workers to turn up on the job to avoid losing money, she said.
Union access to workplaces was also expected to come under threat through the review of the Employment Relations Act.
At present, employers could not deny reasonable access but that could change, she said.
"Restricting union access would be outrageous. We don't want to spend time taking employers to court just on access issues.
"Employers could say they have a busy schedule and can't fit us in. We would have great difficulty in getting proof of that."
There were few cases which had been taken and won against unions having unreasonable access to workplaces and that should give employers confidence that the right would not be abused, Ms Kelly said.
Mr Simpson expected the unions to campaign against any attempt to remove them from involvement in collective agreement bargaining, but he also expected there would be some move to widen the bargaining rules.
"At that point, it will be man the barricades. We plan to be giving advice on strikes and lockouts as time goes on. The days lost through industrial action will start to go up again.
"To be fair, I don't think the pendulum is swinging too far in favour of employers.
"If I was a betting man, I would put money on the employees winning most of the time. As employers, we don't want to see too much of a swing."
Health and safety was another major concern, particularly as the Department of Labour was successfully appealing fines and seeing them increased substantially on appeal, he said.
A construction firm in Christchurch had its fine increased from $5000 to $50,000 on appeal from the Department of Labour and another firm's fine increased from $15,000 to $40,000 on appeal.
"There is a trend to get stuck into employers and not just the bigger ones.
"The worry is that it does not relate to reality. You can't put a price on a death but these fines were for minor accidents.
"We can't condone accidents and we are doing a lot of work on health and safety with members. But these fines are out of all proportion."
