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SIMON O’CONNOR/Stuff
The courier industry is one sector that could be affected by the now-deferred reform of employment law.
The Council of Trade Unions has signalled it is disappointed by the Government’s decision to delay reforms that could have afforded some of the country’s estimated 150,000 contractors the same rights as employees.
A working group established by the Government and which included union and employer representatives recommended redrawing the legal boundary between contractors and employees in 2021.
In a win for unions that could have seen more contractors classed as employees with the right to holiday and sick pay and the right to take personal grievance cases, the working party recommended that the “critical question” should be whether a worker was “genuinely in business on his or her own account”.
But Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on Monday that the Government would defer public consultations pending the result of an appeal being lodged by Uber against an Employment Court ruling that its drivers were employees and not contractors.
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CTU national secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges said the rights of contractors were a “bread and butter” issue for thousands of workers.
“Many contractors in New Zealand end up earning well below the minimum wage, and have fewer employment benefits like sick leave and Kiwisaver. That is an unacceptable and untenable situation, especially in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis,” she said.
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Uber’s court loss in October was part of a wider dispute between some businesses and unions (video first published in October).
CTU president Richard Wagstaff had previously revealed he had raised the importance of contractor-law reform with Hipkins, shortly after he was confirmed as Prime Minister,
The delay is part of a raft of policy retrenchments which Hipkins said were intended to “free up more government bandwidth and money to focus on the cost of living”.
Ironically, the Employment Court had applied the same test recommended by the government working group in coming to its decision on Uber, so had appeared to be converging on the position that the Government was moving to, before Hipkins announcement that it would let the court process run first.
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