Speaking after a business breakfast this morning, Mr Little was asked about the 90-day trials, and he said Labour's intention was to add a "fairness requirement".
"The principle thing is, on the 90-day trial thing, every business owner I talk to about having to give feedback to someone under a trial, they all say, 'Yeah, but I do that already'.
"So there won't be any new onerous obligation in that regard. But it will make it fair and we want to write that into the law."
Asked if his comments meant that the trial periods - previously opposed by Labour - would remain in a Government under his leadership, he said they would.
"We wouldn't be talking about making the 90-day trial period fairer if we were going to get rid of it...the 90-day trail thing is there, we want to make it fair."
In January, Mr Little said in his first state of the nation speech as leader that small businesses - "the engine room of job growth" - would be a priority for Labour as it developed policy over the next two years.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Mr Little would not be drawn on changes to Labour policies that small businesses might oppose such as abolishing the 90-day trial period for new workers.
He was more forthright in a press release in June last year, when as the spokesman on labour issues he stated, "we don't need the 90-day law and under Labour it will go".
"The reality is we had, and still have, a perfectly good law that allows probationary periods but which require an employer to give feedback and notify the worker if they are not meeting the required standard," Mr Little said in the June 2014 press release.
Before he entered Parliament in 2011, Mr Little was the head of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) for 11 years.
A spokeswoman for the union said national secretary Bill Newson was in an all-day meeting and unavailable for comment.
By Nicholas Jones of the New Zealand Herald
