Contents Page: NZJER, 2014, 39(2)
Name

Title

Page
NumberGuest Editors:
Margaret Wilson and Introduction
Pam Nuttall
Keith D. Ewing
Regulating for Decent Work andthe Effectiveness of Labour Law

3-21

Precarious Work – New ZealandExperience

22-33

Margaret Wilson

Melanie Nolan

Susan Robson

Judith Scott

Yvonne Oldfield

Anne-Marie McInally

Antipodean Aspirations and the
Difficulties of Regulating For
Decent Work Now and Then?
Regulating dispute resolution in theemployment jurisdiction: someinsights into regulating for decent
work from an empirical study ofpolicy for and the operations of theinstitutions 1990-2010
Mechanisms
for
Resolving
Collective Bargaining Disputes in
New Zealand

1-2

34-50

51-61

62-72

Safe and Healthy Work: a Human
Right

73-105

Corporate Manslaughter – does it
have a place in NZ law?

106-116

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 1-2

Introduction
The second New Zealand Labour Law Conference was hosted by AUT on 22
November 2013. The theme of the conference was Regulating for Decent Work. The
purpose of the conference was to enable contributors to analyse and reflect on thetheory and practice of the concept of decent work both internationally anddomestically. The advent of a neo-liberal labour relations regulatory framework has
placed, at risk, the notion of a decent work agenda. The conference provided an
opportunity for debate and discussion on the issues that have become evident under
the current regulatory arrangements.
The conference attracted 21 papers from academics and practitioners and, consistent
with the practice after the first conference, 15 of these are being published in special
labour law issues of the NZJER. The after dinner speech of Chief Judge Colgan who
introduced participants to the notion of ‘legal creep’ that has been developing in
employment law is also published. These two special NZJER issues include papers
from both academics and practitioners and are intended to provide a record of current
issues facing labour law today.
The paper covered a variety of topics, with the conference opening with presentations
from Professor Ewing and Professor Margaret Wilson that were intended to provide
an overview of decent law internationally and domestically. Professor Ewing
analysed regulating for decent work within the context of the ILO Declaration on
Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation and the Decent Work Agenda that has been
adopted by the ILO as a means of implementing decent work into domestic
jurisdictions. Professor Wilson’s paper focussed on the increasing prevalence ofinsecure/precious work in New Zealand that undermines the notion of decent work.
Professor Ewing also identifies the increasing number of zero contracts and forms ofinsecure work in the United Kingdom and the problems of regulation in this area.
The whole issue of decent work was examined in its historical context by Melanie
Nolan who identified that decent work was a myth for many workers under the IC andA system. She also notes that the various current campaigns for decent work, such as
Forestry Safety, Living Wage, Fairness at Work and Campaign of Insecure Work
reflect similar to issues raised in the 1890s and early 20th century. The challenge ofeffectively implementing decent work was explored in Susan Robson’s paper that
presents empirical research on dispute institutions 1990-2010. The importance ofunderstanding the statutory dispute resolution procedure of facilitation is analysed in
Judith Scott’s paper.
Other papers identify various employment practices and regulation that influence thereality of decent work in New Zealand. Yvonne Oldfield provides a detailed analysisof health and safety regulation and argues that health and safety is a human rights
issue, while Anne-Marie McInally pursues this topic with an argument for legal
recognition of the offence of corporate manslaughter after the tragedy at Pike River.
The argument that labour rights are human rights is also the subject of Edward Miller
and Jeff Sissons’ paper on the barriers to collective bargaining. Simon Mitchell’s
paper, also on collective bargaining, provides the perspective of a practitioner
advising union clients.
1

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 1-2

The value of a practitioner’s perspective is seen in Peter Cranney’s analysis of the law
relating to redundancy that highlights the need for legal certainty in an area that
directly affects the rights of employees. Phillipa Wells provides an Australianperspective on the law relating to redundancy. The need for greater legal certainty isalso identified in Anthony Drake’s paper on the complex issues raised wheninterpreting the provisions of Part 6A of the ERA. Greg Lloyd, in his paper, identified
the uncertainty surrounding conflicts of interest when lawyers represent employers inhealth and safety issues that affect the interests of workers who have no independent
legal representation.
A gender analysis is applied to the provisions of flexible work by Annick Masselot in
a comprehensive analysis of statutory provisions relating to leave related to the caringrole of women. Finally, Ross Wilson shares his experience of implementing thedecent work agenda in Burma. Although several other presentations were delivered at
the conference, the papers were not available for publication in the NZJER but may
appear in other publications.
The first eight papers discussed above are to be found in this issue of the Journal
39(2). The balance of the papers and the Chief Judge’s speech will appear in thesubsequent issue 39(3).
Overall, the conference fulfilled its objective of contributing to greater understandingof the theory and practice underlying labour law today in New Zealand. The New
Zealand Labour Law Society organisers were delighted at the level of support for the
conference from the whole spectrum of the community associated with the practice oflabour law and would like to acknowledge support from AUT Law School and the NZ
Work Research Institute.
Guest editors
Margaret Wilson, Professor of Law and Public Policy,
Faculty of Law, University of Waikato
Pam Nuttall, Senior Lecturer, AUT Law School2New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21

Regulating for Decent Work and the Effectiveness of Labour Law
Keith D. EWING*I
On 10 June 2008, the International Labour Conference adopted the Declaration on Social Justice fora Fair Globalisation. This was an important initiative, being only the third major declaration in thehistory of the ILO, building on the foundations established by the other two. The Declaration ofPhiladelphia of 1944 firmly embedded the principle that ‘labour is not a commodity’,1 while the
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work of 1998 reinforced the importance offour core principles relating to human rights at work (freedom of association and the effective
recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the prohibition of forced and compulsory labour, theeffective abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in employment). 2
The Declaration on Social Justice was designed in part to institutionalise the ILO’s decent work
agenda that had been developed since 1999, thereby placing the latter agenda at the core of the ILO’s
policies. Key aspects of that agenda were job creation, the extension of social and labour protection,
promoting social dialogue, and guaranteeing rights at work (with an emphasis on freedom of
association and collective bargaining).3 Although the Declaration was said to come “at a crucial
political moment, reflecting the wide consensus on the need for a strong social dimension to
globalization in achieving improved and fair outcomes for all”,4 having been adopted on the eve of
the global financial crisis, it also came at a spectacularly bad time economically and politically.
The Declaration nevertheless provided that the Decent Work Agenda would be promoted throughfour strategic objectives, all said to be equally important.5 Reflecting the outline of the Decent Work
Agenda considered above, the first of these relates to job creation, and the second to ‘developing
measures of social protection – social security and labour protection – which are sustainable andadapted to national circumstances’, including
Policies in regard to wages and earnings, hours and other conditions of work, designed toensure a just share of the fruits of progress to all and a minimum living age to all employed
and in need of such protection.6
The third objective is “the promotion of social dialogue and tripartism as the most appropriate
methods” for a number of defined purposes. These include “adapting the implementation of thestrategic objectives to the needs and circumstances of each country”. But more importantly forpresent purposes they also include “making labour law and institutions effective, including in respect*

Professor of Public Law, King’s College, London

1

On which, See P O’Higgins “Labour is not a Commodity”: an Irish Contribution to International Labour Law” (1997)
26 ILJ 225, and A Supiot and others “Dialogue & Debate: Labour, Constitution and A Sense of Measure: A Debate with
Alain Supiot” (2010) 19 Social Legal Studies 217-252.
2
On which, See P Alston, “Core Labour Standards’ and the Transformation of the International Labour Rights Regime”(2004) 15 EJIL 457.
3
See <www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/decent-work-agenda/lang--en/index.htm>.
4
ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation (2008), Preface.
5
At Part IA.
6
At Part IA(ii).

3New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21of the recognition of the employment relationship, the promotion of good industrial relations and thebuilding of effective labour inspection systems”.7 Note the need for labour law to be “effective”.
The promotion of social dialogue is, thus, not an end in itself, but an objective with a number ofdefined purposes of which the effectiveness of labour law is immensely important, but not the onlyone.
The fourth and final objective is respect, promotion and realisation of the fundamental principles andrights at work,8 these to be found in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at
Work referred to above. In emphasising the importance of these fundamental principles and rights atwork, the Declaration on Social Justice maintains that these rights are valuable not only for their own
sake, but also for “enabling conditions that are necessary for the full realization of all the strategic
objectives’. According to the Declaration, however, “freedom of association and the effective
recognition of the right to collective bargaining are particularly important to enable the attainment of
the four strategic objectives”.9 Note the ‘effective’ recognition of the ‘right’ to collective bargaining.

II
From the partisan perspective of labour law, there are a number of points that stand out in the
Declaration on Social Justice, not least the idea of an ‘effective labour law’. This is a concept withwhich I am unfamiliar, and which does not appear to be well developed in the literature. But it is
one which is very intriguing, not least because its meaning is unclear. In terms of the conference
theme of Regulating for Decent Work, effective labour law would appear to be an essential starting
point.
Despite the uncertainty as to meaning, there is a suggestion in the Declaration that an effective
labour law is one that addresses both substantive and procedural matters, that is to say, both thecontent of the law and the manner of its enforcement. As to the former, at the very least, it mustmean a labour law that is wholly inclusive in terms of its coverage (hence the reference in the
Declaration to the “recognition of the employment relationship”). This, of course, is very importantin view of the segmentation of labour law that is taking place in many jurisdictions throughout theworld, as new forms of employment relationship are emerging in order to evade the protections
which labour law seeks to provide, even though these protections increasingly are very limited.10
Beyond the question of scope, the idea of an effective labour law raises questions about thesubstance of the law. But if effectiveness relates to substance, how can we determine if labour law
is effective if we do not know what it is seeking to achieve? This is a much more challenging issue
about which consensus is likely to be difficult, though some sense of the minimum normative
content of labour law for these purposes may be revealed by the Declaration itself. 11 Less
challenging perhaps are the means by which that that minimum normative content is to be met, theDeclaration highlighting procedural measures designed to secure the right to collective bargaining,

7

At Part IA(iii).
At Part IA(iv).
9
At Part IA.
10This is a point pursued in some detail below.
11
A normative content in terms of labour standards is suggested by the reference to “wages and earnings, hours and otherconditions of work, designed to ensure a just share of the fruits of progress to all and a minimum living age to all
employed and in need of such protection”: ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation (2008), Part IA(ii).
This is a matter that needs to be more fully considered.
84New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
alongside policies relating to pay, working time, health and safety and other undefined conditions ofwork.12Apart from questions of scope and content, an effective labour law is one that addresses questions ofenforcement of standards. At an abstract level, that is perhaps uncontroversial, and certainly lesscontroversial than questions about the substance of the law. But not wholly uncontroversial, at least
to the extent that there is an assumed need for a system of labour inspection, presumably to remove
the burden of enforcement from the vulnerable. Effectiveness as enforcement also raises wider
questions about the nature of national legal systems with which not all countries are able to comply.
At its most basic, there are wider rule of law questions applicable here about access to justice, theindependence of the judiciary, and the enforcement of judicial decisions.13
These seem to me to be modest claims for effectiveness. The first and third say little about thesubstance of the law: if we are to have labour law it should apply to everyone, and it should beproperly administered and enforced. The second admittedly begs questions about substantive
outcomes, though the demands of the Declaration are far from viewing labour law as a redistributional tool.14 Yet, it is clear that there are powerful forces at work to ensure that thesemodest principles are diminished in the face of a deliberate ineffectiveness of labour law in national
systems. Three phenomena, in particular, present a clear and continuing challenge: thesegmentation of labour law to which I have already referred, the growing commodification of labour,and the mutation of employer practice.
I propose to consider these latter phenomena through the lens of developments in English law, before
returning to the effectiveness of labour law and the decent work agenda. If the effectiveness oflabour law is the first step in regulating for decent work, we need to understand the problems theregulator must address. While I make no claims that the British experience is universal, I would be
surprised if there are no parallels in other common law jurisdictions in particular.

III
Asda Stores Ltd is a British subsidiary of the US retail giant Walmart, though to claim that Walmart
is a giant perhaps does not do full justice to its size. Walmart is the biggest private employer in theworld, employing 2.1 million people globally, which places it just below the US Department of
Defense, and the People’s Liberation Army, respectively.
Step forward a group of Asda employees in the United Kingdom who claimed that their terms andconditions of employment had been unlawfully changed.15 The company wanted to move all staff
onto the same working conditions, leading to 8,700 workers being transferred ‘involuntarily’ to the
new conditions, which led some of their number to bring proceedings for unauthorised deductions
from wages, breach of contract and, in some cases, unfair dismissal.

12

At n 11 above. These latter questions on questions of substance presumably could be dealt with by collective
bargaining or by protective legislation, or both.
13This is an issue that has arisen recently in relation to Cambodia. See ILO, Report of the Committee of Experts on the
Application of Conventions and Recommendations (Report III, Part 1A) (2014) 74-75.
14
See above n 11.
15
Bateman v ASDA Stores Ltd [2010] IRLR 370. For comment, see J Hendy and F Reynolds, “Reserving the Right toChange Terms and Conditions” (2012) 41 Industrial Law Journal 79.

5New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
The issue before the employment tribunal hearing the case was a simple one, namely whether theemployees’ consent was necessary before these changes could be made. Asda Stores claimed that it
had secured authority to make the change by virtue of a passage in its ‘Colleague Handbook’, which
provides that “the Company reserves the right to review, revise, amend or replace the content of thishandbook, and introduce new policies from time to time to reflect the changing needs of the businessand to comply with new legislation”.
It is not clear whether “colleagues” were always supplied with their personal copies of the handbook(which made clear that not all its terms were contractual). According to the handbook, however, acopy is “displayed on the colleague communication board in your store and on Pipeline, andreplacement copies are available from your People Manager”. It appears to have been the
responsibility of ‘colleagues’ to keep themselves up to date about changes, “by attending meetings,
huddles [informal team meetings] and by keeping an eye on the colleague communication board forany updates”.16
In dismissing the employees’ various claims, the employment tribunal, nevertheless, accepted that“the introduction of the new regime was a significant change affecting how much employees would
be paid for their work at particular times of the day and night as well as removing certain benefits”.
It also concluded that “the pay of the claimants was fundamental to the employment relationship andthat in the light of the significant changes to the claimants’ contractual terms as to pay, Asda was
required on ordinary principles to obtain the consent of the employees”.17
So why did the tribunal decide for the employer? The answer lay in the provisions of the handbook,the tribunal accepting “the general principle that employers may reserve the contractual right to vary
the terms or to change important aspects of their job irrespective of whether the employee consents
or not”, adding “such provisions will be scrutinised carefully to ensure that they cover the particularchanges made unilaterally by the employer”. But “if the change or variation falls within thecontractual power to vary, it will be effective even if financial loss ensues”.18
True, the tribunal suggested that there might be a number of safeguards that could operate to preventthe abuse of this power, in what would, of course, be standard form contracts, in which any notion ofcontract would be pure fiction. But these did not apply in this case, despite claims in an unsuccessful
appeal that “most of the employees were not well-educated or even literate or numerate andsubsisting on very low wages”. Nor was it persuasive that to argue that:
not one of the 150,000 employees who entered a contract on the basis of it, could conceivably haveintended or expected its effect would be to leave to the unilateral discretion of the respondent the rightto reduce the pay increase or change the hours of work and cut holidays without the need for consent
and without the need for notice.19

We return below to consider what this case tells us about the contribution of labour law to the
problems faced by workers in the modern economy. For the moment, perhaps the best that can besaid is that Bateman was a harsh decision. But it is not the only example recently of employers
taking the power to change the terms and conditions of employment unilaterally, or of the courts

16

Bateman at [6].
At [10].
18
At [13] citing Wandsworth LBC v D’Silva [1998] IRLR 193, per Lord Woolf, at [31].
19
Bateman at [22].
176New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
looking the other way. Nor is the use of this power confined to retail workers, with similar terms
being identified in the contracts of dock-workers, airline cabin crew,20 and bankers.

IV
Labour economists have referred to the segmentation of labour for many years, as employers ‘sliceand dice’ the workforce to minimise the risks of employment, by transferring these risks where
possible to the worker.21 Thus, the worker is used when needed and wages are paid only whenrequired, divesting the employer of responsibility for the worker as a person rather than as alabourer. Labour law has permitted, tolerated and encouraged this development by what might bereferred to as the parallel segmentation of labour law.
This segmentation is best seen in the form of a simple pyramid divided into three parts. At the top of
the pyramid is a small group of highly paid workers illustrated by the applicants in Dresdner
Kleinwort Ltd v Attrill, 22 in which 104 employees of the bank claimed that “they had been
wrongfully denied their contractual entitlement to certain discretionary bonuses for the calendar year
2008 promised by their employers”.23 According to the judgment of the appeal court which upheld
the lower court decision in favour of the claimants, at stake were “sums totaling more than €50
million”.24 The applicants’ claimed that the employer had undertaken to make these payments andwas contractually bound to do so, having been caught out by contracts of employment providing that“the Company reserves the right to vary the terms and conditions described in this handbook and theterms and conditions of your employment generally”.25
This top segment of the workforce is a small and elite group: wealthy individuals in very highly paid
jobs with generous contractual terms and the personal financial muscle to enforce them. The
distinguishing feature of this case (and cases like it in recent years) is that it was heard in theordinary courts, where justice is very expensive to administer and where the costs of failure arecrippling. Attrill was a case where both sides were represented by city solicitors and at least two
barristers each. The proceedings, at first instance, lasted for 16 days, and the appeal for anotherthree; and this was only after the applicants had survived earlier attempts by the employer to havetheir action struck out as showing no cause of action,26 in a case involving another expensive team ofsolicitors and barristers of the highest professional calibre. Indeed, one of the barristers for the bank
was subsequently appointed directly from legal practice to the Supreme Court in a unique move,albeit a move reportedly delayed as the individual in question completed his highly publicised andallegedly highly remunerated representation of Roman Abramovitch.27
20

Malone v British Airways plc [2010] EWHC 302 (QB), [2010] IRLR 32. See K D Ewing, Fighting Back – Resisting‘Union – Busting’ and ‘Strike – Breaking’ During the BA Dispute (Institute of Employment Rights, 2011).
21
See the discussion in N Beerepoot, ‘Globalization and the Reworking of Labour Market Segmentation’, in A C
Bergene, S B Endresen and H M Knutsen (eds) Missing Links in Human Geography (Ashgate, Farnham, 2010) 220-3.
22
Dresdner Kleinwort Ltd v Attrill [2013] EWCA Civ 394.
23
At [1] (Elias LJ).
24
At [1]
25
The passage continued: “Such changes can only be made by a member of the Human Resource Department and must
be communicated to you in writing. When the change affects a group of employees, notification may be by display on
notice boards or Company Intranet”.
26[2010] EWHC 1249 (QB); [2011] EWCA Civ 229, [2011] IRLR 613.
27
This fight to the death with rival oligarch Boris Berezovsky over the entrails of the USSR was fought out in the
English courts: Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2012: ‘Roman Abramovich has won his $6.5bn legal battle with his former
mentor and business partner, in the biggest private court case in British legal history’. Sumption’s fee in the latter casewas reported to be £3m: The Lawyer, 6 April 2011.

7

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21

The Attrill case is, thus, important partly because the bankers had access to the most senior judges inthe High Court to enforce a massive contract claim with the help of very expensive legal teams. This
is not an option available to most workers28 and, indeed, the dangers of losing such a case would
have been enough to terrify all but the most reckless or the most financially secure, in view of thecosts’ order that might be awarded to the successful party.29 The case is also important, however, forillustrating how wealthy litigants are able to enforce their contracts and, in the process, indulge inesoteric and technical aspects of contract law in the enforcement of their claims.30 As indicated,
Attrill is not alone, and it is an important feature of these recent cases that the courts have indicated awillingness to develop principles to control the wide discretionary powers employers often reserve
for themselves in contracts, the courts in these cases beginning to apply to the private law of contract
principles that seem to derive from public law and the legal control of State power.31
The latter is a welcome development but one with limited application lower down the pyramid.
Perhaps, the idea is that there will be a ‘trickle down’ effect to the second or middle segment of the
pyramid, though it was not much evidence of ‘trickle down’ in Bateman. The second segment
applies to what is probably still the majority of workers, though it is a category that is shrinking fast
for a number of reasons. This is the category of workers who enjoy various employment rights byvirtue of their legal status as ‘employees’. These are workers whose contracts provide benefits,nothing like the benefits and bonuses available to bankers (who might as well inhabit a different
planet), and indeed whose contracts are likely to be subject to detrimental variations in circumstanceswhere the worker in question may have little option for practical (and perhaps also legal) reasons to
accept. That aside, these are workers to whom minimum wage, working time, and unfair dismissal
protections still apply, along with a raft of other protective legislation, the standards albeit typicallyset at a low level.
These rights on which this segment of the workforce relies are not enforceable in the ordinary courts,
but in specialist tribunals which were designed to provide a cheap and accessible form of roughjustice. Recent procedural changes, however, push this category closer to the third segment at thebottom of the pyramid which, as a result, continues to grow. Although workers in the second
category may have statutory rights, these rights are increasingly difficult to enforce. Concern has
been expressed in political circles about the large number of cases brought annually to employment
tribunals, with the statistics for 2010-11 revealing a staggering 50,000 unfair dismissal cases alone.
There is clearly a problem here, though there is no consensus about what that problem is.32 Rather
than see these statistics as evidence of a general problem of the misuse of employer power in themodern economy, the government, with the support of employers, has read this to mean that accessto tribunals is too easy. As a result, employees bringing tribunal claims must now pay the State forthe privilege of doing so, with the cost depending on the nature of the claim, but with unfair
dismissal claims, for example, requiring the worker to pay £1,200 for the case to be heard.33

28

Though there are exceptions: Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher [2011] UKSC 41, [2011] ICR 1157.
These would be mainly the legal costs of the successful party, as well as also having to absorb one’s own costs.
30
See also in this vein, Societe General, London Branch v Geys [2012] UKSC 63, [2013] 1 AC 523. For background,see D Cabrelli and R Zahn, “The Elective and Automatic Theories of Termination at Common Law: Resolving theConundrum?” (2012) 41 Industrial Law Journal 346.
31
See, for a good example, Rutherford v Seymour Pierce Ltd [2010] EWHC 375 (QB), [2010] IRLR 606.
32
For a discussion of this matter, see K D Ewing and J Hendy QC, “Unfair Dismissal Law Changes – Unfair?” (2012) 41
Industrial Law Journal 115. Compare D Mangan, “Employment Tribunal Reforms to Boost the Economy” (2013) 42
Industrial Law Journal 409.
33
See Employment Tribunals and Employment Appeal Tribunal Fees Order 2013, SI 2013 No 1893; R (Unison) v Lord
Chancellor [2014] EWHC 218 (Admin) – legal challenge to fee regime fails. This is in addition to the legal and other29

8New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21

It is not surprising that the introduction of fees should have led to a massive decline in the number oftribunal applications, falling by 79 per cent as access to justice is beyond the means of many
workers34 and, in many cases, with the cost of bringing a claim exceeding its value.35 In this way,formally protected workers in the middle segment fall unwittingly into the burgeoning segment oflargely unprotected workers in the third segment at the bottom of the pyramid, and do so forprocedural reasons. There, they will find workers who are there because they have no rights toenforce, usually because they do not fall within the statutory definition of employee, or because they
do have sufficient continuous service as an employee to qualify for the bringing of a complaint. In
order to bring an unfair dismissal complaint, the employee must now be continuously employed by
the same employer for at least two years, which for one reason or another typically excludes
temporary agency workers and zero hours contract workers, as well as those who have a bogus
relationship of self-employment with their employer.36
A measure of the problems facing workers in this third segment is revealed by James v Greenwich
London Borough Council,37 where the applicant had been supplied to the council by an agency toperform services as a care worker. When the council changed the agencies from whom it recruited
workers, Ms James changed to the new agency and continued to provide services to the council,
though she was paid more by the new agency. She had a contract with the agency, not the council;
and the contract stated expressly that she was engaged under a contract for services rather than acontract of service.38 Following a period of sickness, Ms James was replaced by another worker
from the same agency and brought a claim against the council that she had been unfairly dismissed,
having worked for the council for three years as a result of her assignments by the two agencies. In
order to bring a claim against the council, Ms James would have to establish that she was an
employee, an argument she was never going to win. This is because there was “no obligation upon
the claimant to provide her services to Greenwich Council and there was no obligation on the part ofGreenwich Council to provide the claimant with work”.39

VSegmentation reinforces commodification, and indeed helps to create extreme forms ofcommodification, our virtual pyramid suggesting that more and more workers are gravitating fromthe second to the third segments as more practices are being developed and used by employers
prepared to draw workers into the “orbit of the market”,40 stripped of even modest social protection.
cost that the employee may encounter in enforcing his or her rights. It should be added that there is a complex system offee remission for low paid workers.
34
A decline that has caused concern even on the part of the most robust employer-side law firms, one of whom (whoshall remain anonymous) reflected on 21 March 2014 that “Few employers opposed the introduction of Tribunal fees andthere is little doubt that they have curbed claims perceived as dubious or tactical. That said, it is in the interest of all that
the Tribunal system is stable, robust and fit for purpose. The fact that the figures could serve to re-enforce a perceptionthat Tribunals are less accessible casts an unwelcome shadow over the future stability and certainty of the current
system’.
35
This would be true, for example, where the employer fails to provide a statement of the terms of the employment,
unlawfully withholds wages, or fails to make a redundancy payment to those with short periods of service.
36
Unfair Dismissal and Statement of Reasons for Dismissal (Variation of Qualifying Period) Order 2012, SI 2012 No
989.
37
James v Greenwich London Borough Council [2008] EWCA Civ 35, [2008] ICR 545.
38
This meant that she was a self- employed contractor rather than an employee of the agency.
39
James above n 37 at [21] citing the decision of the employment tribunal.
40
Polanyi, as quoted by S B Endresen “We Order 20 Bodies’: Labour Hire and Alienation” in Bergene, Endresen and
Knutsen (eds) above n 21 at 223.

9

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
But, while the need for regulation to counteract these developments is obvious, recent attempts toregulate one of the major groups of workers in the bottom third segment in order to provide
protection and eliminate the worst forms of exploitation has backfired spectacularly. These are theattempts relating to temporary agency workers, who are said to represent a “purification of thecommodity form of labour power”,41 the attempts at regulation leading, ironically, to the liberation of
employers and to limited, contingent and porous protections for agency workers.
Unlike the EU Part-time Workers directive and the EU Fixed-term Workers directive, 42 theTemporary Agency Workers Directive (TAW Directive) was not the product of the social dialogue
procedure in what is now the TFEU. The first of these two directives were a monument to anotherera now long past, and it is implausible to think that social dialogue will produce any moremeaningful regulatory initiatives in the foreseeable future. For all practical purposes, social dialogue
is dead as a regulatory tool, killed by the same logic that created the need regulatory intervention in
the first place. So it is left to the political institutions to “strike a balance between flexibility andsecurity in the labour market and help both workers and employers to seize the opportunities offeredby globalization”. 43
But these are the same political institutions dominated by national
governments, who include those who have consciously segmented their labour laws in the manner
described above for reasons of competitive advantage in the global economy, and who are unlikely
to welcome external threats which are inconsistent with the evolution of their regressive regulatorymodel.
It is, thus, hardly surprising that the TAW Directive should be, at best, seeking to reconcile
contradictory impulses: to be simultaneously permissive and protective.
Stripped of its
presentational rhetoric; however, the first aim reflects theneed to establish a suitable framework for the use of temporary agency work with a view tocontributing effectively to the creation of jobs and to the development of flexible forms of working.44

In other words, the first purpose of the Directive is to remove national restrictions on the use ofagency labour in those countries where it was not previously permitted, or where it was permitted but
subject to tight regulation. This aim is reflected, in turn, in the provisions of Art 4 which requires theremoval of “prohibitions or restrictions” on the use of temporary agency work, unless theseprohibitions or restrictions can be justified,
only on grounds of general interest relating in particular to the protection of temporary agency
workers, the requirements of health and safety at work or the need to ensure that the labour market
functions properly and abuses are prevented.

In place of “prohibitions or restrictions” are measures designed “to ensure the protection of
temporary agency workers and to improve the quality of temporary agency work”.45 But, as alreadysuggested, the means by which protection is to be secured – the principle of equality – is deeply
flawed. True, Art 5 expresses the principle in apparently wide and unequivocal terms:

41

At 223.
Council Directive 97/81/EC of 15 December 1997 concerning the Framework Agreement on part-time work concluded
by UNICE, CEEP and the ETUC, and Council Directive 99/70/EC of 28 June 1999 concerning the framework agreement
on fixed-term work concluded by ETUC, UNICE and CEEP, respectively.
43
Directive 2008/104/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on temporary agency
work, Preamble, Recital 9.
44
TAW Directive, Art 2.
45
Art 2.
42

10

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
The basic working and employment conditions of temporary agency workers shall be, for the durationof their assignment at a user undertaking, at least those that would apply if they had been recruited
directly by that undertaking to occupy the same job.

But, all is not as it seems, with “basic working conditions then defined narrowly to mean only
working and employment conditions relating to (i) the duration of working time, overtime, breaks,
rest periods, night work, holidays and public holidays; and (ii) pay”.46 It is then left to Member
States to define what is meant by “pay” for these purposes, 47 while a major omission from thenarrow scope of “basic working conditions” is any reference to job security for agency workers,
particularly important in view of the real problems encountered by workers such as Ms James above.
But that is not all. Even this narrowly-scoped application of the principle of equal treatment issubject to exceptions. The first – labelled inappropriately as the ‘Swedish derogation’ in Art 5(2) –provides that the principle of equal treatment may be denied by national law to “temporary agency
workers who have a permanent contract of employment with a temporary work agency”, and“continue to be paid in the time between assignments”. This is stated to be an acknowledgement of“the special protection such a contract offers”,48 and acknowledges also that the agency assumes therisk of paying the worker even though no work is being done on behalf of a client. But it is a
grotesquely inadequate provision, which imposes no obligation about the substance of the contract
between the temporary agency worker and the agency. Thus, there is no obligation of
proportionality, with the agency worker entitled to receive whatever the market will bear rather thanwhat directly employed colleagues of the client are being paid. Nor is any provision made toregulate how much is paid between assignments. Is the agency worker entitled to be paid the same
when not working, or only a fraction thereof, and if the latter, how big a fraction thereof?
The other major exception is what might be referred to as the ‘British derogation’ in Art 5(4).
Although other countries have since made use of this provision, it appears to have been tailoredspecifically to deal with the United Kingdom in particular, applying only in Member States where
there is either no system in law for declaring collective agreements universally applicable or no such
system in law or practice for extending their provisions to all similar undertakings in a certain sector
49
or geographical area.

Although this is a distinguishing feature of the British system of collective bargaining, it is far fromclear why it is relevant to whether or not there should be a derogation from the principle of equal
treatment. On the contrary, it might be argued that, in such systems, the regulatory deficit is likely to
be greatest, and the need for regulatory intervention, therefore, most acute. Nevertheless, wherethese conditions are met, it is possible for the Member State in question to “establish arrangements
concerning the basic working and employment conditions which derogate from the principle [ofequal treatment]”.50 It is specifically provided that “such arrangements may include a qualifying
period for equal treatment”.51

46

Art 3(1)(f).
It is to be noted that by virtue of Art 5(4), “Member States shall specify, in application of Article 3(2), whether
occupational social security schemes, including pension, sick pay or financial participation schemes are included in thebasic working and employment conditions”. Here the find the language of obligation being used as a mask to disguisethe fact these items may be excluded from the national implementation of the Directive.
48
Preamble, Recital 15.
49
Art 5(4).
50
Art 5(4).
51
Art 5(4).
47

11New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
The effect of this latter provision, of course, is to ride roughshod over the principle of equal
treatment by providing that agency workers who are not employees of the agency have no right toequal treatment for a period of time not determined by the Directive. The old two-card trick is thus
complete: no equal treatment if the agency worker is an employee of the agency, and used under acontract of service (Art 5(2)); and no equal treatment where the agency worker is not an employee ofthe agency, but used under a contract for services (Art 5(4)). The only protection for the worker is
to be found in Art 5(5), which provides that
Member States shall take appropriate measures, in accordance with national law and/or practice, witha view to preventing misuse in the application of this Article and, in particular, to preventing
successive assignments designed to circumvent the provisions of this Directive.

Although the latter is welcome, it is wholly inadequate. Measures against misuse do not remove thefreedom of agencies to alter the way in which they use labour. Nor do they overcome the licencegiven to the agencies to avoid the commitment to equal treatment.
It is thus open to question just how effectively the TAW Directive overcomes the commodificationof agency labour. The truth is that, perhaps, it was never intended to. Rather, by legitimising thepractice of temporary agency work throughout the EU and beyond, the TAW Directive has
reinforced the acute commodification of this form of labour, and has reinforced it still further byregulatory gaps in the protection the directive was ostensibly intended to provide. To this end, one
easily overlooked provision of the directive stands as a metaphor for the text as whole. This is Art
6(2) which provides that
Member States shall take any action required to ensure that any clauses prohibiting or having theeffect of preventing the conclusion of a contract of employment or an employment relationshipbetween the user undertaking and the temporary agency worker after his assignment are null and voidor may be declared null and void.

It is then provided, however, that temporary agencies may “receive a reasonable level of recompense
for services rendered to user undertakings for the assignment, recruitment and training of temporary
agency workers”. 52 To adapt a well-known phrase, under EU law the worker has become “acommodity, no more, no less so than is the sugar”.53

VI
The limitations of the TAW Directive were soon revealed by the implementing regulations in the
United Kingdom, where every regulatory gap was fully exploited.54 It begins with Regulation 5,
which provides that the agency worker is entitled to the same basic working and employment
conditions to which he or she would have been entitled had he or she had been directly recruited by
the hirer. However, it is open to the agency to defeat the claim by establishing that the agency
worker is working under the same relevant terms and conditions as a ‘comparable employee’.55 For
this purpose a comparable employee means someone engaged on work which is the same or broadly
similar, having regard to qualification and skills. 56 Even where there is no employee doing
52

Compare under the Acquired Rights Directive, Case C-132/91 C-138/91, C-139/91, Katsikas v Konstantinidis [1992]
ECR 1-6577.
53
K Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, chapter 2.
54
Agency Workers Regulations 2010, SI 2010 No 93.
55
Reg 5(3).
56
Reg 5(4)(a)(ii).

12New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
comparable work in the establishment where the agency worker is engaged, the claim can bedefeated by the employer establishing that there is a comparable worker engaged elsewhere in theundertaking.57
It is important to note here that there may be several comparable workers, not all paid the same.
There is no obligation on the part of the agency to identify the “most comparable” worker, and nopresumption that the most comparable worker is the one who will best promote the principle of equal
treatment. Indeed, it has been pointed out that there is no prohibition on the employer recruiting a“token” employee at a low wage in order to be the comparison for what may be a workforce heavily
supplied by an agency. 58 The principle of equal treatment can, thus, be defeated either by theabsence of a comparable worker (not unlikely where the employer is heavily segmented anddependent on agency workers), or by the presence of several categories of comparable worker (notunlikely where a large employer has a mixed workforce).
The main problem with the regulations, however, relates to the extent to which they have exploitedthe provisions of Art 5(4) and 5(2) of the Directive. So far, as the former is concerned, theregulations introduce a 12 week qualifying period, which is thought to have the effect of excludingfrom the scope of the principle of equal treatment about 40 per cent of the United Kingdom’s
estimated 1.3 million temporary agency workers.59 It will be recalled that the Directive permits aqualifying period only after “consulting the social partners at national level and on the basis of anagreement concluded by them”. This gives rise to questions about why the TUC would have madesuch a major concession to the government. Extracted on 22 May 2008 (some six months before the
Directive was made), it seems that the agreement was a necessary condition of the British
government’s support for the directive, the TUC being placed in the invidious position of having toagree to business demands to exclude 40 per cent in order to secure protection for 60 per cent.
Having secured this concession from the trade unions, the (Labour) government undertook to“engage with its European partners to seek agreement on the terms of the Agency Workers
Directive”.60
Implementing this agreement was far from straightforward, the regulations providing that “theagency worker must work in the same role with the same hirer for 12 continuous calendar weeks,during one or more assignments”. 61 The problem here is how to avoid employers effectively
extending the qualifying period by (i) introducing short breaks in service, or by (ii) rotating staff androtating functions, so that it never becomes possible for the agency worker to say that he or she has
been continuously employed in the same role for 12 weeks. The danger is made clear in theregulations, which accept that an agency worker may work for the same user, but not in the samerole, if the worker is assigned to a new role and the work or duties in that new role are “substantively
different” from the previous role.62 That said, however, two anti-abuse mechanisms are included in57

Reg 5(4)(b).
A Davies, “The Implementation of the Directive on Temporary Agency Work in the UK: A Missed Opportunity”(2010) 1 European Labour Law Journal.
59
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Explanatory Memorandum to the Agency Workers
Regulations 2010 (2010) at 13. According to the government, “There is good reason to think the distribution of
assignment lengths will change with the implementation of the Directive. One of the incentives to hirers will be to switch
towards greater use of short-term agency working (i.e. assignments lasting less than 12 weeks) in an attempt to minimise
costs. This will depend on the degree of extra cost, how sensitive hirers are to these cost changes, as well as the overall
labour market situation and the feasibility of switching to shorter-term placements”.
60
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Agency Workers: Joint Declaration by Government, the
CBI and the TUC (2008). The agreement was only a page in length.
61
SI 2010 No 93, Reg 7(2).
62Reg 7(3).
58

13New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
the regulations, the first providing that weeks worked either side of a break or breaks in service cancount in establishing the 12 week period of continuous employment. The other applies where roles
are reassigned deliberately to prevent the worker from building up 12 weeks service in the samerole.63
Although the 12 week qualifying period is a significant weakening of the protection offered by theregulations, it is nevertheless the other major concession to employers that has given rise to thegreatest immediate concern. 64 This is the arrangement referred to as ‘pay between assignments
contracts’, permitted by Art 5(2) of the Directive. This has been a major concern of trade unions, it
being reported shortly after implementation that some agencies were issuing agency workers with
contracts of employment in order to defeat the principle of equal treatment, and with unions claiming
that, in some cases, agency workers were being paid up to £135 a week less than directly employedstaff of the user for doing the same work.65 There are clearly concerns to be overcome on the part of
the agency before it issues agency staff with contracts of employment, not least because such a movetransfers the risks associated with employment from the worker to the agency. If the agency staff are
no longer self-employed, the agency will assume liabilities for maternity rights, redundancy andunfair dismissal, suggesting that the costs saved by taking people into direct employment would haveto be considerable.66
This is a risk to the employer that becomes easier by virtue of the terms of Regulation 10, which
requires the employer to provide only a minimum of one week’s pay in any week during which theemployee is not assigned to a client. It is a risk that becomes easier still if employers are to follow
the example of one contract drawn to my attention in which the agency supplying dock workers
places people on contracts of employment with Bateman-style terms, whereby
the company reserves the right to vary these terms and conditions for operational, commercial of
financial reasons according to the needs of the business. Any changes will be notified to you bydirect correspondence.67

Not only does all this appear to contradict the terms of the Directive, it also directly contradicts theterms of the agreement between the government, the TUC and the CBI, which states clearly that
there should be
Appropriate anti-avoidance measures reflecting Art 9(2), in particular relating to the treatment ofrepeat contracts for the same worker and the position of workers with permanent contracts of
employment with agencies who continue to be paid between assignments; it is not intended that Art
5(2) will be used to evade the aims of the Directive.68
63

Reg 9, which refers to “the most likely explanation for the structure of the assignment, or assignments’ being that itwas ‘intended to prevent the agency worker from being entitled to, or from continuing to be entitled to, to the [right toequal treatment]” (Reg 9(4)).
64
It has also given rise to a formal complaint to the European Commission by the TUC that the United Kingdom has
failed properly to implement the Directive: TUC, TUC Lodges Complaint against Government for Failing to Give
Equal Pay to Agency Workers, 2 September 2013.
65
Above n64. See also the ‘Justice for Agency Workers Campaign’ by the Communication Workers Union to have this‘loophole’ closed: <www.cwu.org/agency-loopholes.html>.
66
See J Tanfield, ‘What is the Swedish Derogation and could it be the Answer to your AWR Model?’, Global Recruiter:<www.theglobalrecruiter.com/news/features/what-is-the-swedish-derogation-and-could-it-be-the-answer-to-your-awrmodel-jim-tanfield-takes-a-look/3198>
67
The contract also states explicitly that “by entering into this employment contract you are fully aware that you do nothave any entitlement to equal pay in accordance with Regulation 12 of the Agency Workers Regulations”.
68
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Agency Workers: Joint Declaration by Government, the
CBI and the TUC, above. The risk to the employer of “pay between assignments” contracts is also much easier for

14

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21

But – as discussed above – even where the principle of equal treatment applies, it remains the casethat it does not apply to all terms and conditions of employment, but only to those relating to pay, theduration of working time, night work, rest periods, rest breaks, and annual leave (including holidaypay). It is true that ‘pay’ is widely defined to mean “any sum payable to a worker of the hirer inconnection with the worker’s employment, including any fee, bonus, commission, holiday pay orother emoluments referable to the employment, whether payable under contract or otherwise”. 69
But it is also true that there is a list of exceptions long enough to fill every place in a football team.
Thus, the definition of pay does not include occupational sick pay, pensions or allowances inconnection with retirement, maternity or paternity pay, redundancy pay, payment for time off to takepart in trade union duties.

VII
The treatment of temporary agency workers in the United Kingdom is a symptom of regulatory
failure in an advanced post-industrialised economy now guided by neo-liberal policies. As Bergene,Endresen and Knutsen suggest, the expansion of agencies and the use of agency workers present
formidable challenges for unions, 70 not least because it reflects a declining regulatory role oforganised labour in the contemporary workplace.71 But it is not only the trade union function that ismutating in the modern economy. So, too, are employment practices, with agency work being only
form in which working people are being commodified. Mutation takes several forms, one of which
we have already encountered. This is the mutation of the nature of regulated activity in order toavoid a regulatory framework, as in the paradoxical example of businesses moving their staff fromself-employment to contracts of employment, in order to avoid the principle of equal treatment, by
taking advantage of the misnamed ‘Swedish derogation’.
But there are other ways by which employment practices can mutate, partly to ensure that
employment falls beyond the regulator’s reach. The experience of the last 20 years is that as certain
forms of precarious working relationship has been the subject of regulation, so others have emerged
to take their place. The EU has regulated for part time work, it has regulated to address the abuse of
fixed-term contracts and, most recently, as we have discussed it has (albeit inadequately) responded
to the problem of temporary agency work. But there is now a new virus that will be much moredifficult to address, this being the virus called ‘zero hours contracts’. Information about theprevalence of these arrangements attracted a great deal of publicity in the summer of 2013, whensome effective journalism revealed failings on the part of the Office for National Statistics properly
to account for the practice. The ONS had appeared grossly to underestimate the nature of the
problem, as business after business was revealed to make use of such contracts.72 Located heavily
in retail, hospitality and social care sectors, it is impossible to say how many people are employed onzero hours contracts, revised official now at 1.4 million, believed likely to be an under-estimate.
The controversy about these contracts was fuelled more recently by newspaper claims that the Stateowned RBS was recommending the use of such contracts to its small business clients, on the groundemployers to take as a result of the recent changes to the enforcement of employment rights considered above. As was
already discussed, these changes have priced the enforcement employment rights beyond the means of many workers,
with vulnerable workers – such as agency workers – being likely to be among those most likely to be disadvantaged.
69
SI 2010, No 93, Reg 6(2).
70Above n 21.
71
K D Ewing, “The Function of Trade Unions” (2005) 34 Industrial Law Journal 1.
72
Guardian, 9 March 2014. For a revised estimation from ONS, see Guardian, 1 May 2014.

15

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
that they are “ideal for employers whose businesses experience variations in demand”.73 As thesame newspaper correctly identified, what is involved in these contracts is the complete transfer ofrisk and responsibility from the employer to the worker, without the need to engage the services of athird party agency or labour supplier. The logic of the employer is why pay someone unless theirservices are formally required? This leads to arrangements whereby the employer directly retains apool of workers (who may be required by the terms of the arrangement to provide exclusive service,
and prohibited from working for others), and uses them only when work is available. These
practices perhaps reflect the final commodification, in the sense that the worker is engaged ad-hoc
only when labour is required, and paid only in return for the labour provided. There are no
guaranteed hours, there is no regularity of employment, and there is no security of income. It is not
surprising, then, that the average income of zero hours contract workers is below the average wageof both permanent staff and agency workers.74
For employers, it is the ultimate flexibility, and for workers it is the ultimate insecurity. So far, as
the regulatory framework is concerned, two questions confront these workers. The first question is
the question of their employment status. Are they employees (and, therefore, covered by statutory
minimum standards), or are they self-employed (and, therefore, largely excluded from suchstandards)? The problem here is that the employer is not required to offer work to the individual,
and if work is provided, there will often be a term in the contract that the individual is not required toaccept the offer of an assignment, if unavailable for any reason. It will, thus, be difficult for thelabourer to say that there is a ‘mutuality of obligation’, which under English law is an essential
precondition of having the status of an employee under a contract of employment. 75 Although thecourts have expressed concern about what are no more than sham arrangements to enable employers
to avoid obligations to the people they employ, 76 arrangements of this kind are, nevertheless,common and have even been used to defeat claims by labourers that they have been victimised forreasons relating to trade union membership.77
More difficult, however, is the second question, which is that many employment rights havequalifying conditions that must be met, in particular that the employee must have been employed fora minimum period of time in order to be eligible for the benefit in question. This is not the case, ofcourse, in relation to the national minimum wage, working time, or (now following the interventionof the CJEU) in relation to paid holidays. But in the case of other employment rights (such as thoserelating specifically to redundancy payments and unfair dismissal), there is a requirement that theemployee should have been continuously employed for a period of what is now two years following
recent Coalition-led changes. 78 Although legislation provides that various interruptions from
employment (such as illness or maternity, as well as a host of others) do not break continuity ofservice,79 an employee with an intermittent employment record as a result of engagement under a73

Independent, 7 April 2014.
Independent, 9 April 2014. In addition, it is said that “more than three-quarters (76 per cent) of workers on zero-hours
contracts in London and more than a half outside the capital earn less than the living wage which is currently fixed at£8.80 an hour in the capital and £7.65 elsewhere in the UK”.
75
See O’Kelly v Trust Houses Forte plc [1984] 1 QB 90.
76
See especially Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher above n 28. For comment, see A Bogg, ‘Sham Self-Employment in theSupreme Court’ (2012) 41 Industrial Law Journal 328.
77
Consistent Group Ltd v Kalwak [2008] EWCA Civ 430, [2008] IRLR 505.
78
In the case of unfair dismissal, the length of the qualifying period has fluctuated over the years, depending largely on
the political complexion of the government in power at any one time. Labour governments have favoured six months toa year, while Conservative and Liberal Democrat governments have favoured two years. The last Labour government(1997-2010) reduced the qualifying period from two years to one year; the current Conservative- Liberal Democrat
government reinstated the two year qualifying period.
79
Employment Rights Act 1996, s 212.
74

16

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
zero hours contract is, nevertheless, unlikely to be able to satisfy a continuity of service requirement.
This may be true even though the same employer may have engaged the employee in question for anumber of years.
The widespread use of zero hours contracts in an abusive way, thus, presents a new regulatory
challenge. Some commentators have drawn parallels with forms of employment that operated in aprevious generation which, it had been thought, had been eradicated. The parallels were drawn inparticular with the employment of dockworkers before the Second World War, when dockworkers
would queue for work every day to be selected by the employer or his or her agent.80 That practice
was stopped by the introduction of the statutory National Dock Labour Scheme (since abolished) forthe better regulation of working conditions. The challenge for trade unions today is to reproduce aneffective regulatory framework in an environment where the voice and impact of trade unionism aremuch diminished since 1946 when the dock labour scheme was first introduced. The obvious
regulatory solution is collective bargaining, which would accommodate the need for flexibility in afair and structured environment. However, unlike in 1946 when collective bargaining density stoodat 86 per cent, today, it is no more than 30 per cent and falling, being largely absent from the muchof the private sector. 81
There is no contemporary evidence to suggest that any future British government will confound thewishes of employers by engineering a restoration of the collective bargaining structures that wereonce prevalent in the United Kingdom, in common with much the rest of the EU.82 The United
Kingdom was the first EU member state to construct sectoral bargaining machinery, and the first to
dismantle it. As a result, the most likely regulatory solution to the zero hours contract problem will
be another round of legislation, likely again to be imperfectly tailored to the nature of the problem,
producing an ill-fitting suit that sags at some crucial points and reveals great gaps at others. The
basic problem, of course, is that, like water, work is a scarce global resource which needs to berationed, with a regulatory focus now on minimum hours as much as maximum hours.83 To that end,
it ought to be possible to require employment contracts to specify the guaranteed minimum numberof hours on a weekly and/or monthly and/or annual basis, and to regulate for abuse by providing that80

S Milne, ‘Zero-hours Contracts: in Cameron’s Britain, the Dockers’ Line-up is Back’, The
Guardian, 6 August 2013.
81
For a an excellent account of the legal and political context of collective bargaining decline in the United Kingdom see
A Bogg The Democratic Aspects of Trade Union Recognition (Hart, Oxford, 2009). For proposals to rebuild collective
bargaining machinery, see K D Ewing and J Hendy QC, Reconstruction after the Crisis – A Manifesto for Collective
Bargaining (Institute of Employment Rights, Liverpool, 2013). This decline in levels of collective bargaining coverageraises other questions about compatibility with the Declaration on Social Justice, given the undertaking made by states
when adopting the latter to “the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining”. The problem of ZHC
workers also reinforces the insight in the Declaration about the importance of collective bargaining as a means ofpromoting all of the four strategic objectives of the Declaration.
82
For an account of these structures, see Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations Handbook (1961). There is now no
Ministry of Labour and no representation of the voice of working people in government.
83
For a precedent, see ILO Convention 47 (Forty Hour Week Convention, 1935), created in recognition of the fact that“unemployment has become so widespread and long continued that there are at the present time many millions ofworkers throughout the world suffering hardship and privation for which they are not themselves responsible and fromwhich they are justly entitled to be relieved”; and that “it is desirable that workers should as far as practicable be enabled
to share in the benefits of the rapid technical progress which is a characteristic of modern industry”. Made in theaftermath of depression at a time of Keynesian expansion in many countries, this attempt to reduce working hours to 40
from 48 hours a week (“in such a manner that the standard of living is not reduced in consequence” (Art 1(a)) did notcome into force until 1957 as a result of the low number of ratifications, by which time the reason for its existence hadlong since passed.

17

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
a worker may not be required to work more than a prescribed number of hours beyond thecontractual minimum without penalty overtime rates.84
It is unlikely, however, that measures of this kind will be adopted, with the Labour Party proposing a
number of initiatives, one of which would be to remove the exclusivity requirement that prevents
workers on zero hours contracts from being permitted to work for other employers.85 But apart fromserving to legitimise the illegitimate, such a move could be counter-productive, allowing courts todraw conclusions about zero hours contract workers being self-employed contractors providing
labour services to a range of clients. Labour’s other proposal appeared to follow the twisted logic of
the Agency Workers Regulatons 2010, by providing that workers on zero hours contracts will beentitled to be offered a standard hours contract after 12 weeks of employment on zero hours. But
while this was better, it was most recently displaced by a much diluted commitment that will allow
workers to request regular hours after six months and to be provided with regular hours after 12months. It is unnecessary to say anything by way of comment, save that, “employers can already see
ways to game these rules”.86

VIII
All of which brings us back to the Bateman case with which this soliloquy began. The segmentation,commodification and mutation identified above take place in the context of the disintegration of thestandard employment relationship. The latter is, thus, being challenged by both internal and external
threats, returning the law to a primitive era when what is now known as labour law was known as thelaw of master and servant, for good reason.
To this end, it should be emphasised that the Bateman case is not alone in exposing what might bedescribed as ‘master and servant clauses’, so called because they enable the employer unilaterally tochange the terms of the engagement. As already suggested, the same kind of term was to be found in
the standard form contracts of another large employer, in this case British Airways, which claimed
the power to make ‘reasonable changes’ to the terms of employment of cabin crew.
The problem erupted, there, in a case involving the reduction in the number of cabin crew on long
haul flights leading to the intensification of work for the reduced crew. 87 It was held that even if thechange was not reasonable, the court would not, in any event, grant a remedy to prevent the change
being imposed. This was because the balance of convenience was ‘strongly’ against such a course,88
on the ground that it would impose ‘a quite exceptional burden’ on BA in terms of cost, planning andreorganisation.89
Problem compounded. Even if there is no right (of the employer), there is no remedy (for theemployee). But this is by no means an isolated example of the capture of labour law and thebetrayal of its historic purpose. Austerity has led to employers – mainly in the public sector –making changes to working conditions, in circumstances where the employer has omitted to impose

84

K D Ewing, ‘Zero Hours Contracts: Some Policy Proposals’ (Institute of Employment Rights, Liverpool, 2013),
where these core ideas are more fully developed.
85
The Guardian, 8 September 2013.
86
The Guardian, 1 May 2014. Government proposals are imminent. Labour has made it very easy for the government.
87
Malone v British Airways plc [2010] EWHC 302 (QB), [2010] IRLR 32.
88
At [32]
89
At [31].

18

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
‘master and servant clauses’ in employment contracts. The normal rule in such circumstances is thatno change can be imposed without the consent of the employee.
Yet, we find public sector employers imposing large-scale changes on thousands of employees, inthe case of Birmingham City Council alone, the changes covering some 26,000 employees.90 The
various employers were able to do this by capturing and exploiting what had been designed as aprotective redundancy consultation procedure introduced by the Collective Redundancies
Directive,91 in what many saw as a cynical manoeuvre to drive through change.
Employers apparently with no intention of dismissing anyone for reason of redundancy,
nevertheless, issued redundancy consultation notices to trade unions effectively to impose atimetable on consultations. The unions were, thus, consulting with a gun at their heads: either agree
to change the terms and conditions of members (to their detriment) or risk the selective dismissal of
their members who, in some cases, would be left to reapply for their jobs on reduced terms in acompetitive process. The unions typically agreed to the changes.92
In these ways, the standard employment relationship is being developed in a manner that suits theinterests of employers, the law both facilitating the naked exercise of employer power and,inadvertently, providing procedural frameworks within which that power can be exercised. It is a
short step from this to remove altogether the substantive rights that derive from the standard form
contract, including the right not to be unfairly dismissed which, as we have seen, is being gradually
removed by stealth.
This erosion of substantive rights is, however, an ongoing and dynamic process, as most vividly
revealed by a study authored by a venture capitalist, commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Office in2010. It was the view of Mr. Adrian Beecroft that if unfair dismissal law could not be abolishedaltogether, a new ‘no fault dismissal’ scheme should be introduced, enabling employers to dispose ofworkers who were allegedly under-performing at a minimum cost to the employer.93 The proposal
does not yet have enough political support.94

IX
The problems of segmentation, commodification and mutation referred to above have been
deliberately sandwiched in this essay between two slices of evidence that the standard employment
relationship is disintegrating.
As the distinction between standard and non-standard
employment begins to dissolve, the relationships from which employers are seeking to escapeare becoming more like the relationships to which they are seeking to move.

90

G Gall, Guardian CiF, 7 July 2011.
Council Directive 98/59/EC of 20 July 1998, implemented in United Kingdom by Trade Union and Labour Relations(Consolidation) Act 1992, s 188 and following (as amended).
92
For a brief discussion of this process, see H Collins, K D Ewing and A McColgan, Labour Law (Cambridge University
press, Cambridge, 2012) at 623-4.
93
A Beecroft, Report on Employment Law (2011). For comment, see K Ewing, Morning Star, 24 May 2012, (‘24 pagesof ideological poison’).
94
According to the (Liberal Democrat) Secretary of State for Business, Inovation and Skills, “The UK already has one of
the most flexible labour markets in the world . . . At a time when workers are proving to be flexible in difficult economic
conditions it would almost certainly be counterproductive to increase fear of dismissal”: BIS, Statement by Vince Cableon the Beecroft Report on Employment Law, 21 May 2012..
91

19

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
The dispossession of workers’ legal protection and the ineffectiveness of labour law are, thus,
profound. Segmentation, commodification and mutation are symptoms and consequences of thatineffectiveness. Segmentation is caused by a failure to observe (i) the first principle of effectivenessto the extent that some workers have no rights, (ii) the second principle of effectiveness to the extent
that different workers have rights of variable quality which, in some cases, are unable to meet thelimited standards of the Declaration on Social Justice; and (iii) the third principle of effectiveness tothe extent that workers lack the capacity or the same capacity to enforce their rights.
Commodification is a direct challenge not only to the principles of the ILO Declaration on Social
Justice, but even more profoundly to the first principle of the Declaration of Philadelphia. 95
Commodification is to be seen in the explosion of agency work and the use of zero hours contracts,
which appear to be growing out of control, like a virus exploiting the lack of any form of medical
intervention. As such, commodification is a direct result of labour law’s ineffectiveness, a
consequence of the failure to ensure the robust application of the first principle that labour law
should be universal in its scope, a failure clearly revealed by the James case (above), the TAW
Directive, and the Agency Workers Regulations.
Although commodification is mainly about the failure of the first principle (the denial of someworkers any protection), it also leads to a failure of the second in the sense that this extreme form ofcommodification leaves workers with few rights, and certainly without rights that would meet the
expectations of the Declaration. To the extent that rights have been created by legislation, thesewere accompanied by measures that enable employers to escape the regulatory framework in what
could only be described as a carefully constructed attempt to create by legislation a form of labour
protection that would be ineffective. Ineffectiveness has been a deliberate policy choice, about to berepeated in relation to ZHCs.96
Mutation is, likewise, a symptom of ineffectiveness, in the sense that it allows employers to develop
practices that escape the regulatory framework as a result of the lack of comprehensiveness of labour
law’s scope (principle 1), enabling these employers to make little commitment to substantive terms
and conditions (principle 2), leaving workers with few rights to enforce, but in many cases without
the means to enforce these rights (principle 3). The main issue of ineffectiveness here, however, isalmost certainly the lack of universality that enables employers to take advantage of gaps thatgovernments are largely unwilling to close, even when publicly exposed.
Yet, while segmentation, commodification and mutation reveal clear evidence of ineffectiveness,
cases like Bateman and Malone reveal an even more worrying sign of a different kind of
ineffectiveness. Here, the focus is not so much with labour law’s scope (principle 1), as it is with its
failure to constrain the nature of employer power (principle 2), or to enforce contracts where theirterms have been breached (principle 3).

X
The Declaration on Social Justice is an important document that commits governments to various
forms of action to put decent work at the centre of economic and social policies.97 Integral to one of
the four strategic objectives for the development of this agenda is the idea of effective labour law.
95

‘Labour is not a commodity’. Compare K Marx above n 53.
This point is pursued more generally in K D Ewing, “Future Prospects for Labour Law – Lessons from the United
Kingdom” in J Riley and P Sheldon (eds), Remaking Australian Industrial Relations (CCH, Sydney, 2008).
97
ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation (2008) Part IIB.
96

20

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 3-21
As already suggested, this is an interesting and intriguing idea, and one that demands more attention
and fuller treatment than has been possible here, the preliminary inquiry above having identified
three basic principles of effectiveness.
But even if we take the idea at the most elementary level proposed above, it is clear that in the
United Kingdom at least, it is an idea that is not respected. Apart from the exclusion of many
workers from labour law protection, perhaps the most visible illustration of this relates to recent
steps to charge what appear to be prohibitively high fees for the enforcement of employment rights.
This lack of respect is important not just because of the consequences for workers affected, but evenmore fundamentally from the lawyer’s perspective because it reflects a failure on the part ofgovernment to comply with undertakings solemnly undertaken.
Moreover, in 2008, ILO Member States did not simply commit themselves to follow a series of
optional principles and random strategic objectives when they adopted the Directive. It also
committed them to methods of implementation that would impose obligations on the ILO as anorganisation, as well as on member states individually.98 Although, no doubt not on the radar of
most governments at the moment (if ever in recent times), the Declaration makes clear that Members“have a key responsibility to contribute, through their social and economic policy, to the realisationof a global and integrated strategy for the implementation of the strategic objectives”, which
encompass the Decent Work Agenda.
And while making clear that it is up to each Member State to determine how to discharge its
responsibilities (in consultation with the social partners), they are each urged to consider taking
seven different initiatives for this purpose. It is the responsibility of labour lawyers to be informed
about these obligations and to remind governments that they were voluntarily accepted at the time
the Declaration was adopted. Having made these commitments, governments have a duty to comply
with them, the first being “the adoption of a national or regional strategy for decent work”, aimed at“targeting a set of priorities for the integrated pursuit of the strategic objectives”.99
If anyone is reading this, they may like to ask just what steps are being taken by their own national
government to this end, the obligation of not being to select one or two aspects of the agenda (suchas job creation), but all aspects, including the development of an effective labour law. Although notdefined, it would be a good start for national governments to develop their own understanding of theterm, and to do so in consultation with the social partners, as the Declaration appears to require. At
the risk of repetition and of sounding platitudinous and trite, an effective labour law is surely the firststep in regulating for decent work.

This paper is based on a presentation at the Second New Zealand Labour Law Society Conference,“Regulating for Decent Work”, at AUT University on 22 November 2013.
My thanks to Pam Nuttall and her colleagues for inviting me to speak at the event.

98
99

Part IIB.
Ibid, Part IIB(i).

21New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33

Precarious Work – New Zealand Experience
MARGARET WILSON*
Introduction
The legal regulation of precarious or insecure work is one of the major labour market
policy issues facing New Zealand. Although it is difficult to find accurate figures, itappears at least 30 per cent of New Zealand’s workforce – over 635,000 people – areaffected by precarious/insecure work. 1 Precarious work is characterised by afundamental uncertainty of pay, conditions and duration of work and includes work
described as causal, zero hours, seasonal contracting (including labour hire) and
fixed-term types of work. While various types of work have always been insecure,the increase in precarious work globally has increased since the adoption of theflexible labour market practices that are associated with a neo-liberal policy
framework.
This article will examine the current legal framework and how it accommodates thetrend towards precarious work. This analysis will include the various recent attempts
to change the statutory framework to both enable more flexibility and to provide
greater legal protections for employees subject to precarious work. Although thefocus of the article is on the New Zealand experience, the increase in insecure formsof employment has been experienced globally.
The International Labour
Organisation (ILO) recognised this trend and its detrimental consequences on both
wages and conditions of employment when it adopted the Decent Work Agenda as an
operational strategy to implement the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles
and Rights at Work. The four strategic objectives of the Decent Work Agenda are topromote and implement international standards and rights at work; to create decent
employment and income opportunities for all men and women; to enhance coverage
and effectiveness of social protections for all peoples; and to strengthen economic andsocial dialogue between government, employers, and workers.
New Zealand adopted the Decent Work Agenda and the former Department of Labour(DoL) developed a comprehensive programme to implement a decent work that wasset out in detail on its website. This Agenda reflected a commitment to maintaining
and promoting labour standards through a tripartite relationship between
governments, employer organisations and labour organisations. In the New Zealandcontext, this tripartite commitment has not been a feature of government policy since2009 and, therefore, the decent work strategy has not been a focus for government
policy. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (CTU) however, as one of thetripartite parties, has continued to pursue the issue of decent work and, in particular, a
new regulatory framework for precarious/insecure work. At the 2012 NZCTU*

Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Waikato, New Zealand

1

NZCTU “Under Pressure: A Detailed Report into Insecure Work in New Zealand” (October 2013)<www.union.org.nz>.

22

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
conference, decent work was defined as a job for all; a living wage; secure work; andsafe work.

Research
The specific issue of precarious work was directly addressed at the 2013 NZCTU
conference with the launch of research report Under Pressure: A Detailed Report into
Insecure Work in New Zealand2. This Report provides a comprehensive analysis of
the effects of precarious work from the perspective of the individual employee andincludes proposal for legal reform. The research follows on from the Australia CTU
independent inquiry Lives on Hold: Unlocking the Potential of Australia’s
Workforce.3 Reading both reports, it is apparent the drivers of precarious work aresimilar though the solutions will reflect the regulatory frameworks of each country.
The NZCTU Report noted that New Zealand is recognised by the OECD as having
the fourth lowest level of protection relating to temporary work and the lowest levelof regulation on temporary agency work.4 This reflects the government’s policy toprovide a flexible, employer-friendly regulatory framework. Interestingly, theprotections for standard employment workers have been undermined also and reflect
the general policy to embed a regulatory framework that supports insecure work as
the norm.
The NZCTU Report also recommended stronger legal protections including:5






Stronger legal protections to prevent insecure work
Improved income support mechanisms for insecure workers
Support for the Living Wage with greater security of hours
Government procurement to promote decent work
Union campaigns and bargaining to support secure work.

Research has also been undertaken by the previous DoL that provides an insight into
the lived experience of precarious work.6 Although the research was reported in 2004
and before the global financial crisis, it is interesting to reflect on the findings. In its
conclusion the report noted:
In this study employees in non-permanent, low paying, poorly supervised forms ofwork with unequal employment relationships reported that they experienced theirform of work as precarious; more women than men reported their work as precarious.
Some employees in the cases studied were prepared to enter casual or temporary
employment under a variety of terms to meet their needs.

2

As above.
ACTU “Lives on Hold: Unlocking the Potential of Australia’s Workforce” (2012)<www.actu.org.au>.
4OECD “OECD Employment Outlook 2013” (2013) <www.oecd.org> at chapter 2.
5
NZCTU above n 1 at 1.
6
Web Research “Report of Exploratory Case Study Research into Precarious Employment” (June
2004) Department of Labour <www.dol.govt.nz>.
323New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
Employees reported that they experienced their form of work as precarious when theyfelt that: they were not getting a fair day’s pay for the fair day’s work they undertook
 they were not treated fairly at work
 that they were not able to earn enough to live as they aspired even if those
aspirations were modest
 they were afraid that their family could not survive, or was suffering, becauseof the state they were in considering their work and home lives.
The formal legal basis of their employment was not a significant factor in theirperception of their precariousness.
Where we found work that was precarious we also found people with little or no
labour market power, powerful employers, an absence of bargaining, low knowledgeof employment relations, no access to information about employment, low wages,
unsociable hours and reduced participation in family and economic life.
The impact most frequently reported to us by people in precarious work was theirlack of participation in the lives of their children.
More employees in this study reported that they felt overworked or underpaid or weredissatisfied with their employment than reported that they experienced their work as
precarious.

The research also revealed that many of the employees interviewed had limited
information or understanding of their legal status or rights. A main concern of theinterviewees, however, was the lack of participation in the lives of their children. The
all-consuming nature of insecure work in terms of the time it takes from an
employee’s life is a factor that is often overlooked but was a feature of the NZCTU
Report.
Helen Kelly, CTU President, in the Forward to the Report positions insecure workwithin a community context. The emphasis is not only the detrimental affects to theindividual employee, or contractor, but also the damage this lack of certainty andinsecurity has on families and the community. Kelly writes:7
Insecure work, for most people, means their lives are dominated by work: waiting forit, looking for it, worrying when they don’t have it. They often don’t have paid
holidays – which can mean no holidays at all. They lose out on family time. They
often don’t have sick leave. They are vulnerable if they try to assert their rights orraise any concerns. They are exposed to dangerous working conditions and have toaccept low wages. They can’t make commitments – to family, to sports teams, tochurch activities, to mortgages, or even to increasing their skills.

It is important to emphasise, however, that insecure work is not new. In the history of
paid employment, it is only relatively recently that employees have experienced legal
rights and protections. It was only through the combination of employees combining
to form trade unions and through employees using their political rights that regulatory
regimes have been enacted with specific employment rights. It has been the role oftrade unions to promote and protect the rights and interests of employees. The
NZCTU has been continuing this role through the research into the extent andconsequences of the trend towards insecure work.
7

At 1.

24

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33

New Zealand Legal Framework
In New Zealand, the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration statutory framework
regulated employment relations for 90 years until it was repealed and replaced with
the Employment Contracts Act 1991. Since the 1890s, New Zealand had developed asystem of employee protections that was dependent on trade unions negotiatingcollectively on behalf of their members and on statutory recognition of minimum
standards that must apply to the employees regardless of their union membership.
The status and role of trade unions was recognised legally through the Industrial
Conciliation and Arbitration Act (IC&A) 1894 and the Trade Union Act 1908.
Employee rights and protections were further recognised through the enactment ofminimum standards legislation. The Holidays Act 2003, the Wages Protection Act
1983, the Minimum Wage Act 1983, the Equal Pay Act 1974 and the Health and
Safety legislation are examples of this minimum regulatory framework.
The means of enforcement of these rights and protections was through the legal
system in the form of enforcement of awards and agreements by trade unions and the
DoL inspectorate. With the decline of union membership and collective agreements
and the withdrawal of both resources and authority from the DoL Labour (now part of
the Ministry of Business Innovation, and Employment [MBIE]) the enforcement of
employees’ rights and protections has become much more difficult. The tragic eventsat the Pike River mine provided evidence of the lack of priority given to enforcementof employment rights by public officials.
Although the IC&A regulatory framework was not formally repealed until 1991, it
was after the Second World War that ideological opposition, particularly in the UnitedStates, began to develop to counter the rise and entrenchment of the social andeconomic rights through statute and state policy. 8 Trade unions and collective
bargaining were seen as a major obstacle to a free labour market and, therefore,
became a target for change. This ideology did not flower in New Zealand however
until the election of the fourth Labour government in 1984 but the policy agenda had
been well-prepared previously for implementation once a compliant politicalenvironment was achieved.
The political argument in New Zealand9 that labour markets must be deregulated topromote economic growth, productivity and jobs was consistent with that used by all
western governments that pursued the neo-liberal agenda. At the time of restructuring
the economy in the 1980s and 1990s, there was an increase in unemployment. The
promise of jobs through greater labour market flexibility was, therefore, attractive.
What were never discussed in any detail were the type of new jobs that were being
created and the social and economic consequences of removing employment rights
and protections from individual employees and their representative unions. The
evidence would suggest that precarious jobs are now seen as a necessary and integral
8

Susan George “A Short History of Neo-liberalism” (March 1999) Global Exchange<www.globalexchange.org>; Peter Evans and William H Sewell Jr “The National Era: Ideology,
Policy and Social Effects” (2013) UC Berkeley Sociology Department <www.socialogy.berkeley.edu>.
9
The Treasury Economic Management (July 14 1984) at 234-248.

25

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
part of the neo-liberal economy. Davies and Freedland10 noted in their analysis offlexible labour market regulation that:
We noted at the beginning of this chapter the US influences on the ‘welfare to work’
policies adopted by the British government. However, it would be wrong to conclude
that the policy focus on the employment rate and on supply-side techniques foraddressing the issue are purely Anglo-American phenomena. On the contrary, thesepolicies have been a growing feature of all developed economies over the past two
decades. The intellectual foundations for at least a good part of the policies
subsequently adopted were in fact provided by the Organisation for Economic
Corporation and Development, whose Jobs Study of 1994, leading to an OECD Jobs
Strategy, was highly influential in promoting supply-side reforms within the overall
framework of stable macro-economic management.11

Recent research from the OECD itself in its report Divided We Stand: Why Inequality
Keeps Rising12 noted:
The Landmark 2008 OECD report Growing Unequal showed the gap between richand poor had been growing in most OECD countries. Three years down the road,inequality has become a universal concern, among both policy makers and societies
at large. … Today in advanced economies, the average income of the richest 10% of
the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10%. … The single mostimportant driver has been greater inequality in wages and salaries. … The study
reveals a number of surprising findings: … regulatory reforms and institutionalchanges increased employment opportunities but also contributed to greater wage
inequality. …part-time work has increased, atypical labour contracts became morecommon and the coverage of collective-bargaining arrangements declined in many
countries. These changes in working conditions also contributed to rising earning
inequality.

The rise of labour market flexibility in New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s saw the
decline of statutory intervention to protect and further interests of employees and there-emergence of the 19th century notion of contract as the primary instrument ofregulation in the workplace. The Employment Contract Act embedded the resurgenceof the contract as the basis for the relationship in the workplace. It also signalled thedecline in trade union membership, collective bargaining, and the beginning ofgrowing inequality of income.13 The rationale for this shift was not only economic,
however, but also founded on the notion of the liberation of the individual worker tobe free from the “outcome-orientated, centralist-collectivist viewpoint to an incentiveorientated, truly individualist viewpoint”.14 Trade unions and the statutory support for
employees was characterised as a constraint on the individual’s freedom to pursue
their self-interest.

10

Paul Davies and Mark Freedland Towards a Flexible Labour Market: Labour Legislation andRegulation Since the 1990s (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007).
11
At 223.
12
OECD “OECD work on Income Distribution and Poverty” (2011) <www.oecd.org>.
13
Max Rashbrooke (ed) Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis (Bridget Williams Books, Wellington,2012).
14
Penelope Brook Freedom at Work: The Case for Reforming Labour Law in New Zealand (Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1990) at ix.

26

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
Maximising the individual’s freedom was an important rationale for the advocates ofthe dominance of market responses to economic issues. This meant that traditional
democratic notions, such as equality that had driven much of the rationale for politicaland industrial reform in New Zealand in the 20th century, were criticised as being
results-orientated and denying individuals’ equal opportunities. Although much of
the rhetoric that surrounded the Employment Contracts Act was contradictory, it did
clearly reflect a fundamental shift in political ideology and consensus that had
dominated New Zealand politics for much of the 20th century and continues into the
21st century.
The notion of contract has been firmly entrenched within both legal and political
history. The emergence of the law of contract with the rise of capitalism wasaccompanied by change in the legal nature of the employment relationship. The
master and servant relationship that was defined by the characteristics ofsubordination, obligations and duties slowly morphed into a contract that assumed thefree and voluntary will of the parties to negotiate terms and conditions that defined
the legal limits of the relationship. The employment contract, however, incorporated
the notion of subordination that remained fundamental to distinguishing it from otherforms of employment related contracts. The interventions through legislation into thenegotiation and content of the contract of employment and collective bargaining
steadily increased throughout the 20th century as employees obtained politicalinfluence and the legal rights to organise industrially. Through political organisationand democratically winning political power, parties representing the interests of
employees legally gained recognition of employees’ rights in the workplace. Since
the advent of the contract of employment as the legal instrument to regulate theemployment relationship, this has been legally and politically contested territory.15
The trend toward the increase in precarious work is another chapter in this story.
Although the Employment Relations Act 2000 was an attempt to emphasise thecooperative nature of the employment relationship, the current Employment Relations
Amendment Bill before Parliament clearly illustrates the government’s support for the
traditional subordination and control model of the employment relationship. Thisapproach is starkly illustrated in employer’s control of employee rest breaks that will
only be now given according to what the employer deems reasonable. The criterion
for what is reasonable appears to relate only to the needs of the business and not the
wellbeing of the employee.
Although the current government policy has supported increasing insecure work, theopposition has been promoting amendments that support legal rights for employees in
insecure work. All the members bill have been introduced and discharged by theparliament for lack of majority support. The Minimum Wage and Remuneration
Amendment Bill was aimed at providing a minimum wage for paid contractors who
were excluded from the provisions of the Minimum Wage Act because they were notclassified as being employees. The Employment Relations (Statutory Redundancy
Entitlements) Amendment Bill, the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment)
Amendment Bill and the Employment Relations Protection of Young Workers(Amendment) Bill were other examples of attempts to provide protections of
employees in precarious work.
15

See P.S. Atiyah The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979) at 523 544; Allan Fox Beyond Contract (Faber & Faber, London, 1974) at 175 - 313.

27

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33

The fundamental issue identified in these statutory amendments is the legal definitionof an employee being the initial barrier to access to legal protection however minimal
that protection may be. The two legal approaches to the removal of this barrier are
either to widen the definition of who is an employee to include dependent contractors
and independent contractors who employ no staff and have characteristics of an
employee, or to provide a statutory regime that specifically gives legal rights andprotections to contractors. At the heart of the distinction between these various
contracts is the degree of autonomy exercised by the person providing the labour orservice in the performance of the contract. Employment contracts assume a degree of
direction and control over performance while the independent contractor is assumed
to have total control the performance of the control. The determination of the legal
nature of the employee’s employment relationship has frequently been left to thecourts that have developed a series of tests to guide the parties when entering an
employment relationship.

Role of the Courts
Although traditionally the courts in New Zealand had not played a large role inemployment relations, the Employment Contract Act elevated the courts to a moredeterminative role in both defining who is an employee and whether an employment
relationship exists on the facts. The courts’ interpretation of who is an employee has
evolved to reflect the changing nature of the work performed that frequently reflects
minimal control in reality by the employer over the work performed. The United
Kingdom courts had also developed the notion of implied terms of the employment
contract that was followed by the New Zealand courts. The test being evolved by the
courts was incorporated into the Employment Relations Act to reflect the evolving
practice in the courts.16
The Employment Relations Act also attempted to ensure the law reflected the realityof the nature of the employment arrangement. The Act states that when determining
whether a contract of service is present the Employment Authority must determine thereal nature of the relationship, by considering all relevant matters including theintention of the parties and most importantly “not to treat as a determining matter any
statement by persons that describes the nature of their relationship”.17 This statutory
definition was consistent with the approach agreed to ILO Recommendation 198 –The Employment Relations Recommendation explicitly recognised the changing
reality of the employment relationship and the need to provide national policy
protection for all workers, regardless of their technical legal status.18
This wider legal definition to accommodate the changing nature of work and theemployment relationship was reversed in a recent demonstration in New Zealand of
the close relationship between the legal and political in the contract of employment.
The events surrounding the ‘Hobbit saga’ are well known and will not be rehearsed.
16

An analysis of the various tests developed by the courts prior to the Employment Contracts Act isfound in A Szkats Law of Employment (3rd ed, Butterworths).
17(Employment Relations Act 2000, s 6 (3) (b)). Employment Relations Act 2000.
18
ILO Recommendation R198, clause 9 <www.ilo.org>.

28

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
It is, however, a recent example and reminder of the political nature of employment
rights for employees and how a government overnight, without consultation, legally
entrenched the interests of capital over the right of employees to negotiate theirconditions of employment. 19 It was a crude but effective demonstration of use of
executive power in the labour market to fundamentally tilt the so-called level playing
field of the market in favour of the employer party. It was also an important reminderof the importance of the law in determining the nature of the employment relationshipand how dependent employees are on the law to organise collectively to negotiate
their conditions of employment.
In this context, it is relevant to note that the Supreme Court in Bryson v Three Foot
Six Ltd 20 applied this definition to a case involving a contractor working as atechnician for Three Foot Six, a film production company, who challenged his
employment status as a contractor on the grounds the terms under which he worked inreality were those of an employee.21 The Supreme Court decided that the contract
was, in reality, a contract of service. Helen Kelly notes in her narrative that this case
had applied in the industry since 2005 with many productions having taken placesince the decision without much difficulty.22 There was still freedom for the parties tonegotiate their own contract but it must reflect the actual conditions of work.
The 2010 Amendment to the Employment Relations Act not only overturned theSupreme Court decision, it also attempted to exclude consideration by the courts of
the legal nature of the employment contract by explicitly excluding persons working
in film production as “an actor, stand-in, body double, stunt performer, extra, singer,
musician, dancer or entertainer” or a person “engaged in film production work in any
other capacity”. Film production work is also extensively defined to include preproduction and post-production work or services and promotional or advertising workor services. 23 In effect, the government was ‘labelling’ this work as only being
undertaken by a contractor, unless there was a written agreement by the parties statingthat the person is an employee. The unreality of this provision to give employees areal choice as to their status becomes apparent when it is realised that the employer isoften a company like Warner Brothers that was involved in negotiations with thegovernment at the time of the amendment. Any notion of choice as to an employee’s
employment status in the film production industry in New Zealand is now illusionary.
It is interesting to note that the justification for changing the status of employees wasto create jobs, yet recently, it is reported that there is a crisis in the film industry withfew projects available to provide jobs. It would appear, therefore, that any advantage
in changing the employment status of employees was short-term and that the realissue is the level of government subsided funding for the industry.
The ‘Hobbit’ legislation was part of the strategy to fundamentally shift the nature of
the employment relationship from one founded on consensus through good faithnegotiating to one based on an adversarial position being adopted by all parties when19

See (2011) 36(3) NZJER for an account of the Hobbit saga from all perspectives.
Bryson v Three Foot Six Ltd [2005] NZSC 6.
21
See Pam Nuttall, “Where the Shadows lie”: Confusions, misunderstanding, and misinformation
about workplace status” (2011) 36(3) NZJER 73 for analysis of the legal implications of the Hobbit
Amendment.
22
Helen Kelly “The Hobbit Dispute” (2011) 36(3) NZJER 30.
23
Employment Relations Act s6(1)(d)(i) & (ii) and s 6(7).
20

29New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
conducting their relationship. Interestingly, New Zealand’s industrial relations
system was founded on the assumption of fundamental conflict between capital andlabour, but with the state, through the legal framework providing a reasonable levelplaying field through the industrial conciliation and arbitration system. It would seemthat the current policy framework does not attempt a level playing field but
subordinates the interests of employees to those of employers and business in theinterests of the economy. The justification for this policy approach is that it will leadto economic benefits through job creation. Again, however, the real question is whatsort of jobs.
The causal way in which the decision of the Supreme Court in the Bryson Case wasbrushed aside by the government demonstrates another feature of the current
employment relations environment, that is, the tension between court decisions andthe government. While this tension is not new, it highlights the determination of thegovernment to ensure their policy prevails. The Employment Court in the 1990s wascharacterised as in opposition to the policy of labour market flexibility and attempts
were made to remove its jurisdiction to presumably what was considered the more
compliant environment of the District Court. The fact that the fundamental role of the
Employment Court changed with the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act
from an arbitration court to a solely legal body does not appear to have always been
respected by the executive.
This raises the more fundamental issue of the constitutional relationship between theexecutive and the judiciary. This is subject beyond the scope of this article but it isrelevant to the extent that the Employment Court is now faced with issues that wereonce resolved through mediation or arbitration. The Court’s approach to theresolution of the cases before it is to interpret the law as written in the legislation andin accordance with the provisions of the Interpretation Act 1999. When such decisions
are unacceptable to the employer party, the government has often responded with anamendment to achieve the desired result of ensuring the employer has increasing if
not absolute flexibility over the conditions of employment. The personal grievancelegislation is a classic example of this dance between the court and the government.
The government is entitled to amend the law according to its policy but constantamendments do not provide a stable consistent environment nor does it achieve thecertainty that is sought by the government and employers. Employment relationships
are human relationships and, by their very nature, uncertain. No amount of detailed
regulation will achieve the certainty sought and, often, it creates greater uncertainty aseach change of the rules is contested and determined by the Authority and the Courts.

Recent Case Law Relating to Precarious WorkAn example of the current approach of the government to a decision of the
Employment Court with which was contested by employers is seen in Idea Services
Ltd v Dickson24 where the Court of Appeal upheld the Employment Court decisionthat care workers who sleep over as part of their employment are entitled to be paid arate that was at least that required by the Minimum Wage Act. The Court of Appeal
24

Idea Services Ltd v Dickson [2011] 2 NZLR 522, [2011] ERNZ 192.

30

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
in its decision had identified three factors to be considered when determining whether
the work performed was within the definition of ‘work’ in the Minimum Wage Act.
Those factors were namely; the greater the constraints on the employee’s use of time,
the greater the responsibilities of the employee, and the greater the benefit to theemployer. The decision was also not confined to the caring industry.
The ‘sleepover case’ prompted considerable comments and the government’s
response was to enact the Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Act 2011. Unlike the Hobbit
Amendment however, this legislation was enacted after a negotiation with the Service
and Food Workers Union (SFWU) and the further appeal to the Supreme Court by theemployer was withdrawn. While this may have settled that particular dispute, thegeneral issue of when ‘sleepover work’ attracts a minimum wage is still a contested
legal issue. For example, the question arose also in New Zealand King Salmon Co Ltd
v Cerny and Moretti 25 where hatchery operators had been required to work from4.30pm to 8am without being paid the minimum wage. An application for special
leave to remove the matter into the Employment Court was rejected by the Court on
the ground that no important question of law was involved because of the Court ofAppeal decision giving guidance to the parties in such cases. The matter was referredback to the Employment relations Authority. There is a further case currently waiting
decision of the Employment Court, namely, Law v Board of Trustees of Woolford
House that raises the issue in the context of the education sector. It is apparent theissue of ‘sleepover work’ applies to all sectors and the question arises whether it will
attract further statutory amendment.
The legal significance of the Minimum Wage Act was also highlighted in the caseTerranova Home & Care Ltd v Faitala and Goff 26 where the Court of Appeal
dismissed an appeal against the Employment Court decision that the compulsory
Kiwisaver employer contribution had to be paid in addition to the minimum wage.
The employer practice in this case had been to deduct the payment from theemployee’s wages that resulted in them being paid less than the minimum wage. The
fact that the Minimum Wage Act is proving to provide necessary protection for somany employees highlights the prevalence of low paid that often accompanies aprecarious work regime.
An increasing number of cases relating to precarious work have also risen before the
Employment Court in cases requiring legal clarification of whether work is causal,
fixed-term, or permanent. In the case of Jinkinson v Oceana Gold (NZ) Ltd27, Judge
Couch summarised the criteria used in Australia and Canada to identify causal work
as being:
engagement for short periods of time for specific purposes; a lack of regular work
pattern or expectation of ongoing employment; employment dependent on
availability of work demands; no guarantee of work from one week to the next;
employment as and when needed; lack of an obligation on the employer to offer
employment or on the employee to accept another engagement; and employee is only
engaged for the specific term of each period of employment.

25

New Zealand King Salmon Co Ltd v Cerny and Moretti [2012] NZEmpC 195.
Terranova Home & Care Ltd v Faitala and Goff [2013] NZCA 435.
27
Jinkinson v Oceana Gold (NZ) Ltd [2009] ERNZ 225.
26

31

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
Recent cases raising the same issue include Baker v St John Central Trust Board28(employee held to be casual and not permanent on the facts); Muldoon v Nelson
Marlborough District Health Board 29 (on the facts the nurse was held to bepermanent and not causal employee); Rush Security Service Ltd v Samoa30 (on thefacts the security guard was held to be a permanent and not a causal employee). All
these cases were dealing with the complexity of current employment arrangements
and determining if there was a ‘relationship’ implying some on-going sense ofobligation, or whether it was a time specific arrangement with no expectation of
obligation.
Another issue related to precarious work that is currently being determined by the
Court is the legal rights and obligations that flow from triangular employment
relationship that are increasingly common as more work is contracted out. In Hill v
Workforce Development Ltd 31 , the Court was faced with a classic triangulararrangement where Ms. Hill was employed by Workforce Development Ltd toundertake work contracted to it by the Corrections Department. When Corrections
decided Ms Hill could not only be employed for breach of their protocols and she wasdismissed by Workforce Development, the issue was whether she had been
unjustifiably dismissed, and the Court found on the facts she had been unjustifiably
dismissed. This case is being appealed so it will be interesting to see how the Courtof Appeal deals with this form of employment. The complexity of the legal issues
that arise in such situations was first addressed by the Employment Court in
McDonald v Ontrack Infrastructure Ltd & Allied Work Force Ltd 32 when the Full
Court agreed with the proposition that “in a tripartite employment situation, where thearrangements are genuine and represent the actual relationship, it will be a rare casewhere the Court will imply a contract between the workers and end users”. Whether
such a situation was present on the facts of the present case was referred to a single
Judge for determination.
The above cases provide a sample of recent decisions that have arisen from theincreasing use of precarious work. While the courts are developing a principledapproach to determine the legal status and rights of employee and employers in
precarious work, it is apparent that statutory guidance is required. As noted above,the emphasis on reforming the law has focussed on the legal definition of who were
employees and the nature of the employment relationship. This involves the court
interpreting the terms of any written agreement and the statutory definitions. As
noted, the attempts at reform have also focussed on the statutory definitions anddetermination on the legal nature of the employment relationship.

Alternative Approach to Regulation
While statutory clarification of who is legally an employee has much merit, it may
also be useful to consider a different approach, namely, to focus on the legal
regulation of the time engaged in working. Concern over the effects of zero contracts
28

Baker v St John Central Trust Board [2013] NZEmpC 34.
Muldoon v Nelson Marlborough District Health Board [2011] NZEmpC 103.
30
Rush Security Service Ltd v Samoa [2011] NZEmpC 76.
31
Hill v Workforce Development Ltd [2013] NZERA 65.
32
McDonald v Ontrack Infrastructure Ltd & Allied Work Force Ltd [2010] NZEmpC 132.
29

32

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 22-33
in the United Kingdom has resulted in Professor Ewing proposing an approach that
focusses on the regulation of hours of work.33 He suggests a Working Time regulatory
framework be enacted that requires the worker to know the conditions of
employment, including the hours to be worked. The contract, therefore, must provide
for the number of hours to be paid over a stated period. He suggested that to avoid
employers stating one hour of employment in the contract, it be unlawful to work
more than the stated number of hours unless there is an agreement with the tradeunion. Also, if the worker is on-call or a zero hours contract, he argued that aminimum on-call payment must be made and that payment must be the same as aminimum wage.
It is open to argument whether the approach advocated by Professor Ewing would
work in New Zealand. The emphasis on regulation of time worked does not avoid thelegal definition of who is an employee or a worker, though this could be overcome if
a new regulatory regime applied to all work performed for another, whatever its legal
nature. The idea of regulating the hours of work is an old one. In New Zealand, thefirst strike was over the eight-hour day. Today, the main issue has been not too many
hours worked, but not enough hours or certainty of the hours to be worked. Hours ofwork have always been linked to benefits, such as the number of holidays, time off forsick leave.
If an organising principle for future reform is sought then the notions of hours worked
may be a useful starting point for discussion. This also is not a new notion as under
the previous arbitration system a standard wage and hours of work were set. Also,
such an approach would acknowledge a more fundamental reality that the way we usetime is changing and the regulation to determine the value of time and how we usetime must also change. The value of time being the focus of regulation has been
explored by Mark Harvey, who highlights the under-valuation of caring and work athome normally undertaken by women.34

Conclusion
Whatever approach is taken, the need for a new regulatory regime is required if those
who use their labour and skills for the profit of others are to be recognised as having
enforceable legal rights as well as obligations. It is essential that any regulatory
regime reflect the reality of the labour market and the workplace. It is also essentialthat it reflect the values of the society. This is the fundamental question facing New
Zealanders – have we changed from out traditional values of equality and fairness tovalues founded on economic or financial value only. Currently, the regulatory regime
reflects a conflict between these values, but with an increasing tendency towards thedominance of economic and financial values being the driver for labour market
regulation.

33

Professor Keith Ewing “Zero-hours Contracts: Some policy proposals” (13 August 2013) The
Institute of Employment Rights <www.ier.org.uk>.
34
Mark Harvey “Economies of Time: A Framework for Analysing the Restructuring of Employment
Relations” in Alan Felsead and Nick Jewson (eds) Global Trends in Flexible Labour (MacMillan
Business, London, 1999) 21.

33

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50

Antipodean Aspirations and the Difficulties of Regulating For Decent Work Now
and Then?
MELANIE NOLAN*
Abstract
Currently, the NZCTU is waging a number of campaigns for decent work. There is a view that theIndustrial Conciliation and Arbitration (IC and A) Act, instituted in 1894, achieved decent work before
the 1991 Employment Contracts Act deregulated workplaces and industrial relations. In this paper, I
give a more nuanced overview of the IC and A Act’s implementation, questioning the extent to whichmost workers in New Zealand were regulated before 1936, and indicating the ways in which universal‘decent or fair wages’ were aspirational. For some time after 1936, too, regulation for women, forinstance, meant being paid less than men for the same job and ranking female-dominated occupations as
inferior in skill and, therefore, wages to male-dominated occupations. The story about decent work for
marginal workers – some women, Māori, Pacific, young, old and those working for small workplaces –differs from the standard story for skilled, unionised male workers.

Introduction: Contemporary CTU Campaigns
At the 2013 New Zealand Labour Party conference, Helen Kelly, President of the New Zealand Councilof Trade Unions (CTU), discussed the CTU’s various workplace campaigns: Forestry Safety, the Living
Wage Campaign, the Fairness at Work Campaign and the Campaign on Insecure Work. Its campaign
for greater workplace safety was in the wake of corporate and regulatory failures in mining which led to
the 29 men dead in the Pike River coal mine disaster in November 2010, but was further inspired byeight deaths in the forestry industry in 2013. The CTU estimated that 570,000 workers out of the total
workforce of 2.2 million were employed in one of the five industries with the worst health and safety
records: agriculture, forestry, fishery, construction and manufacturing. The CTU’s living wage campaign
aimed to raise minimum wages for the lowest paid workers to 66 per cent of the average ordinary time
wage. The CTU estimated that 573,000 workers earned less than the living wage and raising minimum
wages was an attempt to ‘raise the floor’ and reduce poverty. Its campaign on insecure work and fairness
at work targeted the 635,000 or 30 per cent of New Zealand workers, perhaps as high as 50 per cent ofworkers, in insecure work; including the 192,000 in temporary employment, the 95,000 workers with nousual work time and the 61,000 with no written employment agreement (CTU 2013a). More generally,and from the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act in 1991, the CTU waged a work rights
campaign for industrial law and practice ensuring workers’ rights to union representation, collective
bargaining, equal pay and sharing productivity profits (CTU, 2013b). This was sometimes characterised
as a wish to ‘turn back’ to the ‘glory days’ before 1991. By 2013, however, the CTU, of course, was not
the only group concerned about health and safety, living wages and the workers’ rights to secure work.

*

Prof. Melanie Nolan. Director of the National Centre of Biography; General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of
Biography. Australia National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

34

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
The Royal Commission on the 2010 Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy’s report, released in October 2012,
identified a range of problems with the regulatory environment for workplace health and safety. The
Commission recommended that, to improve New Zealand’s poor record in workplace health and safety,
a new Crown agency focussing solely on workplace health and safety should be established. The 2010
Commission also called on the Minister of Labour to establish an Independent Taskforce on Workplace
Health and Safety, and required it to report back to the Minister on the organisational design options fora health and safety regulator. In turn, the Independent Taskforce, which reported in April 2013,
identified that each year over 100 New Zealanders died from workplaces accidents. It also reckoned thatbetween 700 and 1,000 other people died as a result of gradual work-related diseases. The Taskforce
said New Zealand’s workplace culture, with its “high level of tolerance for risk, and negative
perceptions of health and safety, Kiwi stoicism, deference to authority, laid-back complacency andsuspicion of red tape” affected “behaviour from the boardroom to the shop floor” (Independent
Taskforce of Workplace Health and Safety, 2013:31). The Ministry of Business, Innovation and
Employment (MBIE) took over workplace health and safety responsibilities from the former Departmentof Labour in 2012. A stand-alone regulatory body, WorkSafe New Zealand, with a focus on
occupational health and safety was established in December 2013, aggregating responsibilities which
had been distributed among various bodies including customs, the ministries of Transport, Health, andBusiness Innovation and Employment, the Civil Aviation Authority and Maritime NZ and “multiple
pieces of legislation” (Parkes, 2012: 5). The Taskforce suggested that New Zealand’s workplace injury
rates were about twice that of Australia and almost six times that of the UK (Lilley, Samaranayaka &Weiss, 2013). Indeed, the Australian model was invoked, especially Australia’s tripartism and legal
framework. The government set itself the target of changing the workplace culture and reducing
workplace deaths and serious injury rates by 25 per cent by 2020, by means of WorkSafe NZ
collaborating with workplaces and assisted by new regulations.
Unions joined other groups in a second decent wage campaign in 2012. In April 2012, the Service andFood Workers Union called the first meeting and, with support by more than 50 mostly community andreligious organisations, began a ‘living wage’ campaign, which followed the similar overseas campaigns
in the UK, the US and Canada. The Living Wage Aotearoa New Zealand Campaign commissioned areport by the Family Centre Social Policy Research (FCSPRU) to provide an empirical basis fordetermining the level of a living wage for New Zealand in 2012 (King & Waldegrave, 2012). The idea
was that minimum wage legislation would combat poverty in New Zealand. The campaign was inspiredby calls to cut the youth minimum wage in 2012 to a lower ‘starting-out wage’ in an attempt to lower
youth unemployment rates. The Minister of Labour, in a periodical review of the minimum wage, took
advice from his officials, including submissions by Business NZ and the CTU, and raised the adultminimum wages slightly. The CTU submission had recommended that the minimum wage be raised
substantially to 66 percent of the average ordinary time wage, from $13.50 to $18.40 an hour (CTU,
2013c). A significant part of the CTU argument was that the New Zealand minimum wage was only 74
per cent of the Australian federal minimum wage and only 60 per cent for casual workers. A large partof the differential, it is argued, was that Australia had maintained an award and national minimum wageorder system. The NZ Public Service Association called on the government, as the country’s largest
employer and funder of public services, to take the lead and to provide a living wage to its employees.
Controversially, the Wellington City Council adopted a living wage policy in order to reduce poverty
and lift workplace morale and productivity (Dominion Post, 2013).
The CTU’s third campaign was more of its own making, marked by the research towards andpublication of its report, ‘Under Pressure’ in October 2013 (CTU, 2013a). By then, however, a numberof commentators had also begun to consider ‘workers on the margins’. Cybele Locke, for instance,
35

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
examined those workers in “low-wage, temporary, casualized or part-time [work]… unemployed orunderemployed, or engaged in no-wage work (household labour or voluntary work” (Locke, 2012). She
estimated that “by the beginning of the twenty-first century over half of New Zealand workers were inpart-time, temporary, subcontracted or outsourced work. Many experienced poor working conditions
with no labour protections. The workforce had changed radically since the mid-twentieth century” (ibid).
She argued, as did the CTU, that the economic downturn from 1966, and the abandonment of full
employment in 1984 and market reforms were significant turning points in the marginalisation process.
Implicit in this social commentary was the idea that, once, New Zealand’s industrial system and its
health and safety provisions were world class. Recently, there has been a range of indications that New
Zealand has a poor workplace relations and health and safety record compared to other advanced
countries. The assumption is that, earlier, New Zealand legislated and provided for uniform, decent
wages and conditions, which were lost in late 20th century system reform and market forces (Stock,2007).

Idealising New Zealand’s Industrial System?
Indeed, New Zealand (and Australia) had a unique arbitration system for nearly a century. The New
Zealand Act was repealed in 1973; its descendent compulsory arbitration aspects ended in 1984 in theprivate sector and in 1988 the public sector. The Employment Contracts Act 1991 ended other important
aspects of the industrial relations system: trade union registration, compulsory union membership andthe award system. There have been a number of accounts of aspects of arbitration over time but few
comprehensive overviews. Most accounts of the arbitration system are empirical and consider thecompressed wage structure and relatively high degree of uniformity in wage rates it effected forparticular periods for particular groups (Holt, 1980; 1986; Rowley, 1931). Some historians havefocussed on contentious moments, such as strikes in 1912, 1913, and 1951 when militant unionists
attacked ‘labour’s leg-iron’; others consider periods when employers sought to end the system, as in1928, while others have considered when the system was abandoned as in the depression, 1932-1936(Holland, 1912; Martin, 1994). In 1994, the Trade Union History Project marked the centenary of the IC
and A Act 1894, which established the arbitration system in New Zealand, by the publication of a bookassessing trade unions’ and historians’ experience of the arbitration system (Walsh, 1994a). It argued
that arbitration was the central social institution distinguishing New Zealand for most of the 20th century.
Subsequently, Peter Beilharz (2014) argued that arbitration was a distinctive innovation that involved
the antipodes’ greatest social thinkers.
Despite its seeming advantages, the industrial system was abandoned. Carlyon and Morrow (2013) haveexamined what they argue as the role of minorities in effecting change in society more generally from ahighly regulated postwar New Zealand. Certainly, some non-militant unions considered the protections
afforded to them to be their lifeline (Nolan & Walsh, 1994). In the postwar period, however,
governments as well as employers and some unionists came to resent the egalitarian wage structures thesystem generated and its rigid nature to such an extent and sufficiently coordinated to support and effecta “slow walk away from the arbitration system” (Rosenberg, 1970; Walsh, 1994b).
In passing, the ‘centenary book’ pointed to the problem of idealising or romanticising the arbitration
system before 1991. First, it took much longer to implement the arbitration system than it is sometimes
portrayed in accounts. Although the system was first legislated for in the 1894, most workers in New
Zealand were not included in the system until 1936. Moreover, the ‘golden age’ accounts largely
overlook the labour market disadvantage of “women, Māori, Pacific Island and other low-income36New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
workers” (Nolan, 2011). In this paper, I consider the process of legislating and providing for decent
wages and conditions and the arbitration system in its infancy and adolescence (Burton, 1995; Hancock,2013). I argue that large numbers of New Zealanders for much of the ‘arbitration’ century had poorer
employment conditions than the arbitration standard and the Higgins measure of decent wages.
Regulating for universal decent wages and conditions was not achieved even under the best arbitration
conditions.

Legislating for Decent Working Conditions and Defining Antipodean Values
The contemporary CTU campaigns discussed above were, indeed, mirrored a century earlier by a rangeof similar union and social campaigns. Three conspicuous campaigns led to significant industrial
legislation:
1. The eight hours movement;
2. The anti-sweating movement and the demand for protective labour legislation; and3. The arbitration movement and the demands that lead to the benchmark in industrial law, theHarvester Judgment of 1907.
A number of historians have considered the resulting maximum hour regulations, minimum wage laws
and compulsory arbitration procedures (Pember Reeves, 1902; Coleman, 1987). They are mainstays forwhat is described as an ‘Antipodean settlement’ (Macintyre, 1987; Macintyre & Mitchell 1989; Goldfinch& Mein Smith, 2006).
1. Eight hours Movement
English cotton manager and part owner of mills, Robert Owen, supported a ten-hour day in 1810 and aneight-hour day in 1817, ‘eight hours labour, eight hours recreation and eight hours rest’. It is legendarythat Samuel Parnell insisted on working no longer than eight hours when erecting a store for themerchant George Hunter in Petone in 1840 at the time of Wellington settlement. The shortage of skilled
labour saw Hunter having to accept Parnell’s terms, with eight-hour days becoming widespread amongskilled workers particularly in local construction. Similarly, the Otago Association had promoted
Dunedin settlers an eight-hour day as part of its new world vision. The eight-hours movement, spreadthrough settlements, as it did across the Tasman. Victoria instituted the first piece of legislation in 1856
(Simpson, 1997). By 1875, the Official Handbook of New Zealand was attempting to lure newimmigrations with the statement that in “all mechanical trades, and for labourers in general, the standard
day’s work is eight hours” (Vogel, 1875).
There were demonstrations in support of an eight-hour law beginning in Auckland and Dunedin in 1882.
Matthew Green began introducing eight-hours bills in parliament in 1882, 1883 and 1884. The Maritime
Council instituted a “general holiday” or Demonstration Day in 1890, on the anniversary of its formation
on 28 October 1889. Parnell led the Wellington procession. Premier Richard Seddon’s response to the1898 Trades and Labour Council’s criticism of the Lib-Lab Federation and its failure to deliver forworking people was to institute an official Labour Day holiday to celebrate the achievement of an eighthour working day from 1899 (Roth, 1990; 1991).
2. Anti-Sweating Movement37New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
In the early 1870s, Waikaia MP, James Bradshaw, championed factory legislation to combat the effects
of New Zealand’s nascent industrialization – the long working hours, poor conditions and underemployment resulting from the free play of the market forces. Parliament, subsequently, passed its firstprotective labour legislation for women, the Employment of Females Act 1873. However, by regulating
factory working hours for women, the Act introduced the principle of differential state intervention.
Further legislation in the 1870s and 1880s broadened the Act by regulating child labour as well, sinceneither women nor young people were believed capable of combining together “as workmen do in theirtrades union, to protect themselves and limit the hours of labour” At the same time, economic
depression was intensifying calls by organised labour for more state intervention to deal specificallywith cheaper female and boy labour because it was displacing adult males or undermining their earning
capacity (Appendices to the House of Representatives, 1878; Salmond, 1950; Biggs 1990; 1991).
By the end of the 1880s, a particular hue and cry had developed over the unwholesomeness of women’s
working conditions in the clothing industry. Their low pay and long working hours were regarded as‘sweated labour’. Attention focussed on urban areas where there was a higher proportion of women andgreater industrialisation: 27 per cent of Dunedin’s workforce was employed in the clothing industry,
which was 80 per cent female. The furore over ‘sweating’ resulted in the formation of tailoresses’unions, a commission of inquiry, and demands for further factory legislation and regulation of women’s
work (Richardson, 1881; Royal Commission on Sweating, 1890; Duncan, 1989; Bassett, 1990).
There was an avalanche of Liberals’ protective labour legislation between 1891 and 1912 (New Zealand,
1909). One theme of this regulation was prescribing when women could work and for how long. The
1891 Factories Act led to alterations and improvements to alleviate overcrowding, and to provide
sanitary facilities (which employers had avoided because standards had not been defined in earlier
legislation). It redefined the term ‘factory’ to include smaller workplaces and created a new factoryinspectorate. The legislation banned night work for women (and boys), restricted their overtime, andrequired them to take regular meal breaks. Concerns over maternal health were behind the stipulation in
the Shops and Shop Assistants Act 1892 that seats were to be provided for female employees and therequirement in its 1894 amendment that the seats were to be used at ‘reasonable’ intervals to avoid fallen
wombs (lapsus uteri), varicose veins and ‘irregularities’ (amenorrhoea). Amending legislation in 1905
limited women’s hours to 6pm on four nights and 9pm on the fifth in the major centres and 7pm and9pm in smaller centres. Girls had a higher minimum commencing age for indenture than boys, which
prevented them from becoming apprentices. Work immediately after confinement was also prohibited.
Under the Factories Act 1901, women were not to be employed in a factory for the four weeks after
giving birth. At the other end of the age scale, gender differentials in superannuation were also
introduced. Thus, women’s working life was seen as being shorter than men’s; women worked shorter
hours when they were in employment and earnt, on average, less than half the male wage rates (Nolan,
2000).
A second legislative theme was to deem certain tasks too heavy, too dirty or too dangerous for women.
Under the Factories Act 1891, women were protected from some of the dirtiest factory work. Girls were
not to work on wet-spinning or where there was steam. Boys and girls were prohibited from hazardous
tasks, such as silvering mirrors using mercury, dipping lucifer matches, dry-grinding in the metal trades
and melting glass. Work involving gas, brine and salt was also specifically closed to girls. There wererestrictions on boys and females undertaking the cleaning, lubrication and examination of moving
machinery parts, and only males aged 18 and over were allowed to be in control of boilers andmachinery.
38

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
A third aspect of the legislation directly excluded women from “unsuitable” occupations. The Coal
Mines Act 1886 specified that “[n]o female of any age, and no male child under the age of twelve years,
shall be employed in any capacity in or about any mine”. Parliament was told that in New Zealand,
while “the wages of men were so good”, there could be no occasion “that women and children should be
employed in such work”. This was a preventative rather than a remedial measure, as no women were
employed in New Zealand mines at the time. The Liberals did not repeal this legislation. Indeed, it
moved to exclude women from serving in bars also. It was accepted that women could do the job, butthat they ought not to. With much fanfare, members of Parliament decided in 1910 to ban barmaids inthe future. Some continued to ply the trade, having being employed as barmaids before 1911 or as
publicans’ wives, but, supposedly for their own good and the community’s well-being, no women could
enter the trade between 1911 and 1961. Over time this legislation was extended (Equal Pay
Commission, 1971). This left men’s conditions worse than women’s but they were considered able tounionise to improve them whereas women could not.
3. Arbitration Movement
In 1886, Joseph D. Weeks made one of the first general calls for permanent boards of arbitration inwhich employers and employed were equally represented and presided over by an “disinterested
umpire” to determine industrial conditions nationally (Weeks, 1886). Weeks cited precedents in theguild tribunals, Conseils des prud’hommes in France and Belgium and a successfully operating board ofarbitration in the English Nottingham hosiery and glove trade, which had been formed in 1860. The
Knights of Labour popularised arbitration internationally in 1886-1887 arguing for legislation. In 1887,
an earlier Christchurch union changed its name to ‘The New Zealand Knights of Labour’. While theKnights of Labour were a wide-reaching movement, Robert Weir (2009) concludes that the movement
achieved its greatest success in New Zealand where more than two dozen Knights were elected to
Parliament, and where it enacted most of its political and social platform. So, while Jim Gardnerdiscusses the 1890 House of Commons arbitration bill, he considers the “intellectual property” inAustralasia, which was translated into successful bills, quite separate (Gardiner, 2009). William Pember
Reeves, New Zealand Minister of Labour, strongly supported compulsory arbitration. He based his
successful bill on Charles Kingston’s South Australian bill, with the former ‘beating’ the later to thestatute books. Reeves argued that arbitration
would never put an end of labour troubles; but it would … put a stop to these disruptions ofindustry by which factories are closed, enterprise checked, work stopped and misery anddesolation brought into hundreds and perhaps thousand of homes” (as cited in Holt 1976; 1986)
In Australasia, the Harvester Judgment is regarded as the epitome of the arbitration system, establishing
the benchmark for decent wages in a civilised community. As James Holt has argued, “it is moredifficult to judge how the unions benefited or failed to benefit from the Court’s policies on wages, hours
and conditions” because the New Zealand Arbitration Court “did not announce what its policies were”(Holt, 1980). Moreover, each award dealt with a particular occupational group in a region. By contrast,
the Australian Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court handed down substantial judgments.
The New Zealand court piggy-backed on the Australian decisions and, notably, the ‘ethos’ of Harvester
and a decent minimum wage were Australasian.
On 8 November 1907, Justice Henry Bournes Higgins, the President of the Commonwealth Conciliation
and Arbitration Court, handed down the decision that has come to be known as the Harvester Judgment,from the name of the agricultural machinery manufactured by H.V. McKay. It established a male living
39New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
wage that had to be “fair and reasonable”, sufficient to support as “civilized beings” in a standard ofliving appropriate to a “civilized community”. When Harvester and the living wage are invoked, so tooare ‘national values’ as, indeed, occurred at the centenary symposium – The Living Wage and National
Values: Remembering Harvester, 1907-2007 – at the University of Melbourne in 2007. The living wage
provided a basis for social justice. Francis G. Castles has written a detailed history of the emergence ofthe male wage earners’ countries – that is, the Australasian wage earner’s welfare state, which embraced
protection for white workers in paid employment: tariffs, centralised and compulsory wage-fixing,
constrained immigration, and a residual welfare system (Castles, 1985). It was “residual” welfare (asopposed to “universal”) in that the unique compulsory wage-fixing system delivered social protection
through a minimum living wage, a relatively egalitarian and compressed wage structure with a highdegree of uniformity in wage increases, and a relatively high standard of living.
A number of historians have considered the Lib-Lab’s ‘social contract’ at the turn of the 20th century
more broadly. It was a social contract developed upon the basis of a social consensus over continual
progress, class harmony and egalitarianism. James Belich and others discuss the “Populist New Zealandcompact”. In Australia, this was known as the “Deakinite settlement” until Paul Kelly popularized it as
the “Australian settlement” (Belich, 2001; Kelly, 1992; Beilheiz, 2014). Critiques have challenged thedegree to which this settlement was unchanging and pointed to the renovation of the settlement in the
1940s and subsidiary aspects (Rowse, 2002; Beilharz, 2008), but common to all versions is the idea thatconflict was assuaged by a social consensus over protective tariffs, a residual welfare state andcentralised and compulsory wage-fixing.

Realising Laws and Analysing Legislation?
Too few consider the extent to which aspirations and legislation were realised universally. We need toconsider the extent to which the eight hours movement, protective labour legislation and arbitration were
put into effect. We need to examine the extent to which, and for whom, the ‘deal’ contained in the social
contract was applied.
1. Short hours were not universal
OECD figures suggest an even pattern of reduction of working hours per worker internationally from 59
in 1871 to 41.7 in 1981 (OECD, 1985; Cross 1989; Roediger & Foner 1989). Certainly, the IC and A
Act 1894 started to introduce the 48 hours working week in New Zealand. Bert Roth noted in 1966,
however, that “while New Zealand was thus the first country in the world to adopt the eight-hour day,the custom was confined to tradesmen and labourers and lacked legislative sanction” (Roth 1966). The
reduction was staggered: the Factories Amendment Act of 1936 fixed a forty-hour week in factories but
exemptions were granted until another amendment in 1945. The Shops and Offices Amendment Act
1936 reduced the working hours from 48 to 44, and reduced further in two steps in 1945 and 1946 to 40
hours with Acts providing the same for seamen in 1947 and restaurant workers in 1948 and so on. While
hours were stipulated, workers could work ‘overtime’, however, under penalty pay provisions.
For many achieving the half-holiday Saturday was a critical reform. Two weeks’ annual holiday wasprovided by the 1944 Annual Holidays Act; the 1955 Public Holidays Act ensured uniformity in public
holidays, and in 1973, Waitangi Day was added. The 1981 Holidays Act provided for 11 statutory
holidays and three weeks’ annual leave. Certainly ‘The Great New Zealand weekend’ was emphatic
from the 1930s to the 1970s in paid work until shops were able open again on Saturdays under the Shop
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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
Trading Hours Amendment Act 1980 and Sunday trading was allowed from Christmas 1989. But manyof those in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, construction and manufacturing had longer hours, sometimes
covered by overtime; and then there were the self-employed and those working in the home who
remained unregulated.
2. Protective Labour Legislation
Protective labour legislation continued to be generated throughout the 20 th century. Bradshaw’s 1871
Act has been described, however, as “preventative rather than remedial” (Martin, 1996; 1997). The evils
it addressed appear to have been potential rather than actual. Women did not constitute much more thana quarter of the industrial workforce at their peak. Indeed, the proportion of female labour in registeredfactories dropped from 26.5 per cent of the total in 1895-6 to 21.5 per cent in 1912-13 (AJHR, 1913).
While numbers increased during war, women did not increase beyond the 1895-6 proportion. Up until
World War Two, most of the female labour force continued to be employed in domestic work, which
was noted for its lack of organisation. Slowly, women moved into commerce, but even there they were
scattered in small workplaces – environments not conducive to unionisation or regulation. More
importantly, young women were in the workforce for only a short time, leaving paid for unpaid work.
Of course there were attempts to have the ‘decent conditions’ of female labour extended to men, andthose attempts are instructive. Edward Tregear, the Secretary of Labour, believed that the Factories Act
1891 was only a partial measure because it did not ‘meddle’ with the working conditions of adult men.
He argued that men should have more protection; at the very least, an Act was required to limit the hours
worked by both sexes. Matters came to a head in 1901 over the Factories Bill. Previous legislation had
regulated the hours of only women and children, in keeping with the original ethos of protective labour
legislation (Tregear, 1906). Yet, the government’s initial 1901 bill, which Tregear shepherded, did not
differentiate on the basis on sex. Instead, it attempted to regulate the hours of women and men equally.
A storm of protests broke out over this extension of the protection principle to men. Seddon commented
that the bill had received more attention than any other for which he had moved a second reading. In
reply, Seddon claimed that the wording of the bill had been changed (from ‘women and children’ to‘person’) without his approval. He affirmed that the Act would limit women to 45 working hours aweek, except in woollen mills where they were allowed to work the same hours as men. Blaming his
officials (that is, Tregear) for the ‘error’, Seddon put back the clauses specifically protecting women.
The attempt to introduce gender-neutral protection had failed (New Zealand Parliamentary Debates,
1901). The failure is important because it runs counter to the agenda of equality that the Liberals
promised to implement when elected with massive popular support in 1890. It is also an example ofLabour Department zeal being tempered by political considerations.
Hence, the Liberals’ programme of protective legislation was inconsistent and patchy, and its results
were less impressive than the rhetoric of its implementation. The state did not interfere with domestic
service, still the largest paid occupation for single women, at least until World War Two, although it did
regulate the fees private registry offices could charge. Nor did it interfere with women’s unpaid
domestic employment, which was larger still. To do so would have been political suicide, and an
administrative nightmare. When it came to domestic work, middle-class, trade union and feminist
reformers were pitted against a vigorous doctrine of laissez-faire and opposition (Olssen, 1980). Indeed,most of women’s paid work was not regulated by the state until the first Labour government, 1935-1949.
It was not until 1936 that clerks, for example, had even a regulated minimum wage and a classification
system (Roth, 1986).
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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
It is interesting to consider why so much legislation was directed at new occupations that were in the
public view. The most advanced and largest worksites boasted good conditions. Most workers were
employed in small business which the Department of Labour inspectorate struggled to regulate and‘nurse’. In 1945, Miss J.R. Menzies was the first person to be appointed as a Nurse Inspector for
Industrial Hygiene, and joined factory and shop inspectors. In March 1990, the Department of Labour
employed 84 inspectors of factories, 29 construction safety inspectors, 10 bush inspectors and 14
explosives and dangerous goods inspectors (Auckland Star, 1945; NZOYB, 1990).
3. Arbitration
Perhaps, most striking was the extent to which the range of conditions existed under the arbitration
system. The ethical centerpiece of arbitration, the Harvester Judgment, was aspirational not universal inthree respects.
First, most workers were simply not included in the arbitration system until at least after 1936. Arbitration
covered skilled workers mostly. There were breaches of awards, or enforcement cases as they were known,
moreover, which involved evasions of awards. The more important and more contentious level of
exemption, however, was occasioned by the Court’s refusal to make an award. The Court refused to bind
local bodies to awards because their workers were employed other than for the direct or indirect pecuniary
gain of the employer. The Court refused to make awards for domestic workers and farm workers because
they largely consisted of family or seasonal workers, and board or lodgings and other necessities of life were
provided, and the need to provide a living wage was deemed to be irrelevant (Nolan, 2009). Whether
occupations could be defined an industrial or not was the crux. Non-industrial workers, including thoseworking in family business, had poorer conditions.
Research has suggested, secondly, that most unskilled labourers did not receive a basic wage sufficient
to support a family of five in the following decades in Australia, let alone larger-sized families(Macarthy 1967; 1969; 1970). Higgins’ Harvester Judgment set the minimum wage at an amount –seven shillings per day – that he considered sufficient for a man to support a family in “frugal comfort,”
supplemented by a “margin of skill” where appropriate. (Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, 1907). In
1919, an Australian Royal Commission on the Basic Wage estimated the cost of living of a “man with awife and three children under 14 years of age” to be around 50 per cent higher than Higgins’s Harvester
standard – an amount that, if paid to workers, would have been more than absorbed into the entire
national income (Atkinson, 1919; Higgins, 1922). The same is true of New Zealand. Family size wasalso an important differential. The 1919 Commission chairman, A.B. Piddington, began to propose theintroduction of child endowment as a necessary complement to the basic wage. His suggestion prompted
the introduction of a modest scheme of child endowment for the federal Australian public service in1921 and a means-tested family allowance in New Zealand in 1926 (Roe, 1976; Nolan, 2000). The
campaign for family endowment for large families was natural corollaries of the male-breadwinner
system; that is, there were important attempts to compensate for the “inequality of luck” in the classsystem. Family size, moreover, was more variable before World War Two than the post-war period(Pool, Dharmalingam & Sceats, 2007). Family Benefit was universal from 1946 until 1985 when it was
abolished to target families in need.
Thirdly, there was one obvious way in which a minimum living wage was aspiration: women’s wages.
The first example of the Arbitration Court ruling that women should receive only a percentage of themale income was the 1903 Christchurch Tailoring Trades Award. Unequal pay did not receive statutory
sanction until the 1936 I C and A Amendment which specified that the Court should fix male wage rates
42

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
so that they could comfortable support a family of five. However, New Zealand piggybacked on themale breadwinner concept, which was central to its industrial-relations system but articulated inAustralia, and differentiated by gender from the outset.
Of course, arbitration was abandoned for men during the Great Depression and was not restored until the1936 I C and A Amendment Act (Martin, 1994). Arbitration was embellished in 1937 by the
introduction the so-called ‘blanket clause’. This made an award binding on all industrial unions,employers or associations engaged in or connected to an industry (Woods, 1963). The coverage was
extended regardless of whether or not the parties had participated in negotiations. In the postwar period,
most workers came to be included in the arbitration system.
Arbitration was not one big universal system for half its existence, at least. As Clinkard noted in 1919
during the first ‘arbitration years’ the court did much for workers
in the direction of shortening working-hours, raising wages granting preference to unionists, andawarding a multitude of lesser benefits; but no scheme of compulsory industrial arbitration could
move the whole economic and social structure unless and until its investigations and jurisdiction
governed the whole field of production and distribution (Clinkard, 1919).

Classic Period of the Arbitration System, 1930s to 1960s?
Surely, in its classic phase, from the late 1930s to the late 1960s, relatively decent wages and conditions
were universal? The development of good working conditions and leisure were used as bargaining tools
in contention with wage negotiations. The Labour government established the Physical Welfare Branch,
Internal Affairs, which operated from 1937 to 1954. Steven Eldred-Grigg (1990) characterised the 1930s
to the 1960s the period of workers embourgeoisement as espoused in T. Veblen’s work. These were theyears in which skilled male wages and conditions peaked as the relativities between unskilled and skilledwages narrowed the margin for skill was undermined (Burton, 2001; Nolan, 2011). Even among workers
under arbitration, there were skill differentials and, while women did not receive a basic wage sufficient
to support a family of four or five, there were differentials among them between 1960 and 1970: womenin the public service received equal pay in 1960; women in the private sector in 1972. Any discussion ofa classic period, however, needs to consider the slow inclusion from non-waged work of married womenand Māori into the paid labour force, at the bottom of wage scales and at lower rates.
The classic period of the arbitration system from the late 1930s to the 1960s was also the period inwhich new groups were being integrated into paid labour. Indeed, most women were marginal to theworkforce and outside the protective system until at least until World War Two. Most young women(between the ages of 16-24 years) were integrated into the paid labour between 1880 and 1939. During
economic depression and before World War Two, most married women were not in paid employment.
New Zealand had a desperate labour shortage. It was so desperate that the government and employers
were prepared to relax the male breadwinner system around World War Two. There was a growth inwhite collar and other areas of female employment, especially for married women thereafter. The
participation rate of married women, especially in part-time work, rose from 3.7 per cent in 1936 to 7.7
per cent in 1945, 9.7 per cent in 1951, 12.9 per cent in 1956, 16.0 per cent in 1961 and 19.9 per cent in
1966: that is, an increase over 500 per cent in 30 years (Nolan, 2003). Similarly, Māori were only
belatedly included in the urban occupational wage system. The proportion of Māori living in urban areasrose from 17.3 per cent in 1936 to 70.7 per cent in 1971 (Butterworth, 1991). Even in employment,
43New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 34-50
Māori found themselves at the bottom of wage scales, skilled and unskilled differentials narrowed at thistime. So, even at its peak, there were significant differentials in working conditions. As indicated,
Cybele Locke has examined in more detail the insecurity of work and wages from the 1960s.

Conclusion: Variable Experience Amid Constant Aspirations
It is generally accepted that New Zealand skilled male workers had decent wages and conditions in the
mid-20th century, but we need to be careful to chart the range of the narratives for those in and outside
the paid workforce, those at the margins and those in small workplaces, and in occupations with healthand safety issues that have gone under the radar of regulation. When we consider the margins, inparticular, we find that legislation or regulations often took some time to be implemented and thiscontinues to be so. This applies to other pieces of legislation and regulation: Colin McGeorge (2006), forinstance, examined the Education Act 1877 which established “free, compulsory and secular” primaryeducation. There were many let-out clauses which made it a “long haul to full school attendance”.
Similarly, there was a long haul to the spread and influence of the I C and A Act. It is difficult tomeasure improvements in decent work absolutely, moreover, when the subject is a moving target: work
and workers changed during the 20th century. While the CTU’s contemporary campaigns are similar toturn of the 20th century campaigns the backdrop to the former is the existence of a social welfare safety
net. Decent work is variable comparatively: equal pay remains elusive for example. So it is not the caseof a Whiggish progression ensuring all New Zealanders achieved decent wages and conditions
eventually. For some workers, there has been progression. For some occupations, such as cleaners,
conditions do not seem to have changed much. Some occupations, such as mining have suffered
regression. Antipodean aspirations have remained more constant.

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Regulating dispute resolution in the employment jurisdiction: someinsights into regulating for decent work from an empirical study ofpolicy for and the operations of the institutions 1990-2010
SUSAN ROBSON*
Introduction
This paper is based on the premise that regulating for decent work would be dependent on an
enforcement system that supports policy objectives aimed at protecting the rights and interests of thevulnerable and/or low paid. It argues that reliance on apparently neutral agencies for enforcement of
employee protections may be less effective than resort to partial and collectivised interests, like
employer and employee groups.
This proposition is derived from an empirical study of the dispute resolution institutions of theemployment jurisdiction from 1991 to 2008, and an analysis of the effect of policies for theiroperations on the quality of the employment outcomes that were the aim of those policies. 1 This
period marks the rise and dominance of individual over collective employment arrangements, and thereliance by employers of the low paid on state subsidies in the form of welfare assistance and tax
relief to those in full time employment.
The study establishes that the policy goal of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 (ECA) of greaterlabour market flexibility was achieved in part as the result of its alignment with the dispute resolution
system that was selected for the jurisdiction. The policy decision to modify rather than replace thissystem during the formulation of the Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) resulted inreinforcement of the 1991 policy goal and the undermining of its own, apparently different, aims. A
failure to associate advocacy cultures with employment policy objectives and a reliance on
institutional neutrals as a substitute for a return to collectivist and protectionist approaches to labour
issues may explain why the ERA’s core policy goal, a rise of mended over ended employment
relationships, never occurred.
A brief description of the way the entry-level institutions operated precedes analysis of the collectivist
and individualist representative cultures of this jurisdiction, with particular emphasis on the role ofinformation provision in the achievement of policy goals. A consideration of the advantages forprotective goals of locating their enforcement with stakeholder rather than institutionally neutral
agencies concludes this paper.

* Susan Robson, Barrister and PhD student in Otago University Law Faculty’s Centre for Legal Issues
1 Susan Robson, Barrister and PhD student in Otago University Law Faculty’s Centre for Legal Issues. Provisional title for

PhD thesis: The policy response to problems of process in the employment jurisdiction, 1990-2008.

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Policy and Institutional operation 1991-2008
The ECA’s creation of a specialist employment jurisdiction and its universalisation of the personal
grievance (the compromise brokered between the advocates for retention of the grievance committee
system and those favouring use of the civil courts2) provided a forum previously denied toindividualised employees,3 and the legal profession. They were quick to take advantage of theopportunity offered by the mandate for the newly created Employment Tribunal of low level,
informal, speedy, fair and just resolution services.4 Claim numbers rose, lawyers replaced union andemployer association advocates,5 and their preference for adjudication over mediation quickly
rendered the Tribunal establishment membership of 14 inadequate. Delayed claim resolution soon
became endemic.
The administrative response was to offer mediation to those who chose adjudication as a first attempt
at resolution, and was available significantly earlier than a hearing.6 The result was that rising
proportions of resolutions were mediated and declining proportions were adjudicated, but adjudication
continued to be the mode of first choice of rising numbers of claimants. 7 Additionally, the number ofclaims per application increased,8 as did the number of ancillary decisions required of adjudicatedoutcomes.9
Analysis of Tribunal delays following the 1996 post-election Coalition Agreement coincided with aministerial determination to rid the jurisdiction of the Employment Court. Delay was attributed to anincreasingly legalistic approach to adjudication imposed by the Employment Court exercising its
supervisory or review function, and the use of legal representation that “introduced a level offormality and a more adversarial approach to claims”.10 The problem was regarded as compounded by
the Tribunal’s passivity.11

2

All unions, many employers, and most submissions to the Select Committee favoured the status quo, as did policy
advisers from the Departments of Labour, Justice and the State Services Commission. The Business Roundtable and policy
advisers in the Treasury sought abolition of the labour jurisdiction institutions and reliance on the civil courts. The
Employers Federation sought abolition of grievance committees but retention of the specialist nature of the jurisdiction. It
opposed the civil courts option.
3
The common law action, wrongful dismissal, limited remedies to compensation for the notice period.
4
Employment Contracts Act 1991, s 76(c).
5Margaret Robbie Representation, Procedure and Process in Mediation and Adjudication since the Employment
Contracts Act (Paper for Diploma Industrial Relations Victoria University of Wellington, 1993).
6
Of the 683 applications that were actively resolved by 31 March 1992, 47 per cent were solely mediated, 47 per centsolely adjudicated and 6 per cent required adjudication following mediation.
7
In the 1992/93 year, 56 per cent of applicants sought adjudication, rising the following year to 62 per cent. The mode ofresolution for those years for adjudication was 35 per cent and 32 percent, and for mediation 64 per cent and 68 per cent.
By 1997, adjudicated resolutions were 12 per cent of total resolutions.
8
For the year ended 30 June 1992, 2332 applications (containing 2547 claims) were filed, a difference between applicationand claim numbers of 215, or 8.44 per cent of total claims. The following year the difference was 13.11 per cent. In the
93/94 year, it was 16.26 per cent. By the 97/98 year, the difference was 20.68 per cent.
9
In the 1991/92 year, 349 decisions were recorded on 312 adjudicated applications. Substantive decisions made up 89 percent and ancillary (interlocutory and costs) decisions 11 per cent of the total. The following year 680 decisions were madeon 585 applications (86.14 per cent). By the 98/99 year, the proportion of substantive decisions had reduced to 71 per centand ancillary decisions had risen to 29 per cent of recorded decisions.
10

Department of Labour “The Supervisory Role of the Employment Court over the Employment Tribunal” undated at[54].
11
As above.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

Policy for ERA institutional alternatives was dominated by the problems experienced by the Tribunal.
Modes of resolution were separated into the Mediation Service and the Employment Relations
Authority, and the Employment Court was relieved of its supervisory powers of review. Mediation
was semi-compulsory, the Authority would investigate problems by use of inquisitorial powers, andlitigants who favoured adversarial processes could do so at the Court, but only after resolution was
attempted via mediation and investigation.
The need to support the employment relationship as a whole in place of the existing focus on defining
or resolving contractual issues, and the facilitation of speedy (close to the event), accessible (informal)
and fair dispute resolution were the primary policy objectives. 12 The style of both mediation andadjudication would be less formal and legalistic with emphasis on the interpersonal, problem solving
skills of mediators and simpler procedures, administration and decision-making for Authority
adjudication.13 Administrative processes aimed at encouraging informality and increased ease ofaccess to the institutions were thought to be a better solution to the problem of undesirable formalityof lawyer representative behaviour than restricting rights of representation.14 The result was anincreased reliance on institutional dispute resolution by individuals but significantly earlier resolution
rates,15 largely as the result of mediation’s filtering function.
However, a greater commitment to use of qualitative research for policy purposes after 2000 revealed
that the government’s desire for a rise in mended over ended employment relationships was neverfulfilled. The institutions were dominated by dismissal grievances, as was the Tribunal.
Reinstatement, the primary remedy, was rarely utilised. The hope that facilitation of problems by theService would replace the evaluative mediative style of the Tribunal went unmet. Separation ofresolution modes reduced incentives on mediators to offer or exercise statutory powers of decision
making when prospects of settlement were unlikely. Settlements were achieved on the basis of thehigher costs of proceeding, rather than any meeting of minds about the problem at issue.
Compensation levels were lower than the costs of achieving them, particularly if both mediation andadjudication was required.

Two representative cultures
The three advocacy groups in this jurisdiction, lawyers, self-employed advocates and union/employer
association advocates, differ in their training and qualifications for the advocacy role, their approaches
to issues of process, and in the business opportunity that representation offers. This analysis focusses
on lawyers and union/employer association advocates because, combined, they represent over 85 percent of parties.16
For union and employer association representatives (for whom advocacy of individual problems is anincident of servicing their memberships’ collective interests), individual casework is time consuming
12

Office of Minister of Labour, Cabinet Submission “Employment Relations Bill – Finalisation of Outstanding Elements”(17 February 2000) at [5].
13
Department of Labour “Employment Institutions – Options Paper” (28 January 2000) at 3.
14
At [41].
15
Personal grievances dominated the subject matter of mediations. By 2002, they constituted 65 per cent of the workload.
16

Kathryn Beck and Ian McAndrew “Decisions and Damages: An Analysis of Adjudication Outcomes in the Employment
Tribunal and the Employment Relations Authority” (paper presented to New Zealand Law Society Employment Law
Conference, November 2002).

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

and requires consideration of the effects of the workplace problem at issue on others. The interests ofindividual members cannot compromise collective interests.17
When confronted by conflict, union organisers regard conciliation of employer and employee interests
as the fundamental requirement of their task with retention of the job for the employee as a major
goal. Much of their effort, therefore, lies in repair of damaged work relationships. This involves aheavy emphasis on negotiation, education and keeping lines of communication open. 18 Unwinding adismissal or a warning is, therefore, of greater importance than pursuing other remedies likecompensation. Much of their effort is expended on avoiding the need for outside intervention. 19 Union
member employees are better equipped to recognise problems in need of resolution than their nonunion counterparts.20 In larger unionised worksites, union delegates traditionally took on relationshiprepair tasks, thereby ensuring that attempts at de-escalation of conflict occurred before the need fordisciplinary action arose. Union organisers also need to establish working relationships withmanagement to facilitate the dialogue necessary to negotiate problems in the workplace as they arise.
Resort to grievance committees prior to 1991 occurred in the name of the grievant’s union so that only
those grievances with prospects of success were taken. These factors help to explain why thedismissal grievance rate through the 1980s was steady and low, relative to the 1990s.21
The speed with which lawyers replaced union and employer association advocates as representatives,
the significant increase of personal grievance claims and the predominant choice of adjudication as
the mode of their resolution marked the successful establishment of a new jurisdiction for the legal
profession in 1991.22
Lawyers have different professional responsibilities and focus than collective advocates. In part, thisarises from the imperative in legal training to identify the source of breach, in conflict, before
considering remedy. The first task of the lawyer is, therefore, allocation of responsibility for breach,
which, in terms of the client relationship, generally involves a search for fault by the other party.23
Codes of ethics underline these obligations by endorsing zealous advocacy of clients’ causes, short ofdishonesty, but without regard to the interests of justice in the particular case or broader social
concerns.24 Of itself, this imperative lends itself more easily to position taking and confrontationalism,
so that the search for breach renders restoration of relationships much more difficult than assertion of
17

Members of some employer associations pay for dispute resolution services provided by their association.
Dianne Donald “Unions and Personal Grievance Resolution: Managers of Discontent The Role of Unions in Advancing
or Impeding the Informal Resolution of Personal Grievances in NZ Organisations” (MA Dissertation, University ofWaikato, 1998).
19
As above.
20
AC Nielsen “Survey of Employment Disputes and Disputes Resolution” Department of Labour, November 2000.
21
Donald shows that about 500 grievances a year were dealt with by the Department of Labour for each of the five years
prior to 1991. Department of Labour claim statistics show a rapid rise of claims for each of the five years after 1991,
although the annual rates of rise were inconsistent and unpredictable.
18

22

It was well positioned to take advantage of an increasingly deregulated economic, social and political environment that
saw increased numbers of dismissals arising from employer perceptions of more flexibility to fire at will, white collar andprofessional employee perceptions of the economic advantages to be gained by challenging dismissals, and the widespread
publication of this means of deriving financial gain: Joanna Cullinane and Dianne Donald “Personal Grievances in New
Zealand” (paper presented to Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand 14 th Annual
Conference, Newcastle, February 2000).
23“A lawyer should advance their client’s partisan interests with the maximum zeal permitted by law” Christine Parker
and Adrian Evans Inside Lawyers’ Ethics (Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 2007).
24
Robert Kagan Adversarial Legalism, The American Way of Law (Harvard University Press, USA) 2001) at 55.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

damage and remedy (compensation), even if restoration of the working relationship is the moredesirable option for the client.25 Additionally, lawyers are more likely to accept that resolution of
conflict is dependent on exit from relationships,26 with the price of the exit measured in monetary
terms. Employees who relied on them were more likely to have been dismissed by the time they
sought representation.27 Their remedies (if available) are, therefore, likely to be less immediate thanthose for unionised employees, notwithstanding that lawyers are more likely to be associated withgetting ‘the best deal’ at the other party’s expense, an assumption not generally supported byresearch.28 A related, but opposing idea, that negotiation on financial matters through lawyers will dolittle to increase independent communication between the parties has been shown to have somevalidity.29
Lawyers were associated with the problem of delay at the Tribunal: resort to them obliged otherparties to engage lawyers; hearing times were drawn out; scheduling and rescheduling wascomplicated by their unavailability.30 They were blamed in the business press for undermining the
Tribunal’s ability to reach commonsense decisions on dismissals and compensation and as responsiblefor ignoring its mediation option in favour of arbitration, rendering it slow and legalistic. 31 However,when they did attend mediation they were regarded as inept: they lacked the skills to negotiate and cut
a deal, failing to recognise that their task was to resolve the matter and the mediator [was] a tool of
their trade.32 The price of their representation was also a source of concern. Fees were payable
regardless of outcome and costs awards never met the full cost of representation.33 This highlighted
the connection between business opportunity and the reluctance of lawyers to acknowledge thevalidity of non-judicial processes (thus, establishing why the adjudication option remained thepreference of grievants at the Tribunal, even after it became clear that the mediation option had many
more advantages for them).34
By contrast, the cost of union membership was described as akin to an insurance premium that offered
representation for individual problems at no extra charge. If advocacy was required, it carried with it
exemption from indemnification of the other party if unsuccessful, the full benefit of any
compensation award and vigorous attempts to sort out the problem on the job (i.e. before mattersescalated to dismissal).35

25

C Menkel-Meadow “Towards Another View of Legal Negotiation: the structure of problem solving” (1984) 31 UCLA
Law Review 754.
26
Richard L. Abel (ed) The Politics of Informal Justice (Academic Press, New York, 1982).
27
UMR Research Ltd for Employment Relations Service “Department of Labour Problem Resolution Services Research
Project: A Qualitative Study amongst Employees and Employers” (July 2004).
28
PSC Lewis Assumptions about lawyers in Policy Statements: A Survey of Relevant Research (Lord Chancellor’s
Department, 2001).
29
As above.
30
Minority of the Labour Select Committee “Report of the minority of the Labour Select Committee on the inquiry into
the effects of the Employment Contracts Act on the New Zealand labour market” (21 September 1993).
31
Graeme Hunt “Employment Tribunal no place for expensive lawyers” The National Business Review (New Zealand, 26
February 1993).
32
WRC Gardiner “A Report from the Trenches” (paper presented to International Employment Relations Association
Conference, Hamilton, July 1995).
33
As above.
34
Alan Rau, Ed Sherman and Scott R. Peppet Processes of Dispute Resolution: The Role of Lawyers (4th ed, Foundation
Press, 2006).
35
Gardiner, above n 32.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

Negotiating the resolution of a dispute for lawyers is not a separate process to litigation because
litigation is the means by which the negotiations begin. 36 By contrast, collectivist advocates look to
institutional intervention only after discussion and negotiation fail to produce a settlement. These
differences of style (over whether institutional intervention is the first or the last step in the resolution
process) affect outcomes, with the higher likelihood that unionised employees will keep their jobs
with minimal financial implications of disputing for their employers whilst their non unionised
counterparts exchange their jobs for money.
In addition to effects on outcomes, lawyer preferences for adjudication affected the mediation
function (in both eras) to the extent that it served two purposes (as the basis of litigation risk analysis,
a necessary pre-condition of settlement for legal representatives, or as assisted negotiation with theaim of resolution for collective advocates) and two constituencies: as a first forum for the assertion ofparty rights and obligations for the legally represented, or a final step in a negotiated resolution
process for union members.
The dominant effect on the institutions was lawyer insistence that they operate judicially. Acting
judicially was regarded as synonymous with adversarial modes of adjudication: David v Employment
Relations Authority37 represented an attempt to impose upon the Authority the adversarial mode ofadjudication legislatively discarded in favour of the investigative mode. When this failed, passive
resistance to ERA policies for informality of process via reliance on causes of action, use ofsubmissions, and separate consideration of substantive and procedural issues proved to be more
successful than the direct action that proceedings over Authority powers signified. Additionally, theMediation Service was forced to abandon facilitative styles of mediation for the evaluative style that
was a feature of Tribunal mediation because legal representatives adopted a variety of techniques toavoid contact with mediators known to rely on a facilitative style. Mediators were required to presideover negotiations of relatively small claims that took as long to resolve as higher value or more
substantive problems, thus generating the perception that mediation was simply a means oftransferring money from employers to employees, as opposed to a forum for the resolution of
workplace problems.38 This was viewed as jeopardising the Service’s capacity for early intervention
in subsisting relationships.39 The behaviour of representatives was regarded as the root of the
problem.40 It attracted policy scrutiny (the 2004 statutory amendments to the mediation function were
designed to counter these negative effects) but resulted in no change to representative style orsubstance. A later policy initiative devoted to the obstacles that representation posed for informality
was successfully diverted to analyses of non-legally qualified individual advocates (e.g no-win-nofee), notwithstanding this group’s low incidence as representatives at the Authority.41
Employers reported unions as moving to resolve disputes more quickly and pragmatically thanlawyers did, and all parties to disputes resulting in mediation assistance expressed the view that the
involvement of lawyers in a dispute tended to draw out the process and raised the expense much more
36

Menkel-Meadow, above n 25.
David v Employment Relations Authority [2001] ERNZ 354.
38
Department of Labour for Minister of Labour “Problem resolution under the Employment Relations Act” (February2003) <www.dol.govt.nz> at 4.
39
Department of Labour for Minister of Labour “Review of the Employment Relations Act – Proposals for Legislative
Fine Tuning” (March 2003) <www.dol.govt.nz>.
40
Department of Labour for Minister of Labour Issues Paper “Review of the Employment Relations Act” (undated, cFebruary 2003).
41
Minister of Labour to Cabinet Economic Development Committee “Review of the Employment Relationship Problem
Resolution System” (4 November 2007) EDC (07) 24/6.
37

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

than was the case if the employer worked with the relevant union. 42 This was also the view of the
Department of Labour when it opposed a Legal Services Agency proposal to approve legal aid for
mediation on the grounds that representation there was unnecessary and would undermine the policy
goal of a low-level, informal, non-legalistic, problem-solving function for the Service.43
If collective representatives were regarded as having cheaper and more pragmatic dispute resolutionconsequences for employers, their resolution mode of choice had similar implications for the publicpurse. The significance of the difference in time and cost between mediated and adjudicatedresolutions has remained constant over both eras,44 as has the conformity of resolution outcomes(compensation settlements/awards of less than $10,000).

Policy and Information Provision
Information provision and its timing was a major policy theme for the ERA.45 It is also a marker ofcultural difference between advocacy types and the extent to which remedy systems in workplaces arewell known, regularised and accessible. The policy hope that the Mediation Service would operate as
the source of information about workplace disputing and become a trusted early intervener so thatdismissal rates were reduced never materialised. The connections established below between
representation, workplace remedy systems, individualism and the need for institutional dispute
resolution suggest why.
Workplace remedy systems
Accessible workplace remedy systems are more common in unionised than non-union workplaces,
and union members are more likely to be aware of them. Non-union workplaces are more likely to
exhibit an absence of uniformity about, or common understanding of, remedy systems, and a low levelof awareness about public sources of information relevant to disputes.46 This affects satisfaction with42

Tony Waldegrave, Diane Anderson, Karen Wong “Evaluation of the Short-Term Impacts of the Employment Relations
Act 2000” (November 2013) Department of Labour <www.dol.govt.nz> at 117.
43
Letter from Department of Labour (IRS: Stockdill) to Legal Services Agency (Banantyne) (16 February 2001).
44
In 1990, mediations cost $415 - $587, adjudications between $2470 and $8258: Department of Labour to Treasury:“Cost of mode of resolution” at 6.3.97.
A cost benefit or utility analysis attributed an economic benefit of $58.9 million to the Service, a $3.2 million benefit to
the Authority and a negative economic benefit to the Court - its costs were very high and the estimated benefit of its
dispute resolution very low: Dr Geoff Plimmer and Chris Cassels report for Department of Labour “Greater strategic
positioning of service delivery to achieve outcomes” (undated but c Nov 2005)
The Authority’s membership is 35-50 per cent of the number of mediators employed by the Service but it investigates 915% of the problems mediated by the Service: Department of Labour and Ministry of Business Innovation and
Employment claim and use statistics for the Mediation Service and the Employment Relations Authority
Authority determinations cost at least $7,000 each or more than $13,000 per proceeding: Department of Labour“Employment Authority Cases 2007-8” (undated c late 2008)
The cost/transfer ratio is 2:6; for every $2 that form the subject of compensation or costs awards, the Authority costs $6 toadminister: Calculations based on costs of administering the Authority in 2007-8 and compensation and costs awards for
those years published on the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment website
45
Requirements of consultation, good faith, bargaining processes, the form and content of employment agreements aresome examples of the focus on information provision.
46

The Department of Labour Infoline was used by 10 per cent of employees as a source of information about a particular
dispute and as a source of information about dispute procedures by seven per cent of employers; its other institutions – the57

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

workplace dispute outcomes: non-union employees are dissatisfied generally with dispute outcomeswhilst their employers believe the majority of disputes are settled amicably; unionised employees
have higher levels of satisfaction with dispute resolution processes and their employers a morepositive view of union involvement in disputes than non-union employers. These differences are
replicated in perceptions of the Mediation Service. It has a facilitative role for unionised workplaces
but is regarded more suspiciously by their non-union counterparts (as a pseudo court process with theemployer on ‘trial’ for alleged breaches).47
These connections between collectivisation, information about dispute resolution, and acceptance of
the utility of state provided mediation services suggested to mediators that access to early intervention
processes to stop problems from escalating and the provision of professional, accurate and partial
information to disputants were major constituents of successful workplace remedy systems.48
These views were shared by collectivised users of the Mediation Service but not their non-union
peers. They were most likely to require assistance to settle the terms of already dissolved employment
relationships and did not accept that mediation would have assisted them before termination
occurred.49 Their employers complained about the emphasis within mediation on risk management(cost of dispute escalation) rather than genuine settlement, the pressure to settle via compromise overmoney, and the absence of settlement guidelines or information about its processes and outcomes,50
thus, establishing a perception of the Service as having a regulatory or judicial, rather than anameliorative or facilitative, function and as an unlikely early intervener for non-unionised workplaces.
Advocate approaches to information provision
Given that information provision in adversarial arbitration attracts a plethora of formal exclusionary
rules (and interlocutory processes), but is regarded as a core resource in the negotiation of collective
agreements, it is not difficult to accept that it is also subject to conflicting professional positions
between litigators and negotiators. Sharing or corralling information had implications for both themediative and adjudicative modes of resolution for both eras.
The exchange of collectivist for individualist advocates that accompanied the establishment of the
Tribunal highlighted the benefits for the institutions, and of the sifting functions that unions andemployer associations performed. They limited their advocacy to grievances with prospects ofsuccess. Their substitution by lawyers removed this mechanism for screening out unmeritorious
cases.51 Mediation became the means by which filtering occurred for the individually represented as
the result of its function as the forum that preceded adjudication, its use of the evaluative mediationstyle and lawyer reliance on Tribunal members’ adjudication experience. Thus, mediators provided
for those, who engaged lawyers, the function that collective advocates performed themselves, before
resort to the Tribunal: the assessment of strength of case or position is a form of information provisionthat lies at the heart of the advocacy role.

Labour Inspectorate and the Tribunal were a source of information for less than three per cent of each group: AC Nielsen
for Department of Labour “Survey of Employment Disputes and Disputes Resolution” (November 2000).
47
UMR Research Lt, above n 27 at 77.
48
Phillip de Wattignar to Department of Labour “Response to Green Paper on the Improvements to the Employment
Relationship Problem Resolution System” (undated c mid 2008).
49
UMR Research Ltd ve n 27.
50
As above.
51
Paul Roth (Editorial) “The Cost of ‘Individualising’ Labour Law” [1997] 5 ELB 82.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

Since this is not an assessment that the adversarial advocate is prepared to make until after
institutional assistance has been sought,52 choice of representative, therefore, had different
consequences for disputants. Union/employer association members took the risk that theirorganisation would refuse to represent them if their prospects of success were too low. Those relying
on lawyers had little or no risk of a refusal to assist but they undertook all the risk associated with
their prospects of success whilst also assuming liability for the costs of representation that were
payable, regardless of risk or outcome. The risk was mitigated by the cost of proceeding further:
unmeritorious claims/defences were capable of settlement if compensation was pitched at a pricelower than the cost of representation for an Authority investigation.
If lawyers saw mediators as sources of information, they had an opposing view of Authority members.
For them, arbiters, as decision-making neutrals, are required to refrain from providing information or
advice to parties to avoid compromising neutrality and/or suggesting predetermination. For collective
advocates, for whom information is a basis for accurate assessments of negotiating positions, andinformation exchange as the means by which disputants work towards resolution, the arbiter performsa facilitative function. This conflict about the Authority’s investigative function affected those of its
members concerned about the extent to which they could facilitate and engage in information
provision and exchange, but only in certain circumstances: where one party was unrepresented and theother was legally represented. The anxiety (of attracting allegations of predetermination and inviting
challenge) reported by members in those circumstances centred on issues or evidence that
unrepresented parties are unaware of the need to establish.53 Since obtaining that information is theessence of the investigative role, this anxiety may be attributable to the tropes of adversarial advocacy.
Authority members, otherwise, reported that they conducted their investigations differently dependingon the amount of information about the problem they considered that parties had.54 A component of
this issue is the bystander effect that occurs when the extent to which representatives take over
responsibility for running a dispute relegates parties to bystander status.55 Authority members
regarded those with legal representation as more vulnerable to this phenomenon when their lawyers
resorted to the language of the law by framing facts and behaviours in legal labels as a substitute forordinary description.56 Mediators regard the phenomenon as undermining parties’ ability to takeresponsibility for their role in disputes, and as thus, condemning them to repeat similar mistakes.57
Thus is established the connection between information provision, the timing of problem resolution
and the need for the institutions: regularised, accessible workplace remedy systems, an informed
workforce with early access to partial advice, and reliance on negotiation for problem resolution
reduces the need for the institutional resolution of grievances and increases the likelihood that
employment relationships can be mended rather than ended.

52

Parker and Evans, above n 23. Parker and Evans’ adversarial advocate combines the ‘principle of partisanship’[meaning that the lawyer should do all for the client that the client would do for themselves, if the client had theknowledge of the lawyer] and the ‘principle of non-accountability’ [meaning the lawyer is not morally responsible for
either the means or the ends of representation] in order to act zealously to represent the client’s interests. (pp14-15)
53
Julie Morton “Reducing Legalism: The impact of the Employment Relations Act 2000” (M.Com Thesis, University ofOtago, 2003) at 117.
54
At 114: Unrepresented parties, or those with representatives that members believed had not fully explained matters,
were more likely to receive more information from members than those with representation that members trusted.
55
At 33.
56
At 128.
57
Phillip de Wattignar, above n 48.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

Conversely, the need for institutions is highest where workplace remedy systems are inaccessible or
not well understood, employees have an imperfect understanding of their rights and obligations,
restricted access to informed partial advice and no power to initiate problem resolution processes, andboth employer and employees rely on advocacy which, in turn, is dependent on their ignorance ofproblem resolution processes as its business opportunity. Workplace remedy systems andrepresentative differences of approach to information provision and the advocacy role are, thus, major
determinants of the need for institutional dispute resolution.
If information provision and early intervention are incidents of collectivised representation, an
institutional neutral cannot function as a substitute for them (as was hoped) because the informationand the early intervention have to come from partial, not neutral, sources that have establishedrelationships of trust with those they seek to assist. Partiality or partisanship – the quality for which
adversarial advocates are most admired and criticised58 – informs the practices of both individual andcollective representatives and must be present at the start of the party/advocate relationship. The
timing of this commenced relationship is what differentiates the consequences for collective andindividual disputants: partial advice early in a dispute helps maintain employment relationships; at a
dispute’s late stages it functions as the means to extract compensation for the ended relationship.

Stakeholder roles in enforcement of employee protections
If partiality, pragmatism and filtering are incidents of collective representation, there is little reason
why they could not also operate to enforce protective provisions for decent work. Stakeholder
enforcement of such provisions would be dependent, however, on collectivisation of both employers
and employees in the sectors in which decent work is in issue. Enforcement would result from theirinteraction – whether it occurred by negotiation or litigation, employer and employee groups affectedby any issue would be solely responsible for the resolution of issues as they arose.
The advantages of enforcement by stakeholder include coverage, data compilation, and sequenced oragreed use of litigation. Employees in most need of the protection of decent work are all but excluded
from the personal grievance jurisdiction, unless they are unionised: the sleepover, KiwiSaver
deduction and gender equity issues before the Employment Court were initiated and funded by theService and Food Workers Union. Conversely, enforcement of the 90-day notification rule by the
Court has worked against the interests of union members.59
Data compilation refers to information gathered about work practices, wage rates etc. Its analysis
reveals problems that are common across a sector, indicating where enforcement or educative effort
should be targeted. As the point made below about the Department of Labour’s use of data shows,
however, the use of such data may depend on the perspective (partiality?) of the interpreter.
Sequenced use of litigation occurs when organisations that control or dominate an issue vulnerable tolitigation decide how, when and why the issue should be presented to the courts. Currently, there islittle or no control or organisation over employment policy issues that arise in the Employment Court
when individuals litigate. Ensuing decisions have precedent value for litigants who follow, but the58

Parker and Evans, above n 23.

59

For example see Idea Services v Barker [2012] NZEmpC 112; Department of Corrections v Waitai [2010] NZEmpC
164; Melville v Air New Zealand [2010] NZEmpC 87.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 51-

result is the unsequenced or haphazard development of policy about matters (like justification for
dismissal) arising, not from the worst or most extreme examples of the behaviour at issue, but from
litigants with the inclination and resources to litigate, and the ability to provide a more favourable, but
incomplete, view of the practices of which they complain.60
The disadvantage of reliance on enforcement by a neutral can be illustrated by the Department ofLabour’s use of the research it commissioned, and the data it collected after 2000. Qualitative andquantitative research about disputing in workplaces and in the institutions it administered was
extensively cited in policy papers, but never featured in any substantive change to policy or practice.
Clues as to why emerge from the Department’s attempts to draw together the results of the surveys
and studies it commissioned.61 It did so by a focus on statistics of prevalence – of types of dispute, of
employee and employer characteristics, existence of written procedures, satisfaction with and barriers
to effective mediation, dispute outcomes. Significance was also attached to departures from otherstatistical norms, so that Maori, for instance, were recorded as having higher incidences of disputing
and union membership than their numbers in the general population.62 Thus emerged a profile of the
disputant in the workplace (male, Maori, unionised, full-time, in job for 10 plus years, large employer,
public sector, earning <$30,000) that bore little resemblance to the profile of the grievant seeking
mediation (NZ European, gender neutral, aged over 25, full time in job for one to four years, nonunionised).63 This focus on statistical data somehow operated to obscure evidence of trends or
phenomena relevant to the policy issues regarded as important by the Department – an earlyintervention role for the Service, for instance – so that the sorts of connection suggested by acomparison of the data available appear not to have been made. The result was that it gathered a datarich resource about disputing in this jurisdiction that it did nothing substantive with.

Conclusion
This study of the NZ personal grievance jurisdiction provided a rare opportunity to draw a number ofcomparisons: between institutional provision of dispute resolution services under two statutes;
between collectivist and individualist approaches to representation; between the operational effects ofthe desires for judicial and for informal approaches to institutional dispute resolution. The clash ofresolution cultures revealed by these comparisons, and the failure of the ERA to meet the policy goals
set for it illustrate the importance of aligning dispute resolution policies with the representative culturethat is most likely to contribute to achieving policy objectives. Protective regulation designed for a
specified group of employees needs the support and interaction of collectivised representation. Its
enforcement may depend more on the engagement of stakeholders than institutional neutrals for
success.

60

Donald Horowitz The Courts and Social Policy (Brookings Institution, Washington, 1977) at 38.
Department of Labour “Stock Take of Employment Relations Monitoring Systems” (2005).
62 AC Nielsen for Department of Labour, above n 20.
63
This profile comparison is based on the AC Neilson Survey of 2000 and the Martin & Woodhams Snapshot ofMediations of 2007. A more time-congruent comparison is not possible because the profiling of mediation users did notoccur until 2007.
61

61

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72

Mechanisms for Resolving Collective Bargaining Disputes in New
ZealandPaper for the NZLLS Conference, 22 November 2013, Auckland
JUDITH SCOTT*
Abstract
The state has provided assistance for parties encountering difficulties in collective bargaining since1894. In the last three decades, there have been considerable change to the employment institutions
and the type of assistance offered. Compulsory arbitration is not a feature of our current legislation.
Parties that have serious difficulties can, however, seek assistance from the Employment Relations
Authority by way of a facilitation process, introduced in the 2004 amendments to the Employment
Relations Act 2000. This paper will review the facilitation process and the cases that have been
accepted for facilitation by the Employment Relations Authority. A brief comparison will also bemade with mechanisms available for resolving collective bargaining disputes in other jurisdictions.

Overview
The subject of this paper, state provided assistance for collective bargaining is not necessarily seen in
the same sexy way it was during the 1970 and 1980s. Those years were a time of unrest in
workplaces when industrial conciliators provided assistance to parties encountering difficulties inreaching settlements of their collectives. The era of the think big projects, Mangere Bridge, Bank of
New Zealand building in Wellington, Marsden Point, provided lots of opportunities for conciliatorsand mediators to demonstrate their skills. Despite there being a move away from collectivism toindividualism, with a reduction in union membership and fewer employees covered by collective
employment agreements assistance in resolving collective disputes, it is still a very importantfunction for the state. Workplace disputes can lead to consequences for a much wider part of society
than those involved in the dispute. An extreme example is the strike at the Marikana Mine in South
Africa. This conflict resulted in the death of 44 miners, with many more injured and a feeling of deep
sadness and helplessness from the South African Conciliation Service. 1 On a less dramatic scale, thePorts of Auckland strike in 2012 filled the news media with stories of tensions and job and profit
losses at the Port.2
New Zealand has a unique form of assistance for parties involved in collective bargaining. My
presentation will review that system, and compare and contrast it to systems applying in otherjurisdictions.

NZ Mediation and Conciliation System 1894-1991*

Senior Advisor for Dispute Resolution at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. PhD candidate, AUT
University.
1
2

CCMA presentation, International Agencies Meeting Dublin Ireland, July 2013
TVNZ “Hundreds of port workers made redundant” (7 March 2012) <www.tvnz.co.nz>.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72

Statutory assistance for resolving collective bargaining disputes in New Zealand has been provided
by the state since 1894.3 The system of industrial conciliation and arbitration introduced in the
Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 lasted in one form or another from 1894 to 1991.
There were, however, major changes to some parts of the system during that time. For example,
voluntary arbitration was introduced at the height of the Great Depression and a highly centralised
wage-fixing system based on compulsory unionism and general wage orders was implemented by the
first Labour government (1935-1949).
The part of the system that did not change greatly was conciliation, a similar process to the mediation
provided by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, to assist collective bargaining
today. While the Arbitration Court issued general wage orders and set wage relativities, mostsettlements were determined between the parties as part of a conciliation process. Conciliation
councils continued to operate successfully and formed the basis for settling collective bargaining
disputes until 1991. Collective employment arrangements were made by way of Awards of the
Arbitration Court or by industrial agreements agreed between the parties. An analysis of the total of
2,000 awards made by the Arbitration Court between 1947 and 1960 showed that 75 per cent werecomplete settlements reached by the parties. During the same period, 1,005 industrial agreements
were made; meaning that out of 3,005 enforceable documents the court had a direct hand in settlingsome of the terms in only 486 documents.4
The system developed into what became known as the annual wage round. The key players were theFederation of Labour, and the Employers Federation. The Department of Labour also played a roleby providing mediation and conciliation services and representing the public interest. Terms andconditions of employment for union members in the private sector were determined in one of twoways; either by an award, made in a conciliation council or, by the Arbitration Court (the predecessorof the present Employment Court), or by an agreement between the parties. The system gave unions
the ability to bind employers who were not parties.5
The conciliation process commenced when a union created a dispute with an employer party byseeking a change to an award. The change sought would usually be a simple claim made at a levelthat would not be readily accepted. The matter would then be referred to a Conciliation Council
made up of representatives from both employers and unions. The parties met together with aconciliator to bargain for an award. The first document to be negotiated, in the 1970s and 1980s,
usually the ‘metal trades’ or ‘general drivers’ awards, would set the standard for the rest of the wage
round. The system was centrally controlled by the Employers Federation and the Federation ofLabour. Government funded the conciliation process, paying for travel and costs plus a small daily
allowance for those appointed to assessors’ positions on conciliation panels. Lawyers were banned
from conciliation proceedings in New Zealand, although a person with legal training not holding apractising certificate could be used. 6
The 1960s and 1970 were a time of increasing industrial disputes, and an increase in enterprisebargaining created by a tight labour market.7 These developments contributed to placing the3

Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894.
Sir Arthur Tyndall “The New Zealand System of Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration” (1960) 82(2) Int’l Lab. Rev.
138.
5
James Holt Compulsory Arbitration in New Zealand: The First Forty Years (Auckland University Press, Auckland,1986) at 16.
6
AJ Geare The System of Industrial Relations (2nd ed, Butterworths, Wellington, 1988).
7
Herbert Roth Trade unions in New Zealand past and present (Reed Education, Wellington, 1973).
4

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72
conciliation and arbitration system under growing pressure. The government’s response was tointroduce the 1970 amendment to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. The Act provided
for personal grievances, improved procedures for handling rights disputes and a new industrial
mediation service. Support for collective bargaining remained with the Arbitration Court and aseparate conciliation service. While the title of the Court changed in subsequent legislative
amendments to the Labour Court and later to the Employment Court, its role and that of theconciliation service continued until 1987 when the Labour Relations Act 1987 merged the mediationand conciliation services into a new mediation service led by a Chief Mediator. The service hadstatutory independence and dealt with personal grievances, disputes and collective bargaining.8
From the inception of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894, the State Sector waslargely exempted from its provisions.9 The State Sector had a different structure established undervarious State Sector acts. The majority of State Servants had their pay and conditions set by adetermination. Pay and conditions were then adjusted on an annual basis by a ruling rates survey orby bargaining between the union and employer. Where agreement could not be reached they also had
recourse to compulsory arbitration before the State Sector Tribunal. The Tribunal had a similar
format and structure to the Arbitration Court.10 This separation of State and private pay fixing
continued until the government enacted the State Sector Act 1988, thereby incorporating the state
sector into the private sector system.
During the last half of the 1980s, the New Zealand economy substantially deregulated. Only minorchanges were made to employment legislation, but in 1991 the arbitration system was swept away by
the Employment Contracts Act (ECA). This act described as “a measure to promote an efficientlabour market” and “freedom of association” was to continue the trend that had been established by
the Labour government for the deregulation of pay fixing and the labour market. The move to treat
employment relationships in contractual terms removed the previous support that was available by
way of mediation and/or arbitration for collective bargaining disputes. The Act established a newframework for employment arrangements. Voluntary union membership was introduced and awards
abolished. In place of unions, workers could choose any bargaining agent to represent them inbargaining with their employer but there were no requirements for employers to negotiate with theworkers’ representatives. Bargaining agents were given limited rights of access to workplaces andonly had to be ‘recognised’ by employers; there was no requirement to bargain with them.
An Employment Tribunal (comprising of one member in any particular case) was established toprovide both mediation and arbitration services. Parties, who were unhappy with the decisions of the
Tribunal, could appeal to the Employment Court on matters of fact or law. There was no compulsory
arbitration available for collective bargaining. A collective was only formed if the parties concluded
their own agreement. The highly centralised system of bargaining that had been in place since the1890s was overnight changed to a completely decentralised system. Unions no longer had a pivotal
role in wage setting. Individual employment contracts were prevalent and enterprise agreements
were the main type of collective employment contract.11

8

Ian McAndrew “The Employment Institutions” in Erling Rasmussen Employment Relationships: Workers, Unions andEmployers in New Zealand (Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2010) 74.
9
Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894, s 91.
10
See for example State Sector Conditions of Employment Act 1977.
11
Ian McAndrew & Sean Woodward “The New Zealand Employment Tribunal: A Review of the First Few Years” (paper
presented to Industrial Relations Research Association Meeting, New Orleans, January 1997).

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72
Collective bargaining’s role as a means of determining terms and conditions of employment was
reduced significantly under the Employment Contracts Act 1991 when union membership number
plummeted.12

The Framework for Collective Bargaining under the Employment Relations Act
2000
In 2000, the Minister of Labour, Hon Margaret Wilson, introduced a bill changing the emphasis on
employment based on contracts to one based on relationships and good faith.
The Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) emphasised that relationships between employers andemployees were an important feature of productive employment relationships. It recognised that
employment relationships should be built on good faith, and that parties were the best suited toaddress any problems between them, but on the occasion when they could not do so, specialised
assistance should be available. In keeping with the intentions of the Act, a mediation service wasestablished to support successful employment relationships.13 The mediation service was given wide
responsibilities to provide information and other services to assist parties in resolving theiremployment relationship problems by being speedy and flexible. In order to insure the independenceof the service special, provisions were made in the legislation and the confidentiality of the process
was reinforced.14 The majority of employment problems are resolved in mediation; however, when
they cannot be resolved at this level, provision is made for them to be referred to the Employment
Relations Authority (the Authority) for determination.15 Authority determinations are not available
for collective bargaining matters except for in very limited circumstances. These are discussed laterin this paper.
One of the overriding intentions of the ERA was the promotion of collective bargaining. With a few
exceptions, where there are special legislative provisions, i.e. police, military and positions coveredby the Higher Salaries Commission, any party in an employment relationship can technically be aparty to a collective employment agreement. The legislation establishes the process for bargaining.
The Act gives unions the role of bargaining agents in what seems like an effort to both increase
union membership numbers and promote collectivism. Despite the high hopes of the unions andgovernment and the dire predictions of business, this did not eventuate in the way the government
intended.16 The move to individualism in employment relationships that had been a feature of the
1990s continued through into the new millennium. Bernard Walker suggests that the most notablefeature, by 2002, was the lack of change and that union numbers had not altered significantly since
the introduction of the Act .17
The collective bargaining objectives of the Act were emphasised in 2002 in the Labour Party policy
and the speech from the throne. In that year, the government announced a proposal to review the Act

12

Department of Labour “Union Membership Return Report 2012” <www.dol.govt.nz>.
Employment Relations Act 2000, s 143.
14
Section 148.
15
Section 156.
16
Erling Rasmussen Employment Relationships: New Zealand Employment Relations Act (Auckland University Press,
Auckland, 2004).
17
Bernard Walker and R.T Hamilton (2009) “Grievance Processes: Research, Rhetoric and Direction for New Zealand”(2009) 34(3) NZJER 43.
13

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72
to identify if any “fine-tuning was needed, either in the law or in its administration”18 for the Act toachieve its “statutory objectives of promoting productive employment relationships, good faith,collective bargaining and the effective resolution of employment problems”.19 The review
undertaken was extensive, drawing on a number of sources, including Department of Labour
research projects assessing the impacts of the Act,20 along with case law developments, as well as
submissions from a range of groups such as practitioners, the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) andBusiness New Zealand.
The ERA recognised that employment relationships must be built on good faith, section 3(a)(i), andrequired that parties to an employment relationship deal with each other in good faith, section
4(1)(a), but there was no penalty provided for breaches of good faith. Good faith did not requireparties bargaining for a collective agreement to conclude an agreement, section 33(b). The lack of arequirement to conclude bargaining and penalties for breaches of good faith were of concern to theunion movement as, apart from strike action, there was nothing they could do if an employer party
chose to stop bargaining.
The review considered legislative amendments required to ensure that the Act fulfilled its statutory
objectives in respect of the promotion of productive employment relationships, good faith, collective
bargaining, and the effective resolution of employment problems. During the early years of the ERA,
the CTU had expressed concern that, while one of the objectives of the Act was to promote collective
bargaining, it did not adequately do so.21 They made a number of submissions to the Committee
reviewing the Act, including a suggestion that third party intervention was required in order toresolve misunderstanding or breaches of the duty of good faith, behaviours aimed at undermining
collective bargaining, or protracted disputes. Submission were made suggesting that various forms ofarbitration be provided to assist in the resolution of collective bargaining, especially “greenfields”
bargaining and multi-employers bargaining, or where there had been a breach of good faith that
undermined the collective bargaining. They asked for greater resources to be made available(specifically) mediation services.
The bill introduced, following the review proposed, that a new process to promote settlements incollective bargaining be introduced. Interestingly, rather than a return to the compulsory arbitration
process available for most of the 20th century, emphasis was to remain on the self-determination. In
some defined cases, however, third party assistance was to be made available.22
The new concept of facilitated bargaining was introduced. The policy intent underlying the
introduction of facilitation was to provide additional assistance to parties who were experiencing
difficulties in concluding a collective arrangement. With the exception of special provisions for the
defence force and police contained in their respective legislation,23 it was not until this December
2004 amendment that provision was made for a form of compulsory assistance in bargaining. 24
A new section 50A made provision for the Employment Relations Authority to assist parties having
serious difficulties in concluding a collective agreement by providing facilitation services. Actions or
18

Hon Margaret Wilson Review of the Employment Relations Act – Overview of Proposals for Legislative Fine Tuning(Minister of Labour, Paper to the Cabinet Economic Development Committee, 2004).
19
Secretary of Cabinet 2003a, Secretary of Cabinet, 2003d.
20
T Waldegrave, D Anderson and K Wong The Effect of the Employment Relations Act 2000 on Collective Bargaining
Report to the Department of Labour 2003.
21
Hon Margaret Wilson, above n 18.
22
Employment Relations Law Reform Bill 2004.
23
Compulsory Arbitration continued in these areas through the ECA and ERA periods.
24
Employment Relations Amendment Act (No 2) 2004.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72
conduct occurring after 1 December 2004 could be used as grounds for obtaining facilitation
assistance from the Authority.
In addition to the facilitation process, a new form of ‘compulsory arbitration’ provided for fixing
terms and conditions of Collective Employment Agreement in cases where good faith wasbreached.25 This was seen as only being likely to apply in extreme cases, a remedy of last resort. The
threshold was, therefore, set at a high level with a potentially high risk outcome for offenders, theremedy under section 50J being that a third party, the Employment Relations Authority, could
effectively set the terms and conditions of employment for a group of employees where a serious
and sustained breach of duty of good faith had occurred.
Specific provisions were made in an attempt to overcome the unions’ concerns about the lack ofrequirement on employers to conclude bargaining. The amendment to the Act provided for section
33 to be extended to require parties to conclude a collective agreement unless there was a genuine
reason not to do so. Philosophical opposition to a collective agreement and disagreements overbargaining fees are specified as not being genuine reasons for failing to conclude an agreement.
Further, when a union and employer have reached a deadlock over a matter they must continue
bargaining about other matters where agreement has not been reached.26
Other changes introduced in an attempt to enhance collective agreements included the extension of
the good faith provisions to prevent an employer from passing on terms and conditions agreed to in acollective to non-union members, section 59A, penalties for breaches of good faith, section 4A, a
subsequent parties clause, section 56A, and a bargaining fees provision, part 6B.

Facilitation Process
Facilitation is a two-stage process with the Employment Relations Authority being the gatekeeper.
Any or both parties involved in collective bargaining can make application to the Authority forfacilitation; however, the Authority is unable to accept an application unless it is satisfied that one of
the grounds set out in the ERA is met. The grounds in section 50C include;
In the course of the bargaining, a party has failed to comply with the duty of good faith in and thefailure was serious and sustained; and it has undermined the bargaining:
The bargaining has been unduly protracted and extensive efforts (including mediation) have failed toresolve the difficulties that have precluded the parties from entering into a collective agreement
In the course of the bargaining there have been one or more protracted or acrimonious strikes orlockouts
In the course of bargaining, a party has proposed a strike or lockout and if it were to occur, it would
be likely to affect the public interest substantially
A strike or lockout is likely to affect the public interest substantially if—
the strike or lockout is likely to endanger the life, safety, or health of persons: or
the strike or lockout is likely to disrupt social, environmental, or economic interestsandthe effects of the disruption are likely to be widespread, long-term, or irreversible.
25
26

Employment Relations Act 2000, s 50J.
Section 32(1)(ca).

67New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72

Once a matter has been accepted for facilitation a different Authority Member is assigned the case toprovide facilitation services.
Initially, the Authority set a high standard for acceptance of matters for facilitation. The first
application for facilitation was made in December 2004. The application from EPMU sought
facilitation on the grounds of alleged breaches of good faith. The Authority member determined thatfacilitation was to be provided where “serious” difficulties were encountered, not just “ordinary”
difficulties. Strike action over 17 days, one 24 hour stoppage, pickets, police involvement andtrespass notices were not sufficient to get over the hurdle required in section 50C.27
Service and Food Workers Union lodged an application in January 2005 alleging that theirbargaining with Air New Zealand had been unduly protracted, or alternatively that the strike action
they had taken had been acrimonious or that the further strike action proposed was likely to
substantially affect the public interest.28 This case was important in establishing the standard required
to get over the facilitation bar. The Employment Relations Authority determined that each ground insection 50 was intended to stand alone, and that the initial role of the Authority was to see whether
any grounds existed. The Authority, in accepting that the strike was acrimonious, determined
acrimony to be “bitter in manner or temper”. The requirement to display bitterness by words orconduct was not merely the parties experiencing bitterness of feelings. During the bargaining, there
had been a number of problems between the parties resulting in disciplinary action against some
employees. On that ground, even though the other grounds were not proven, facilitation was
accepted.
Since that time, another 41 applications for facilitation have been made to the Employment Relations
Authority. Of the cases referred, only six applications have been dismissed. In another matter
between Service and Food Workers Union and Air New Zealand, The Authority considered“protractive bargaining” and while acknowledging that extensive efforts made by the parties had
failed to resolve bargaining, determined that 12 months was not reason for finding bargaining unduly
protracted. The length of time since the parties had commenced bargaining was a factor, however,when bargaining took place was a matter that needed to be factored into the decision. The bargaining
had been protracted due to the bargaining taking place in other collectives, not the time the parties
had been in actual bargaining over this collective.29
The rejection of a proposed settlement on two occasions and bargaining over 10 months was notfound as grounds for facilitation in Service and Food Workers Union v Spotless Services (NZ) Ltd.30
The bargaining between NZ Professional Drivers and Transport Employees Association Inc andTransportation Auckland Corporation Ltd was difficult because of changes in advocates. There weredisagreements about what had been agreed between the parties. The Applicant in this case, a small
union with less than 20 members, claimed that the respondent had delayed negotiations because ofnegotiating another collective with another union and asked the Authority to order that collective
employment agreement conditions be fixed under section 50J. The Authority declined and refused to
grant facilitation. They found that the respondent had not breached obligation to be responsive andcommunicative as the change of negotiating teams by both parties had caused the delay. The
27

PMP Print Ltd and Anor v New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union Inc CA162/04,
22 December 2004.
28
Service and Food Workers Union v Air New Zealand AA11/05, 19 January 2005.
29
Service and Food Workers Union v Air New Zealand AA172/08, 9 May 2008.
30
Service and Food Workers Union v Spotless Services (NZ) Ltd WA71/05, 6 May 2005.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72
respondent did not undermine, mislead or backtrack on agreements reached and the bargaining was
not unduly protracted and efforts to reach resolution not extensive.
In the course of bargaining, parties should seek mediation assistance prior to seeking facilitation,
however, on occasions, the Court or the Authority will all grant facilitation but delay the
implementation to allow mediation or further mediation to occur. Air New Zealand sought
facilitation assistance from the Authority during bargaining with the Flight Attendants and Related
Services Association in 2010.31 The application was made prior to mediation taking place. The
applicant then requested an adjournment of the proceedings so that they could attempt mediation andif this was unsuccessful, they could use facilitation. The Authority did not see the process as one that
could be granted and then put aside for a raining day. They could either continue, in which case theapplication was unlikely to succeed, or withdraw. The applicant withdrew and made a further
application when bargaining hit a difficultly the following year. This later application was granted. 32
However, in Service and Food Workers Union Nga riga Tota Inc and Air New Zealand, theAuthority held an investigation meeting with the parties to consider a reference to facilitation.
Following the meeting, the Authority directed the parties to use mediation before the investigation
proceeded. They granted an adjournment to allow this to occur. When this was unsuccessful the
hearing resumed with the application for facilitation being granted.33
The Employment Court has considered two cases. An appeal by McCain Foods New Zealand Ltd
against an Authority decision granting facilitation was dismissed on the grounds that bargaining over
34 months was unduly protracted, and extensive efforts including mediation had failed to resolve thedifficulties the parties had encountered in concluding a collective employment agreement. This was
the first time the Court had considered the intention of the 2004 amendment. The Court upheld the
Authority’s determination to grant facilitation. Their broad interpretation of section 50A wasconfirmed in Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc v Sanford Limited, when adecision of the Authority to not grant facilitation was overturned. The Court concluded that theefforts to resolve difficulties were sufficiently extensive. While facilitation was granted the Court
directed that it be delayed for a month to allow the parties to continue mediated collective
bargaining.
From these and the other cases that have been decided, it is clear that the facts of the particular caseare the important determining factor in overcoming the facilitation bar. Twelve months may besufficient in one case but not in another, it is all of the surrounding circumstances that are important.
One of the overriding objectives of the legislation is that mediation is the prime problem-solving
mechanism.34 Problems in relationships are more likely to be successful if the parties resolve themthemselves, but sometimes other assistance needs to be made available.35 Despite the high number ofsuccessful application, both the Employment Relations Authority and the Court seem to accept thisprinciple and consider whether the parties have exhausted all other options prior to granting
facilitation. For example in Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc and Air New
Zealand,36 the Authority directed the parties use mediation before the Authority investigation
proceeded and in Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc and Spotless Services (NZ)
Ltd, the application was rejected and the parties were directed to mediation. 37
31

Air New Zealand v Flight Attendants and Related Services Association AA363/10, 18 August 2010.
Air New Zealand v Flight Attendants and Related Services Association [2011] NZERA 309.
33
Service and Food Workers Union v Air New Zealand above, n 29.
34
Employment Relations Act 2000 s 3(a)(v).
35
Sections 143(b) and (c).
36Service and Food Workers Union v Air New Zealand, above n 29.
37
Service and Food Workers Union v Spotless Services (NZ) Ltd, above n 30.
32

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72

Facilitation, what is it?
The legislation does not define facilitation, other than to say that “the purpose of clause 50B to 50L
is to provide a process that enables parties who are having serious difficulties in concluding acollective agreement to seek the assistance of the Authority in resolving the difficulties.” The process
must be conducted in private,38 and is what the Authority determines it to be.39 The collective
bargaining that the facilitation relates to also becomes a process conducted by the Authority.40
The facilitation process is not an investigation by the Authority41 but recommendations as toprocesses to be followed or contents of a collective agreement may be made.42 Recommendations are
not binding but they may be made public. An Authority recommendation has only been made public
on one occasion. Stagecoach New Zealand Ltd and The New Zealand Tramways Union had been
negotiating for seven months prior to making an application to the Authority for facilitation. After
lengthy facilitation, the parties did not accept the Authority’s decision; however, the Authority
decided to release their recommendation to the public.
The only provision in New Zealand employment law for a determination to fix terms and conditionsof employment is in section 50J, where there is a serious and sustained breach of duty of good faithand it would be appropriate in all the circumstances for the Authority to fix the terms. A successful
claim has not been made under this provision. Only one case has been brought before the Authority.
It appears from the papers that this was not a particularly strong example to argue as the Authority
not only refused to set the terms and conditions of employment, but also declined to grant afacilitation hearing.43

International Comparison
Internationally, there are numerous processes supporting collective bargaining. I have chosen threedifferent ones to compare and contrast with New Zealand system. In order to do so I have chosen adispute in the aviation industry in each jurisdiction to discuss the different ways the dispute wasmanaged in the different jurisdictions.
CanadaIn March 2012, Air Canada received notice from the International Association of Machinists andAerospace Workers (IAMAW), representing the airline’s approximately 8,600 mechanics, baggage
handlers and cargo agents in Canada, that it intended to take strike action on Monday March 12,2012. Pilots were also threatening strike action. The strikes were scheduled to take place in the midstof the peak March break travel period. The Airline had also threatened to lock workers out. The
parties were in discussions over terms and conditions of employment and had attended mediation
with a federal mediator.
38

Employment Relations Act 2000 s 50E(1).
Section 50E(2).
40As above.
41
Employment Relations Act 2000, s 50E(3).
42Section 50H.
43
NZ Professional Drivers and Transport Employees Association Inc v Transportation Auckland Corporation Ltd [2011]
NZERA 400.
39

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72

The Minister of Labour asked the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to investigate the matterbased on health and safety issues. The Airline carried pharmaceuticals and other health products into
remote areas.44
When bargaining breaks down and a strike or lockout is threatened, the Canadian government canpass legislation to end the strike or a lockout by implementing compulsory arbitration or bydetermining a new contract without negotiation. The cost of the government appointed arbitrator isequally divided between the parties.
In this case, in addition to the Health and Safety investigation, the government introduced back towork legislation. Bill C33, entitled the Protecting Air Services Act, banned strikes or lockouts until
new collective agreements were signed. The legislation extended the existing collective agreements
until a new one came into effect. It removed Air Canada’s right to lockout or the union’s right tostrike while the existing collective agreement remained in place and appointed an arbitrator toprovide final offer arbitration. The Arbitrator was given 90 days in which to determine the matter.
The decisions, when issued, became the new collective employment agreements for pilots andmachinists employed by the Airline.
Under final offer arbitration, the arbitrator chooses either the union or the employer’s final offer.
This then becomes the applicable collective agreement. A note of interest, final offer arbitration is
not unknown in New Zealand. It is the system that applies when collective bargaining negotiations
break down between the New Zealand police and the Police Union.
Guidelines were given to the arbitrator to assist him with his decision. These were promulgated in
the legislation. The Act says that he was to be guided by the need for terms and conditions of
employment that are consistent with those in other airlines and provide flexibility to ensure short andlong term economic viability and competitiveness of the employer. In both cases, the Arbitrator
found in favour of the Airline’s final offer. This resulted in collective employment agreements thatare in effect until 31 March 2016.
While in this case, the Act specified the criteria the arbitrator was to give weight to, this is notalways the case. For example, Bill C39, “Restoring Rail Services” legislation, which orders
Canadian Pacific Rail workers back to work and prevents their employer locking them out does not
specify criteria for the arbitrator. It merely states that the Arbitrator’s decision must be set out in aform that would allow it to be incorporated into the collective agreement.
Australia
In August 2011, Qantas announced a restructure, which proposed a reduction in their workforce by
1,000. At the same time, there had been long and ongoing industrial action by three unions
representing engineers, baggage and catering staff, and long-haul pilots. The unions were seeking
improvements to pay and conditions.
Qantas alleged that the strike action resulted in at least 80,000 passengers being affected, more than
600 flights cancelled and seven aircraft grounded, and in response they indicated that they would be

44

CBC News, posted: March 08, 2012 11.23 AM ET, (20 November 2013).

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations 39(2): 62-72
locking out their workforce, in effect grounding the airline. They did this. The federal government
intervened and an urgent hearing before Fair Work Australia was held on the 31 October 2011. Anorder was made to terminate industrial action and gave the parties 21 days to try and determine an
outcome between them. Unfortunately, this was not able to be achieved so, under the Fair Work Act
2009, the Tribunal was required to make a determination as to how the matter should be settled.
Hearings were held between 23 March and 26 June in the following year. A determination was
issued on the 8 August 2012
New Zealand
The first matter that was accepted for facilitation, bargaining between the Service and Food Workers
Union and Air New Zealand was done so after the parties had been in lengthy bargaining, there had
been strike action, and further strikes were proposed. Mediation had been offered and accepted under
section 90 of the ERA. When mediation was unsuccessful the parties applied to the Authority forfacilitation. Facilitation was granted. The parties meet in an investigation meeting with James
Wilson. The investigation meeting was carried out in private in terms of the legislation. Following
the meeting, the parties were able to successfully conclude their collective agreement. Unlike theCanadian and Australian situations, unless there are serious breaches of good faith, there is notprovision in legislation to allow a third party to impose a solution without agreement of the parties.

Conclusion
New Zealand has had a long history of State assistance for parties encountering problems incollective bargaining. Since the introduction of the ERA in 2000, the emphasis in New Zealand has
been for parties to employment relationships to work together in good faith to sort out any
difficulties they may encounter in collective bargaining. The legislation emphasises self-resolution
while recognising that on occasions parties may need assistance. Mediation is the prime dispute
resolution process and most collective bargaining matters are resolved either by the parties
themselves or with mediation assistance. The assistance provided both in mediation and facilitation
is designed to support their relationship and, except for very limited circumstances, not to impose
solutions on them. The Employment Court and the Employment Relations Authority both recognise
the importance of mediation assistance but when this has not been successful, parties are granted theright to facilitation assistance. There has been very little research into the success or otherwise of the
New Zealand system. This is a matter I hope to address as part of my PhD research.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 73-105

Safe and Healthy Work: a Human RightYVONNE OLDFIELD*
Abstract
Workplace incidents and work-related diseases are major causes of death and disability worldwide, but
especially in the developing nations. Although rights to health and safety on the job appear in all major
human rights instruments, such issues have not consistently been framed as human rights issues and havenot attracted the same level of attention as other human rights issues. This paper explores the reasons for
this, including the theoretical issues that arise in relation to the question whether workers’ rights are
human rights. It critiques the ILO’s decision to identify a narrow core of workplace rights (excluding
workplace health and safety) in the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, andmakes a case for the inclusion of rights to health and safety in this core.
The final section of the paper considers the difficult questions of how such a right might be defined andwhat the role of the State, as duty holder, might be. It concludes with a brief attempt to evaluate New
Zealand’s health and safety regime in human rights terms with particular reference to the Stateobligations set out in the Maastricht Guidelines on economic, social and cultural rights.
It concludes that the recommendations of the recent Report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace
Health and Safety would need to be implemented in full for the standard set by the Maastricht guidelines
to be achieved.

Key words
Human Rights, Labour Law, ILO, Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, Workplace
Health and Safety, Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992

Introduction
Fatal workplace incidents or work-related diseases claim over two million victims a year worldwide.1 The
numbers who lose their lives at work far exceed the numbers who die as a result of the death penalty 2 orfrom armed conflict.3 The situation in the developing economies has been described as a crisis, with
American commentator Jeff Hilgert asking:4 “Is the search for cheap labor by the world’s multinationals*

1Student Interest and Disputes Resolution Advisor, Victoria University of Wellington.

International Labour Organisation “Work-Related Fatalities Reach 2 Million Annually” <www.ilo.org/global>.
The Guardian “Death Penalty Statistics Country by Country Visualisation and Data” <www.guardian.co.uk>.
3
World Health Organisation “World Report on Violence and Health” (2002) Ch 8 <www.who.int>.
4
Jeff Hilgert “A New Frontier for Industrial Relations: Workplace Health and Safety as a Human Right” in James A Gross andLance Compa (eds) Human Rights in Labor and Employment Relations (Labor and Employment Relations Association) 43 at
50.
2

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):better characterized as a search for disposable labor and an unspoken license to kill workers when
production demands”?
Given that workers’ rights (including rights to health and safety on the job) appear in all major humanrights instruments, it might seem settled that these statistics give rise to human rights issues. Yet, failures
to protect worker health and safety, along with other issues relating to workers’ rights, have notconsistently been framed as human rights issues and have not attracted the same level of attention as otherhuman rights issues.5 While the notion that workers have rights is neither new nor radical, the basis andscope of such rights have been matters of ongoing debate. So have questions about whether a rights-based
analysis can usefully be applied to help protect workers from abuse, exploitation and danger on the job.
This paper sets out to show that workers’ rights, generally, and health and safety rights in particular, canand should be addressed within a human rights framework.
It will begin by offering some indications as to why human rights discourse has not always had a clear
place in discussion about workers’ rights. From there, it will go on to look at some of the theoreticalissues that arise in relation to the question whether workers’ rights are human rights.
The next section will outline the broad range of workplace rights (including rights to a safe and healthy
workplace) which are contained in key human rights instruments and which have historically been
advanced by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The paper will then critique the ILO’s decision
to identify a narrow core of workplace rights (excluding workplace health and safety) in the 1998
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work,6 and make a case for the inclusion of a wider
range of workplace rights, including rights to health and safety, to be included in this core.
In doing so, however, it acknowledges that certain difficult questions must be tackled in asserting theright to a safe and healthy workplace. These are questions about the extent of any such right and about
who the duty holders might be. In the final section, this paper will return to the question of how such aright might be defined, with reference to the New Zealand health and safety regime, which has been
under scrutiny since 2010 when 29 men died in the Pike River mine explosion.
What Ross Wilson of the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) has described as: “a tragedy which should
never have occurred”7 had the effect of drawing public and government attention to our ongoing poor
workplace health and safety statistics. Workplace accidents kill at least 80 New Zealanders, on average,
each year8 while over three hundred more live with permanent impairment.9 Up to a thousand die orsuffer chronic ill health from work-related diseases such as asbestosis.10 These figures are much higher
than in other developed countries: double that of Australia and four to six times that of the United5

Virginia A Leary “The Paradox of Worker’s Rights” in Lance A Compa and Stephen F Diamond (eds) Human Rights, Labor
Rights and International Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1996) 22 at 22.
6
International Labour Organisation Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, adopted at its 86th Session
Geneva June 18 1998.
7
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions “Submission to The Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy”
Transcript of Phase Four Hearing at [5487].
8
Statistics New Zealand “Serious injury outcome indicators: 1994–2010” (2011) <www.stats.govt.nz> at 59.
9Above at 59.
10
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety “Safer Workplaces Consultation Document”<www.hstaskforce.govt.nz/documents/Consultation_doc.pdf> at 2.

74

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):Kingdom.11 Against this background, this paper concludes with an assessment of whether New Zealand’s
statutory health and safety regime meets State obligations as enunciated in the Maastricht Guidelines on
economic, social and cultural rights.12

Are Workers’ Rights Human Rights?
The Contested Place of Rights Discourse
The idea that human rights apply in the workplace is not new, even if, as some argue, it has recently
gained more traction.13 Parallels have long been drawn between “violations caused by a tyrannicalgovernment and violations caused by tyrannical force in an economic system.”14 Tonia Novitz and Colin
Fenwick, for example, point to the influence of Catholic teaching that workers have rights in natural law,
independent of any deal they might negotiate individually or collectively. 15 The existence of such rights ispremised on the view that, before they are servants, employees, or human resources, workers are, first andforemost, human beings. This view was restated in a 1981 papal encyclical in the following terms:16…work is…a source of rights on the part of the worker. These rights must be examined in the broad
context of human rights as a whole, which are connatural with man, and many of which areproclaimed by various international organisations and increasingly guaranteed by the individual States…

American Linda Lotz has traced such ideas back even further to the Hebrew story of Moses freeing the
Jewish people from Pharoah. Framing this as an organised walkout by exploited workers (rather than arebellion against a tyrannous state), she noted the ongoing resonance of this narrative in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam.17
Sarah Joseph describes labour rights as having been: “at the vanguard of the modern human rights
movement” citing efforts to fight slavery and child labour as good examples of a common history
between human rights and labour issues.18 Despite these shared beginnings, however, workplace rights
and general human rights have not developed in an integrated discourse. Workplace rights have been

11

Above at 1.
Philip Alston et al “Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (1998) 20.3 HRQ at 691.
13
Tonia Novitz and Colin Fenwick “The Application of Human Rights Discourse to Labour Relations: Translation of Theory
into Practice” in Colin Fenwick and Tonia Novitz (eds) Human Rights at Work Perspectives on Law and Regulation (Hart
Publishing, Oxford, 2010) 1 at 6.
14James A Gross “A Long Overdue Beginning” James A. Gross (ed) Workers Rights as Human Rights (Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, 2003) 1 at 4.
15
Novitz and Fenwick, above n 13, at 6.
16
Pope John Paul II “Laborum Exercens On Human Work” (1981) at para 16 <www.osjspm.org>.
17
Linda A Lotz “All Religions Believe in Justice” in James A Gross (ed) Workers Rights as Human Rights (Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, 2003) at 183.
18
Sarah Joseph “UN Covenants and Labour Rights” in Colin Fenwick and Tonia Novitz (eds) Human Rights at Work:
Perspectives on Law and Regulation (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2010) at 331.
12

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):dominated by the paradigms of social justice and economics 19 while the idea that workers’ rights are
human rights has waxed and waned in influence.20
This has resulted in part from the priorities of activists. Virginia Leary noted in 1996 that Amnesty
International was, at that time, the only leading non-government human rights organisation working
closely with the ILO.21 Perhaps some activists have regarded issues about ‘first tier’ civil and politicalrights as more pressing, and as necessary antecedents to other rights. Others, according to James Gross,have joined forces with big business and the proponents of the free market, asserting the supremacy of“negative rights” whilst opposing economic and social rights.22 The result, he says, is a “lack of attention”
that:23…has contributed to workers being seen as expendable in worldwide economic development, and theirneeds and concerns not being represented at conferences on the world economy dominated by bankers,
finance ministers and multinational corporations.

It might be reasonable to suppose that trade unions would have made a high priority of promoting
workers’ rights, but unions do not always apply a human rights framework to workplace issues. The firstreason for this is that unions, as well as employers, often situate employment in an economic context.
Although in Europe, historically, workers have at times pursued their demands within a human rights
framework, using the language and legal tools of international human rights, 24 in the United States themarket analysis has left little space for human rights-based strategy. Economic demands dominate routine
collective bargaining and pressure to compromise means sectional interests are prioritised (sometimes atthe expense of other workers) even if the wider union movement supports human rights goals. As a result,a market analysis prevails, with the workplace characterised as an arena where competing interests are to
be balanced. Jeff Hilgert goes so far as to say “from the earliest foundations, human rights were
marginalised ideas and took a backseat to what became the constructed vision of the labour market and its
acceptable regulation”.25
Trade unions have also been suspicious of what they see as the individualistic nature of rights discourse. 26
Hilgert suggests that this is based on the fear that it will “impede the idea of community, solidarity, civic
virtue and, in our context, the goals of collective bargaining”.27
This mistrust of a rights-based approach is not limited to organised labour, or to the United States. Simon
Deakin has argued that this approach may also be perceived as a potential threat to the social contract that
underpins the modern welfare state:28
19

See for example Hugh Collins “Theories of Rights as Justifications for Labour Law” in Guy Davidov and Brian Langille(eds) The Idea of Labour Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) 137 at 137.
20
See for example, Harry Arthur “Labour Law after Labour” in Guy Davidov and Brian Langille (eds) The Idea of Labour
Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) 13 at 23.
21
Leary, above n 5, at 24.
22
Gross, above n 14, at 4.
23
Gross, above n 14, at 3.
24
Tonia Novitz and Colin Fenwick “Conclusion: Regulating to Protect Workers’ Human Rights” in Colin Fenwick and Tonia
Novitz (eds) Human Rights at Work: Perspectives on Law and Regulation (Hart Publishing Oxford and Portland, Oregon,2010) 585 at 587.
25
Hilgert, above n 4, at 62.
26
Hugh Collins “The Productive Disintegration of Labour Law” (1997) 26 Indus LJ 295 at 306.
27
Hilgert, above n 4, at 62.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):Depending on one’s point of view, social rights could be a bulwark against neo-liberalism and amechanism for equipping the welfare state to survive in a globalised world; or, alternatively, a corrosive
force, which by individualizing legal claims to access to resources undermines those solidaristic forms ofsocial cohesion around which the twentieth century welfare state was constructed.

In recent decades, however, it has become clear that collective bargaining, the primary mechanism bywhich unions promote the interests (and rights) of their members, cannot realise a good “market value”
for the labour of all workers. Hugh Collins attributes this failure to a “type of deafness in relation toissues of distributive justice” saying:29
The system of industrial relations presented collective agreements as a fair mechanism for setting the
distribution of wealth and power in society…This analysis failed to acknowledge the possibility ofsegmented labour markets, where outside the realm of collectively agreed terms and conditions, there
was a substantial sector of low paid employment, populated often by women and minorities, where theindustrial structure and the transitory nature of the businesses precluded the development ofbargaining structures.

To make matters worse for workers, even in developed economies, the sector “outside the realm” ofcollective bargaining has been growing. Manufacturing has been in decline and with it the reach oforganised labour. Increasing emphasis has been placed on the individual employment contract as a meansof regulating working relationships, and labour or industrial law courses have been re-labelled as courses
in employment law.
As James Gross has noted, the multi-national corporations of today exceed many nation states in money,
power and influence. Individuals may be as much, or more, at risk from abuse by such entities as they arefrom governments, yet often, as Gross suggests, they lack mechanisms to address this situation: “…while
assertions of individual rights and freedom are commonly made against the exercise of power by thestate, rights and freedom are routinely left outside the factory gates and office buildings with barely amurmur of protest”.30
New ways were, therefore, needed for workers to deal with the challenges of a global economy and anincreasingly segmented labour market. Women and other disadvantaged groups were looking forsolutions to workplace inequalities.31 It is in this context that the human rights approach has gained (or regained) ground. As Novitz and Fenwick argue:32
there appears at least to be consensus amongst workers and their organisations, at the national,
regional and international levels, that they must present their claims in terms of human rights, even if
not exclusively so. The imperative to present their claims as human rights comes from the desire toutilize the potentially powerful legal methods of securing advantage to pursue their claims, and also
from the perceived need to respond to employers’ willingness to use these arguments and tools
themselves.
28

Simon Deakin “Social Rights in a Globalized Economy” in Labour Rights as Human Rights, Philip Alston (ed) Oxford
University Press (2005) 25.
29
Collins, above n 26, at 306.
30Gross, above n 14, at 4.
31
A C L Davies “Perspectives on Labour Law” (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004) at 5.
32
Novitz and Fenwick, above n 24, at 587.

77

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):The latter part of the 20th century saw the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand pass araft of legislation concerned with employment rights. In this country, this included the Equal Pay Act
1972, the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987, and the Human Rights Act 1993. Anne
Davies argues that this programme of statutory protections marked the point at which a human rights
perspective really began to achieve traction in the employment context.33
Theories of Rights in the Workplace
It is probably uncontentious to say that some labour issues clearly are not human rights issues. For every
right there is a duty, and a duty holder. It follows that not all claims (indeed not all needs) amount torights, as this will depend on whether there is a basis for imposing a duty on another party. Claims forpaid professional development leave, for example, would probably be regarded by most as matters fornegotiation between employer and employee.
We do, however, freely apply the language of rights to the workplace. We speak of “rights” to aminimum wage, to protection from unfair dismissal, and to a safe workplace. All of these examples areenshrined in New Zealand’s domestic law, and all can be described as “labour rights” or “employment
rights.” Does this mean that they (or any other labour rights) are human rights?
The term “human right” is used in this paper to mean “universal human right” in the sense, as HughCollins puts it, of a right which “stresses how human rights are universal, natural, and inalienable” andjustifies interference in the affairs of a sovereign state.34
Such a right is not something that is earned, or even legislated into existence. It attaches to the very factof being human and cannot be bargained away. In becoming the holder of entitlements, a worker is “castas a self-sufficient and independent rights-bearer whose assertion of rights amounts to a vindication of…autonomy, personhood and dignity”.35
If (as set out in the previous section) activists have taken awhile to decide that labour rights should be
pursued within a human rights framework, scholars have been cautious about confirming that they can be.
As Virginia Mantouvalou has noted: “some endorse the character of labour rights as human rights without
hesitation, while others view it with scepticism and suspicion”.36
Mantouvalou identifies three ways in which the literature tends to approach the question. The first is apositivist approach, by which the existence of labour rights, in various international human rights
instruments, is taken as indicating that they are indeed human rights. The second is an instrumental
approach, by which the success of strategies promoting labour rights as human rights confirms that that iswhat they are. The third is a normative one.37
33

Davies, above n 31, at 36.
Hugh Collins “Theories of Rights as Justifications for Labour Law” in Guy Davidov and Brian Langille (eds) The Idea ofLabour Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) 137 at 144.
35
Claudia Geiringer and Matthew Palmer “Human Rights and Social Policy in New Zealand” [2007] Social Policy Journal of
New Zealand 12 at 15.
36
Virginia Mantouvalou “Are Labour Rights Human Rights?” (18 February 2012) European Labour Law Journal <http://ssrn.com/abstract=2007535>.
37
At 1.
34

78

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):The positivist approach, as she points out, has limitations. The biggest is that conceptions of rights vary
greatly between different instruments. What has been included and what has not has usually come down,in practice, to negotiation and compromise, rather than any reasoned basis.38 So while looking at humanrights documents can give us some idea of the variety of labour rights which have been labelled as humanrights, it does not provide a definitive answer to the question whether, or which, labour rights are humanrights.
The instrumentalist approach, typified by Philip Alston asking whether it is: “helpful or appropriate toapproach labour rights as human rights”39 is, in Virginia Mantouvalou’s view, the prevailing one.40 We
have already seen in the previous section that labour unions and other activists have identified thepotential for a human rights approach to provide a powerful way of dealing with the challenges of a
global economy and an increasingly segmented labour market. It is not difficult to see why some scholars
might also turn, or return, to human rights discourse for the tools and language they need to grapple withworkplace issues. The human rights approach means that, instead of being framed exclusively ineconomic terms, certain issues will be looked at in light of values that emphasise the duties owed to aperson by virtue of their humanity. The existence of rights also provides a way to resolve competinginterests, at least some of the time, since rights will take priority over other claims.
Mantouvalou notes that the instrumentalist approach has received a boost in recent years in that theEuropean Court of Human Rights (EctHR) “has been receptive to workers’ claims in a development that
led labour law scholars to change their position towards labour rights as human rights”.41 She observes
that this has been a factor in the increased willingness on the part of unions to adopt human rights
strategies.42
However, Mantouvalou also notes that the instrumental approach to whether labour rights are humanrights often amounts to an empirical treatment of the question, which exposes what is probably thegreatest weakness of the approach:43
the success of a strategy leads to endorsement, the failure leads to rejection of labour rights as humanrights…The costs of abandoning rights as a discourse, however, are not always carefully considered.
These include a loss in aspirational standards and impoverishment in normative legal scholarship.

In practice, this impoverishment will mean, as noted in the previous section, that efficiency arguments
and considerations of social justice will dominate thinking about labour and employment law. HughCollins has suggested that neither provide a reliable justification for constraints on the freedom ofindividuals and markets.44 Arguments based on the need to ensure the efficient functioning of markets
readily tend towards a call to do away with labour laws altogether, while a variety of redistributive
mechanisms (many unrelated to labour law) can provide alternative ways of achieving social justice
38

At 3.
Philip Alston “Labour Rights as Human Rights: The Not So Happy State of the Art” in Philip Alston (ed) Labour Rights as
Human Rights Oxford University Press 2005 1 at 4.
40
Mantouvalou, above n 36 at 1.
41
At 10.
42
At 11.
43
At 11.
44
Collins, above n 34, at 137.
39

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):objectives. The New Zealand labour and employment relations system is a case in point. Since the firstinroads into compulsory arbitration in 1973, the labour market has been increasingly deregulated,45 while
the low paid are assisted through measures such as Working for Families.46
This leads to consideration of Mantouvalou’s third category for determining the question whether labour
rights are human rights: the normative approach.
Collins has observed that there is an attraction in basing a theory of labour law on a “strong theory ofrights” that “forecloses the discussions of efficiency and welfare by an appeal to an overriding value thatjustifies labour law”.47 The operative word here is “strong” since as he points out: 48
Not all theories of rights deliver the required degree of foreclosure… only rights regarded as having
pre-emptive force provide a theoretical basis for labour law that can securely withstand attacks that
promote other values and goals which may argue against regulation of the labour market and theworkplace.

Collins doubts whether labour rights are really human rights although he is prepared to say that they may
be “some other kind of ‘fundamental rights’ with exclusionary force”.49 I will come back to what otherkind of rights he thinks they may be. First, however, I will discuss his reasons for disputing that labour
rights are human rights, and the counter arguments developed by Virginia Mantouvalou.
Collins identifies four crucial features of human rights: that they are claims with moral weight, universal
application, stringency and consistency over time.50 He says that labour rights differ from human rights
in respect of all four features. Mantouvalou has challenged Collins’ assertions about all of these supposed
points of difference.
With regard to the first (that labour claims lack the requisite moral weight of human rights), she argues
that while not all labour issues necessarily have the moral weight of human rights issues, some certainly
do. She equates the physical assault, sexual abuse and inadequate meals suffered by many migrant
domestic workers in the United Kingdom with such “compelling and absolute” human rights issues as theprohibition of torture.51 (A similar comparison may indeed be made with loss of life or serious
impairment arising from dangerous working conditions.)
Her response to his assertion that labour rights are not universal claims (because they apply only toworkers and not to everyone) is that: “because a right is conditional upon a particular status does notmean that it is not a human right”.52 She cites for comparison the fact that refugees and migrants enjoy
protection from extradition to places where they may face torture. A similar example might be found inan alleged criminal’s rights to due process and a fair trial. And a majority of individuals are likely to beworkers at some time in their lives when (at least one hopes) rather fewer will be charged with a crime or
45

See Industrial Relations Act 1973, Labour Relations Act 1987, Employment Contracts Act 1991.
New Zealand Government “Working for Families” <www.workingforfamilies.govt.nz>.
47
Collins, above n 34, at 139.
48
As above.
49
At 140.
50
At 143.
51
Mantouvalou, above n 36 at 12.
52
As above.
46

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):be at risk of torture.
The third criterion on which Collins bases his conclusion that labour rights are not human rights iswhether they are stringent claims. He suggests that:53
it seems likely that what will be regarded as fair pay and a reasonable holiday must depend to aconsiderable extent on what the relevant society can afford, whereas respect for dignity and liberty
seems to require observance of minimum standards below which no government should be permitted
to operate.

Mantouvalou points out that this argument could be applied equally to any economic, social or culturalrights that are affected by resource constraints. She argues that there is no basis on which requirements toprovide a minimum core, and to achieve progressive realisation, should not be applied to labour rights inthe same way as to other such rights.
Finally, on the question whether labour rights are timeless entitlements, Collins suggests that such rights
will change over time with changes to production systems, work methods and the labour market. Onceagain, Mantouvalou rejects his argument, suggesting that a claim may remain timeless even though theway it is expressed develops and evolves. Her example is the timelessness of privacy rights in the face ofchanging technology. Another which springs to mind is the right to free speech in the age of the internet.
Mantouvalou’s overall conclusion: that at least some labour rights “are not necessarily and by definitiondifferent in nature to other human rights. It can therefore be said that some labour rights are human rights
on that normative analysis.” Others, she acknowledges, may be categorised differently (perhaps as labour
standards).54
Mantouvalou has, thus, successfully rebutted Hugh Collins’ appraisal that all labour rights fail to meet thefour criteria for inclusion as human rights. Her analysis leaves the way open for a normative assessment
as to which labour rights can be considered to be universal human rights. This question will be consideredwith respect to health and safety rights later in this paper.
First, however, it is worth returning briefly to Hugh Collins’ discussion of other conceptions of rights
which may help us understand workers’ rights. Collins focusses on two alternatives to labour rights being
human rights (as defined at the start of this section). Both, he suggests, offer theoretical justifications forthe idea of a labour right being a “forceful constitutional type of right.”
The first draws on liberal theories of justice and Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’. Collins puts the question:55
Assuming (behind the veil of ignorance) that the rational person does not know whether he will be an
employer, a worker or unemployed, but he or she knows that in a market economy most people earn
the necessary income to support themselves and their families by taking a job… what protective
guarantees would the rational person insist upon?

Although Rawls himself did not include workers’ rights within the canon of protections that might be53

Collins, above n 34, at 142.
Mantouvalou, above n 36 at 23.
55
Collins, above n 34, at 142.
54

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):sought from behind the veil, Collins sees value in the methodology since it gets around issues ofuniversality: the model enables us to consider what rights might properly apply to a particular subgroupor community.
Collins concludes that: “…we can feel reasonably confident that, given the centrality of work in theachievement of primary goods, some special protections for workers might be found to be necessary.” Hementions, for example, the right to work.
Collins also sees approaches based on the dignity or autonomy of the individual as being relevant tojustification for labour rights,56 especially given that they are consistent with the ILO’s historic assertion
that “labour is not a commodity”.57 Using Jeremy Waldron’s work as an example, he notes that: “respectfor human agency as an end in itself” leads to the conclusion that “…at least some social and economic
rights should be guaranteed, in order to prevent the level of destitution that would deny individuals any
dignity at all (that is, undermine their civil liberties)”.58
An approach based on equality leads to a similar conclusion. As Emily Spieler has noted: “Rights-based
theory confronts the problems of inequality in a segmented market by asserting an entitlement to acommon floor, based on ideas of justice and humanity”.59
For labour issues outside the strictly defined category of universal human rights, therefore, approaches
based on justice, dignity and equality provide ways of establishing that some of these should have thestatus of rights at the domestic level. Later in this paper, these approaches will be helpful in helping
define the right to a safe and healthy workplace.

Applying a Rights Approach in the Workplace
The Role of the International Labour Organisation
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) with 185
member states. Its purpose is to promote “social justice and internationally recognised human rights”
which it claims to achieve by “drawing up and overseeing international labour standards”.60
The ILO, in fact, predates the UN itself. Set up in the aftermath of World War I, it owed its existence to a
mixture of humanitarian, political and economic considerations. At the end of the war, trade union groups
had pushed for any peace treaty to include provision for international minimum labour standards and aninternational labour office. Fear of further political and social unrest, and a wish to head off the potential
spread of communism, made the original nine member states receptive to this proposal.61

56

At 151.
International Labour Organisation “ILO Declaration of Philadelphia” 1944 <www.ilo.org>.
58
Collins, above n 34, at 152.
59
Emily Spieler “Risks and Rights: the case for Occupational Safety and Health as a Core Worker Right” in James A. Gross(ed) Workers Rights as Human Rights (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2003) 78 at 93.
60
International Labour Organisation “About the ILO” <www.ilo.org>.
61
International Labour Organisation “Origins and History” <www.ilo.org>.
57

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):As a result the 1919 Constitution of the ILO, Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles provided for theestablishment of a tripartite body made up of representatives of trade unions and employer groups as wellas member states. It also acknowledged the critical place of workers’ rights, including the right to a safeand healthy workplace, in the following terms:62
Whereas universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice; And
whereas conditions of labour exist involving such injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers ofpeople as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperiled; and an
improvement of those conditions is urgently required; as, for example, ... the protection of the worker
against sickness, disease and injury arising out of his employment.

Health and safety issues were also one of the eight “areas for improvement” listed in the preamble to theConstitution.
Unlike the other creation of the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, the ILO was to survive.
Between the two world wars, it demonstrated its relevance and effectiveness with a raft of labour
standards. Most of these focussed on working conditions, including health and safety. Today, nearly halfof all ILO instruments deal with some aspect of workplace health and safety, 63 with over 40 standards anda similar number of Codes of Practice addressing issues relating to national policy as well as specificsectors, industries, and risks.
In 1944, the ILO restated its aims and purposes in the Declaration of Philadelphia. This document (whichis essentially a high-level statement of fundamental principles) does not contain a specific reference tohealth and safety but its first principle has become a famous phrase: “labour is not a commodity”.64
In 1949, the ILO became the first specialised agency of the new United Nations, retaining its tripartite
structure. It was the engine of the international labour rights system, which Alston has described ashaving been “long held up as one of the most successful of international regimes”.65
Throughout the cold war period, the ILO was seen as having a key role in helping maintain the social
contract between labour and capital that underpinned the mixed economies of Europe. (Although it wasviewed with suspicion by the United States which, to this day, has ratified a very paltry list of
conventions.)
Eventually, with the demise of the communist threat, this aspect of its influence was perceived as lesscritical. By the mid-90s, the ILO was facing pressure to prove its ongoing relevance in a new era ofglobalisation. Sarah Joseph suggests that rights discourse had its part to play in the ILO’s search for a
new direction and quotes Philip Alston as saying, in 1994, that “a clear ideological position in favour ofbasic human rights can be the Organisation’s only viable raison d’etre.”66

62International Labour Organisation “ILO Constitution” <www.ilo.org>
International Labour Organisation “Occupational Health and Safety” <www.ilo.org>.
64
International Labour Organisation “ILO Declaration of Philadelphia Declaration Concerning the aims and purposes of theInternational Labour Organisation” <www.ilo.org>.
65
Philip Alston “Core Labour Standards and the Transformation of the International Labour Rights Regime” (2004) 15 EJIL
457 at 458.
66
Joseph, above n 18, at 363.
63

83

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):Workplace Rights in key Human Rights Instruments
Although, as Sarah Joseph points out, the core United Nations treaties have not given rise to a significant
body of jurisprudence,67 workers’ rights have been acknowledged as human rights since they were firstincluded in the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 23 of which provides: “Everyone
has the right to live, to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work andto protection against unemployment…”.68
A limited group of labour rights (those which are accepted as essentially negative or first tier rights) are
included in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).69 Articles 8(1), 8(2) and8(3) prohibit slavery and forced labour, and Article 22 provides for freedom of association. ICCPR rights
are expressed with relative strength in that state parties are required to guarantee these rights. They arealso justiciable pursuant to the optional protocol to the convention. This means that individuals are able tocomplain about State failures to protect these rights to a monitoring body: the Human Rights Committee.
The United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR)70 addresses
a wider group of labour rights. There is some overlap with the ICCPR: Article 8 of the ICESR provides
the right to join a union, reinforcing Article 22 of the ICCPR. Anti-discrimination provisions are also
common to both the ICCPR (Articles (2) (3) and (26)) and the ICESR (Article 2).
The ICESR also provides for further “second tier” or positive rights. Most importantly for the purposesof this paper, Article 6 provides the right to work and Article 7 the right to safe and healthy working
conditions. Also relevant to workplace health and safety is Article 9 which sets out rights to social
security (which includes workers’ compensation). Under these provisions, workers who are unable toearn a living due to injury on the job are to be supported and compensated. Of further potential
application to health and safety on the job are Article 10(2) which provides for paid parental leave andArticle 10(3) which provides for protection of young workers. Finally Article 12 (which deals with healthrights generally) requires states to take measures to improve industrial hygiene and combat occupational
diseases.
The rights in the ICESR are weaker than those contained in the ICCPR. States are not required toguarantee these rights; all that is required is for them to take steps to achieve their progressive realisation.
The rights in the ICESR have also been much harder to enforce, since they were justiciable only bymeans of group action. However, due to the adoption of a further optional protocol for the instrument (inDecember 2008), individuals now have the same rights of enforcement under the ICESR as they havealways enjoyed under the ICCPR.
Article 2 of the ICESR is also of significance in relation to questions about the impact of globalisation on
labour rights and health and safety. It deals with international assistance and cooperation. Compliancewith this obligation means that states will not undermine the rights of others, and “may be required to67

As above.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights art 23.
69
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 999 UNTS 171 (opened for signature 16 December 1966, entered into
force 23 March 1976).
70
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 990 UNTS 3 (opened for signature 16 December 1966,
entered into force 3 January 1976).
68

84

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):take positive actions to improve enjoyment of those rights, particularly when a latter state is unable toprovide for minimum core rights”.71
The Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at WorkIn 1995, in Copenhagen, the United Nations World Summit on Social Development reached agreementthat certain fundamental workers’ rights should be safeguarded as a priority. The Fundamental
Declaration on Principles and Rights at Work (The Declaration) was adopted three years later in 1998. It
sets out as follows: 72
The International Labour Conference …
Declares that all Members, even if they have not ratified the Conventions in question, have an
obligation arising from the very fact of membership in the Organisation to respect, to promote and torealize, in good faith and in accordance with the Constitution, the principles concerning thefundamental rights which are the subject of those conventions, namely:
1.
2.
3.
4.

freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;
the effective abolition of child labour; andthe elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

The Declaration pulls together the content of a group of existing Conventions73 which are a small but
critical subset of the workplace rights contained in other ILO standards and conventions. Prohibitions on
forced labour were first set out in Convention 29 in 1930 and expanded upon in Convention 105 in 1957.
The right to freedom of association and related recognition of collective bargaining were enshrined incomplementary Conventions (87 and 98) in 1948 and 1949 respectively. Discrimination came a little laterwith Convention 100 (Equal Remuneration) in 1951 and Convention 111 (Discrimination, Employment
and Occupation) in 1958. Finally, the abolition of child labour was addressed in Convention 138(Minimum Age Convention) in 1973 and Convention 182 (Worst forms of Child Labour) in 1999.
The Declaration is explained by the ILO itself as a response to the impacts of globalisation and auniversal market economy,74 although Philip Alston suggests that the idea of identifying a core of “basic
human rights” in the workplace had been around for as long as 40 years.75 He traces its eventual
acceptance by the members of the ILO to the fall of communism when he says it became part of a moveto “refine and sharpen the original system of classifying international labour standards according to theirsubject matter as well as to their centrality to the work of the Organisation and to human rights.”76

71

Joseph above n 18, at 336.
International Labour Organisation Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, adopted at its 86th Session
Geneva June 18 1998.
73
International Labour Organisation “The International Labour Organisation’s Fundamental Conventions” <www.ilo.org>.
74
International Labour Organisation “History” <www.ilo.org>.
75
Alston “Core Labour Standards,” above n 65, at 484.
76
As above.
72

85

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):Certainly by the late 1990s, rising inequality indicated a need to strengthen international labour standards,
and it was perceived that this would be assisted by prioritisation and clarification of the “unwieldy andunenforceable list of ILO conventions” currently in existence.77
The Declaration, as its name suggests, is a soft law instrument. Writing in 1998, a former deputy legal
adviser of the ILO, Hillary Kellerson, extolled its “intrinsic” value, in that it reaffirmed “the universalityof fundamental principles and rights at a time of widespread uncertainty and questioning of thoserights”.78 Acknowledging that it is a soft law instrument, he nonetheless argued the advantages of this byasserting that:79
A remarkable aspect of this approach is that it represents a collective decision to pursue social justiceby the high road – drawing on people’s aspiration for equity, social progress and the eradication ofpoverty – rather than by sanctions which can be abused for protectionist purposes in international
trade.

It was adopted on the basis that it restates fundamental obligations of the ILO Constitution and
Declaration of Philadelphia. For this reason, it applies to all member states whether or not they have
ratified the key conventions which underpin it. Its expressed intention is to complement the existing
system rather than replace it.80 As Alston describes it, the dominant narrative around the adoption of the
Declaration was that it “…provided the necessary flexibility in the face of forces of globalisation anduniversalized the reach of the core labour standards. While it left intact the pre-existing labour law
regime, it made it potentially more effective”.81
The Declaration has achieved support outside the ILO with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank all having
agreed, in principle at least, that the four rights identified here are core workplace rights. 82
Meanwhile workplace matters outside this set of four rights – including all issues pertaining to working
conditions – have been relegated to a lower tier. Health and safety, regarded as an aspect of working
conditions, is in this category.
Sarah Joseph has argued that: “claims for the primacy of a small core of labour rights could only be madeif a workable boundary were drawn between the core and other labour standards”.83 So what distinguishes
the core from all the rest?
What the four have in common is that they can be seen as so-called “first tier” human rights: negative
rights or freedoms from interference. Essentially, they all correspond to fundamental civil and politicalrights. This makes them relatively uncontroversial. Importantly for the defenders of the free market, allfour rights “are about the formation of the labor market and not the establishment of any minimum
77

Spieler, above n 59, at 82.
Hilary Kellerson “The ILO Declaration of 1998 on Fundamental Principles and Rights: A Challenge for the Future” (1998)
137.2 Int’l Lab Rev 223 at 227.
79
As above.
80
At 223.
81
Alston “Core Labour Standards,” above n 65, at 458.
82
Spieler, above n 59, at 83.
83
Joseph, above n 18, at 363.
78

86New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):standards within the employment contract”.84 On this assessment, freedom of association is effectively aprocedural right that impacts on the workplace in much the same way as the way the right to vote impacts
civil society. The associated ability to bargain collectively may influence the labour market but will not
fundamentally impede its functioning. Working conditions, because they were seen as lying within thescope of the employment contract, would be determined through negotiation.
Several factors influenced the decision to restrict the range of the core rights to the “first tier.” One was
the prevailing economic orthodoxy that (given the range of variables impacting on the wage bargain), thefree market was best left to itself to achieve optimal outcomes in relation to working conditions. Anotherwas the acceptance that developing economies could not afford first world conditions of employment andwould lose any competitive advantage they had if pushed to meet external standards before they wereready. Political differences, and suspicions that the developed world had a protectionist agenda, alsopresented obstacles to consensus on a wider core of rights.
Associated with the decision to identify a core of rights was a commitment by the ILO to channel its
resources into those priorities. Kellerson has described this as adding further “potential value” to the
Declaration: 85
The promotional effort called for in this Declaration implies a reorientation of the ILO’sconstitutional, operational and budgetary resources in support of the priorities determined in the global
reports, themselves based on annual reports and other official information available to the ILO. The
full value of the Declaration, which depends on the active implementation of the follow-up by many inand outside the ILO, will only emerge in the course of time. The challenge facing the ILO in the next
millennium will be to ensure that the Declaration achieves the significance and the impact it offers.

Essentially, Kellerson saw the Declaration as giving the ILO a mandate to work with its members on a setof key concerns on the basis that securing these rights will be a necessary first step towards improving theposition of workers in developing nations. 86 Joseph suggests that the ILO has indeed been restructured
around the core which gets “special priority and processes”, including provision of technical and advisory
services and support for economic and social development.87
Not all the ILO’s energies have gone into the core, however. Before evaluating the core rights approach isnecessary to acknowledge the Decent Work Agenda and the Seoul Declaration.
The Decent Work Agenda and the Seoul Declaration
In September 2000, the United Nations adopted its Millennium Declaration which set eight goals to beachieved by 2015.88 The first of these, which addresses poverty, was amended in 2005 to include theobjective of “achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women andyoung people”.89 Within the United Nations, the ILO has responsibility for monitoring progress towards

84

Spieler, above n 59, at 83.
Kellerson, above n 78, at 227.
86
At 225.
87
Joseph, above n 18, at 363.
88
United Nations Millennium Declaration GA Res 55/2, A/55/L.2 (2000).
89International Labour Organisation “Millennium Development Goals” <www.ilo.org>.
85

87

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):this goal and has structured its Decent Work Agenda to support it. 90 The four strands of the Decent Work
Agenda are employment creation, social dialogue, social protection, and rights.
While safe work is part of the decent work programme but it also has been the subject of its own specificdocument. The Seoul Declaration on Safety and Health at Work was adopted on 29 June 2008 by the
Safety and Health summit of the XVIII World Congress on Safety and Health at Work.
The Congress was organised by the International Labour Office, the International Social Security
Association, and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency. The preamble to this Declaration
recognises that safety and health at work is a fundamental human right in the following terms:91
Recognizing the serious consequences of work-related accidents and diseases, which the International
Labour Office estimates lead to 2.3 million fatalities per year world-wide and an economic loss of 4
per cent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
Recognizing that improving safety and health at work has a positive impact on working conditions,productivity and economic and social development,
Recalling that the right to a safe and healthy working environment should be recognized as afundamental human right and that globalization must go hand in hand with preventative measures toensure the safety and health of all at work.

The Seoul Declaration does not change the fact that workplace health and safety is not the fifth core right.
It can, however, be construed as some acknowledgement of the seriousness of health and safety as ahuman rights issue, and an attempt to address the issues raised by those who have criticised the failure toinclude it in the core four. It has now been signed by some 50 different union, employer, and government
agencies from around the world.

The Case for a Fifth Core Right
Criticisms of the Core Rights Approach
The decision to isolate four rights as core rights has been subject to criticism. One of its most prominent
detractors has been Philip Alston.92 His first concern relates to the inclusion of the word “principle” in thetitle of the Declaration. If the contents of the core are essentially in the nature of first tier rights, then why(he asks) use the weaker term “principle” at all? He also fears that the move towards “soft promotional
techniques” could result in the downgrading of the role of the ILO’s “traditional enforcement
mechanisms”.93

90

International Labour Organisation “Decent Work Agenda” <www.ilo.org>
Seoul Declaration Secretariat “Seoul Declaration of Safety and Health at Work” <www.seouldeclaration.org.
92
Alston “Core Labour Standards,” above n 65, at 457.
93
At 458.
91

88

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):Most relevantly for the purposes of this paper, he is also concerned that the Declaration creates a“normative hierarchy” which could privilege the four core rights at the expense of others. 94 He seems to
see this as a futile attempt, noting that there has never been agreement on a preeminent human right orvalue (be it dignity, equality or anything else). Emily Spieler makes a similar point by rejecting thesuggestion that the core four might be “self-defining and universal” and so distinguishable from matters to
do with working conditions. She says the core four will, like any other rights, require analysis dependingon the context.95 This argument seems strong: it cannot be self-evident, for example, at what age a childlabourer becomes a young working person, or whether a workshop in a poor town is exploiting children orteaching them vital skills.
Alston argues that the decision as to which rights would be in the new core was “neither scientific nordeliberate”96 and notes that while commentators may seek to extract a rational basis for such decisions
after the event, at the time they are usually the outcome of negotiation and accommodation between theholders of conflicting positions. In this case, he suggests that:97
The choice of standards to be included …was not based on the consistent application of any coherent
or compelling economic, philosophical, or legal criteria, but rather reflects a pragmatic politicalselection of what would be acceptable at the time to the United States and those seeking to salvage
something from what was seen as an unsustainably broad array of labour rights.

Although he does acknowledge that there is some coherence in the core rights grouping in that they areprocess rather than result-orientated in a way that is consistent with a free trade agenda, Alston concludes
that a “handful of exclusively civil and political rights have been selected” to the exclusion of rights
contained in other human rights instruments98 and says that it is inevitable that rights outside the core four
will be neglected:99
To the extent that the Declaration has succeeded in one of its principal objectives, which is to make iteasy for other actors ranging from corporations, through international financial institutions, tointernational labour rights monitors, to narrow their gaze and focus on the four core rights, it has byimplication taken the pressure off them in relation to the non-core rights, whatever rhetoricalassurances to the contrary might issues forth from the ILO or those other actors.

He suggests that one of the criteria by which the success of the new regime should be assessed is that:“the promotion of this limited range of core standards does not serve to undermine the status of otherlabour rights which have long been recognised as human rights”.100
Francis Maupain, former legal adviser to the ILO, has responded to what he calls Alston’s “polemic” onthe core rights approach.101 He agrees that core rights came out of a process of debate and compromise94

As above.
Spieler, above n 59, at 92.
96
Alston “Core Labour Standards,” above n 65, at 485.
97
As above.
98
At 486.
99
At 488.
100
Alston “Core Labour Standards,” above n 65, at 461.
101
Francis Maupain “Revitalization Not Retreat: The Real Potential of the 1998 ILO Declaration for the Universal Protectionof Workers’ Rights” (2005) 16.3 EJIL at 439.
95

89

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):and reflect only a very small part of the body of ILO standards, but rejects the assertion that the category
is “neither scientific nor deliberate.” 102 Instead he argues:103…there is a sort of ‘Kantian’ thread running through their diversity…freedom from forced labour andchild labour as well as non-discrimination relate to the autonomy of the will and freedom of
association and collective bargaining are the extrapolation of this autonomy from the individual to thecollective level. It points to the fact that the concept of ‘social justice’ …cannot be defined so much interms of a pre-defined product as in terms of fair processes which are themselves inseparable from its
proclaimed values of human dignity, freedom and dialogue…
…the fundamental workers’ rights category enjoys a ‘functional coherence’ which relates to theirimpact on the achievement of other rights…as enabling rights or process rights, they empower
workers with the tools that are necessary for the conquest of other rights.

Maupain denies that identifying a core of rights has the effect of relegating the rest “into a secondclass”.104 He says that the Declaration should not be looked at in isolation as it is complemented by theDecent Work strategy. Together, he says, they are part of “an effort to underline the necessary
complementarily and interdependence between the various aspects of workers’ protection and rights”.105
He disagrees that the strengthening of the core rights will affect progress in respect of other rights andsuggests that empirical evidence is what counts. That is to say, wait and see whether “the emphasis on
fundamental rights [is] a boost for, or a break in, the protection of other labour rights”.106
Although there is more than a touch of asperity in the tone of Maupain’s response to Alston, he does notappear, essentially, to disagree with the substance of what Alston says about the core rights approach. He
does not deny that process rights have been prioritised in the hope that they will enable workers with thecapacity to work for the other rights on their own behalf. Where he differs is rather that he thinks the corerights strategy has a chance of working, and believes only time will tell if he is right and Alston is wrong.
It remains now to assess whether a case can be made for the inclusion of health and safety as a fifth coreright.
Health and Safety on the Job – A Human Right?
As discussed in the early part of this paper, there is a case to be made (on a positivist, instrumentalist andnormative basis) that at least some workplace rights amount to fundamental human rights. Thisconclusion is consistent with the fact that all 185 members of the ILO have been able to agree on four
core rights that are considered universal and capable of binding them all.
What is less clear is whether other labour rights, beyond the scope of the four included in the core, canalso be said to be human rights and, in particular, whether the right to a safe and healthy workplace is one
such right. I now attempt to answer that question using Virginia Mantouvalou’s approach of reviewing102

At 446.
At 448.
104
At 447.
105
At 462.
106
At 443.
103

90

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):the positivist, instrumentalist and normative arguments to support the notion that health and safety is ahuman right.
The inclusion of health and safety in key human rights instruments (as set out above) indicates that thepositivist argument, for what it is worth, is strong. It may not be worth very much; however, if counter
arguments (such as those of the neo-liberal economic agenda) continue to dominate popular discourse andpolicy making as they have done in recent decades. The circularity of the positivist approach (it is ahuman right because it is in the instrument and it is in the instrument because it’s a human right) renders
it ineffective unless it is supported by other arguments with more substance.
The instrumentalist approach is, as Mantouvalou noted, the approach many commentators take to thequestion. Even leading scholars like Alston are prey to this charge: as noted already, Maupain has
described his writing on the issue of the core rights as “polemical” in tone and criticised its lack ofanalysis.107
Alston observes that amongst those who argue for additional rights to be included in the core, there isconsensus that “the list should include the right to a safe and healthy workplace”.108 Emily Spieler
articulates that consensus view when she argues that concern about the exclusion of working conditions
from the core rights is “especially justified when one considers the particular problems posed by healthand safety hazards”.109 She suggests that even if there were a case for preferencing certain rights, theexclusion of working conditions from the core could be said to overlook the fact that many workers
endure punishing hours in hazardous conditions for wages that are insufficient to feed them and theirfamilies.110 And Hilgert (also in a defiantly polemic tone) proclaims that “the human rights analysis
argues all workers have a right to return home from work as alive as when they punched in, regardless ofthe business cost estimate”.111
Maupain defends the exclusion of health and safety from the core on the basis that the core rights areprocedural rights and that “workers’ health and safety… even though it may in the strict sense be regarded
as of ‘vital’ importance, cannot be regarded as fundamental in the sense of being an enabling right”.112
Procedural rights, as noted already, safeguard access to the labour market. Women and others who might
be excluded have their place secured, as do organised workers, while protections are erected against thepotential distortions that might arise from the use of unpaid or child labour.
Spieler points out that health and safety issues also impact on access. Workers face a “circular
problem”:113
The ability of workers to seek improved conditions is contingent on their ability to quit, to withhold
their labour, to bargain (individually or collectively) and to seek alternative employment; the ability toseek alternative employment is contingent on the continued health of the worker. In order for workers
107

At 441.
Alston “Core Labour Standards,” above n 65, at 457.
109
Spieler, above n 59, at 86.
110
At 85.
111
Hilgert, above n 4, at 66.
112
Maupain, above n 101, at 449.
113
Spieler, above n 59, at 92.
108

91New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):to have sufficient means to withhold their labor or quit jobs in order to bargain for improved wages
and benefits, their health must be protected.

Since workers who lose life and limb are unable to participate in the labour market, perhaps health andsafety rights can be described as enabling rights with a legitimate place in the core, even on theproceduralists’ terms.
The procedural position is that once their place in the market is secured, it is up to workers to take action
on their own behalf to secure safe working conditions. The instrumentalists are not prepared to wait. They
point out that in a global economy where there is a market for everything, even regulatory frameworks,114
industry will move to whichever location offers the most favourable conditions for business: “What is
new about the more recent appearance of regulatory competition is the exploitation of new possibilities
for entry to and exit from jurisdictions, in particular by corporate entities”.115
The market may eventually respond to industry relocation. Worker power will grow as demand for labour
increases and, eventually, conditions will equalise. The timeframes for these market corrections may,
however, be unacceptable in terms of human lives. Emily Spieler says there is only one way to addressthese issues, and it is not through the core rights approach: 116…the extension of human rights to the private sector is critical, as the increasingly complex web ofgovernmental and private arrangements means that private entities function internationally in waysthat mirror governmental functioning. Pure reliance on an unregulated market permits the persistenceon human rights abuses in workplaces that are the equivalent of direct political oppression by
governments.

While Deakin argues that the outcome of this process is not “pre-ordained” and that low regulation
regimes will not necessarily trump others in the quest for investments, 117 it remains nonetheless that“…emerging hazards and the absence of the regulatory state that protects human rights over employer
property rights means workers in the global south bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s
dangerous work”.118(If need be, of course, local legislation may even be amended on demand to meet the bottom line, as we
saw in New Zealand with the 2010 amendment to s.6 of the Employment Relations Act.)The instrumentalists assert that relying on the market to deliver safe working conditions is, at best, a longrange strategy, and, at worst, will fail to deliver at all. They make a good case for saying that it is inworkers’ interests to use whatever strategies they can to pursue the objective of safe and healthy work. It
remains to be established, however, whether that objective amounts to a human right.
It is time to turn to a normative assessment. For consistency, the same four features of human rights bywhich labour rights generally were evaluated are now applied to health and safety rights. These are moral
weight, universal application, stringency, and timelessness.
114

Deakin, above n 28, at 38.
At 39.
116
Spieler, above n 59, at 79.
117
Deakin, above n 28, at 39.
118
At 52.
115

92

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):The moral weight issue appears relatively straightforward. A right that goes to issues of survival,
especially in circumstances where affected individuals are not certain to have knowledge of or control
over the risks they face, would seem to be of fundamental importance. Indeed, one commentator, Tonia
Novitz, has gone so far as to say that workplace health and safety amounts to “one of the many facets of
the inalienable right to life”.119
Universal application has been discussed already. Most people are workers at some time in their lives, buteven for those few who are not, the possibility of having to earn a living exists for everyone in the same
way that the possibility of being falsely accused exists for everyone. Whether we choose it or not, we are
all members of the category “potential worker” so, to that extent, the right to health and safety of the job
has universal application.
The final two categories are more problematic. No activity (work or any other) can be made entirely risk
free. Any right to health and safety must be bounded by some limitations as to reasonableness. It issuggested that whether health and safety meets the tests of stringency and timelessness will depend on
how the right is defined. This crucial point will be explored more fully in the next section but it issuggested that, with care, it may be possible to define a stringent right to health and safety.
The final point to be made in relation to a normative assessment of health and safety as a human right isthe close connection between health and safety and the key values which underpin human rights: liberty,
equality and dignity. To lose one’s health, possibly one’s life, is a frontal assault on all three, andcompounded for many workers by the absence of choice.

Defining and Protecting the Right
It must be acknowledged that risks are associated with work as they are, inevitably, with any humanactivity. If there can be said to be a right to health and safety, then further questions immediately follow,
concerning the extent of the right and the corresponding duty and as to who bears that duty. As Spieler
has put it:120
One might boldly (and simplistically) assert the proposition that health and safety should be viewed asa human right, and leave it at that… [but] an undefined labor right has a tendency to migrate to an
unsatisfactory least common denominator. The alternative approach is to begin the challenging
process of further definition of the right to health and safety.

This section will consider how that right might be defined and then go on to consider how the protections
available in New Zealand domestic law stand up in comparison.
The Extent of the Right and the Threshold for Protection
Spieler acknowledges that there is a “spectrum of health and safety risks” in the workplace.121 At themost serious end, hazards may arise out of a deliberate act by an employer, such as violence towards
119

Novitz and Fenwick, above n 13, at 13.
Spieler, above n 59, at 97.
121
At 100.
120

93New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):domestic workers and deaths in factory fires where exits had been locked to prevent theft. Infamous cases
include those in 1993 in Bangkok, where two hundred workers died,122 and in 1911 in New York, where
147 lost their lives.123
Spieler says that acts at this end of the spectrum (which might fall to be addressed by the law ofnegligence or by the criminal law) should always be regarded as breaches of human rights. 124 If the rightwere to be defined at this minimum level (as some might say) it might be seen, as she notes, as “a nonwaivable right to be free from excessively dangerous working conditions or from grave danger”.125
However, she asserts that the human right to health and safety goes further than this, and should extend tosituations where harm can be avoided by safety measures which (in the local context) are straightforward
and affordable.
But what of cases where hazards are not readily identifiable, or where there are known risks, but the costof prevention would threaten the viability of the business, and the livelihoods of the very workers whose
protection is desired? Work is, of course, as inherently risky as any other human activity. At the other endof the scale from the Thai factory with the bolted fire exits, workers may be exposed to risks which are
unforeseeable to them and their employers, or in respect of which there is no mechanism for prevention.
Spieler does not see such cases as human rights violations, accepting that the scope of the employer’s
duty can be modified to accommodate the location and circumstances of the workplace. However, sherejects any suggestion that it follows from this that health and safety is not a human right, or should not
be part of the four core rights. Health and safety, as she sees it, is not fundamentally different in this way
from the core four:126
The fact that implementation of a right may in part be locally contingent undeniably creates
uncomfortable ambiguity in the definition of rights. It encourages the search for a least common
denominator that is a universal standard for violation of the right: no child under six should beworking; no worker should be locked in to a workplace without regard to fire hazards. But there is adifference between the development of local standards for the implementation of a right and thefundamental nature of the right itself.

Spieler is also careful to note, however, that multinational corporations that shop around for the least
restrictive regulatory framework, as described above, should not be able to rely on being held to the same
standard as local employers.
She also acknowledges that, in some cases, a worker might expressly accept a known risk (perhaps inconsideration for additional remuneration) thus justifying: “A two-tier approach with a non-waivable
right to “levels of safety that reasonable workers would not wish to relinquish” and waivable but
presumptive rights to further protections”.127
122

New York Times “May 9-15; More Than 200 Die in Thailand Toy Factory Fire” <www.nytimes.com>.
Cornell University “Remembering The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire” <www.ilr.cornell.edu>.
124
Spieler, above n 59, at 103.
125
At 99.
126
Spieler, above n 59, at 104.
127
At 100.
127
At 99.
123

94

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):This leads her to frame the right itself in the following terms: …the right to work in an environment
reasonably free from predictable, preventable, serious risk”.128
How, then, does New Zealand domestic legislation measure up against this proposed standard?
Consideration of this issue requires some background as to the philosophy which underpins our healthand safety regime.
Throughout most of the 20th century, workplaces in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia andCanada were governed by a regulatory framework which imposed detailed, industry specific requirements
on employers. This was monitored and enforced by state agencies which were perennially overstretched
and under-resourced. In 1972, the United Kingdom’s Robens report concluded that the existing system
was inadequate to the task of reducing workplace accidents.129 It proposed to curtail the body of specificregulations and to impose a general duty on employers, backed up by provision for worker participation in
the monitoring of health and safety on the job. In this way, it was felt that the primary responsibility for
maintaining workplace safety would sit with those who had the most control over the workplace, andthose who were most affected by hazards.130
The report can be seen very much as a product of its time and place. In an economy dominated bymanufacturing industries with high union density, British workers willingly exchanged the machinery of ahighly regulated system for one in which they, through their unions, took on shared responsibility for
maintaining workplace safety. The views espoused in the Robens report also met with wide support
outside the United Kingdom and shaped the redevelopment of health and safety laws in Canada andAustralia. Then in New Zealand, a 1988 tripartite advisory group also endorsed the approach, advocatinga major overhaul and simplification of workplace health and safety laws. The end result, enacted after anintervening change of government, was the Health and Safety in Employment (HSE) Act 1992.
Consistent with the underpinning philosophy of the Robens report, New Zealand, Australia, Canada andthe United Kingdom all found the employer duty in respect of health and safety on the notion of what is“reasonably practicable”. Section 6 of the New Zealand HSE Act requires employers to take “allpracticable steps to ensure the safety of employees while at work”.
Section 2 of the HSE Act defines “all practicable steps in relation to achieving any result in any
circumstances” as “all steps to achieve the result that it is reasonably practicable to take in thecircumstances” provided these are circumstances the employers knows about or ought reasonably toknow about, and having regard to a list of factors. These factors include the nature and severity of thepotential harm, and the current state of knowledge about the harm, its nature and severity, and its
likelihood. Other factors to be taken into consideration include the means available to achieve the result,
their efficacy, cost and effectiveness.
So what does “reasonably practicable” mean? What has been called a “classic definition”131 was set out
in the 1949 judgment of Asquith LJ in Edwards v National Coal Board 132
128

At 99.
R W L Howells “The Robens Report” (1972) 1 Indus L J 185.
130
Anthony D Woolf “Roben’s Report – The Wrong Approach?” (1973) 2 Indus L J 88.
131
Buchanans Foundry Ltd v Department of Labour [1996] 1 ERNZ 333.
129

95

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):“Reasonably practicable” is a narrower term than physically possible and seems to me to imply that acomputation must be made by the owner, in which the quantum of risk is placed on one scale, and thesacrifice involved and the measures necessary for reverting the risk, whether in money, time ortrouble, is placed in the other; and that if it can be shown that there is a gross disproportion between
them – the risk being insignificant in relation to the sacrifice – the defendants discharge the onus on
them. Moreover, this computation falls to be made by the owner at a point of time anterior to theaccident.

This definition has been expanded upon, here, in Buchanan’s Foundry Ltd v Department ofLabour, in these terms: “It is clear what the Act requires is that an employer takes all reasonably
practicable steps to guard against potential hazards, rather than a certain, complete protection
against all potential hazards”.133
The current British legislation is the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, section 2(1) of which sets out
the general duties of employers in the following terms: “It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure,so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees”.
In 2007, the Commission of the European Communities asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to
determine whether the “reasonably practicable” standard was sufficient to meet the United Kingdom’s
obligations under Article 5(1) and (4) of Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989, broad duties
which provide that “the employer shall have the duty to ensure the safety and health of workers in every
aspect related to the work…” And:
This Directive shall not restrict the option of Member States to provide for the exclusion or thelimitation of employer’s responsibility where occurrences are due to unusual and unforeseeable
circumstances, beyond the employers’ control, or to exceptional events, the consequences of which
could not have been avoided despite the exercise of all due care.

The Commission argued that the words “so far as is reasonably practicable” in the legislation of theUnited Kingdom, limited the scope of the employer’s duty in a way which was inconsistent orincompatible with Article 5. While acknowledging that no employer can provide a zero risk workplace, it
submitted that the duty on the employer is absolute. Effectively, it sought to have the directive construed
as requiring member states to impose strict liability on employers. Argued in this way, the case failed.134
However, in an opinion to the ECJ, Advocate General Mengozzi attempted to “define specifically thesubstance and extent” of the general duty in Article 5(1) which he considered was expressed in “absoluteterms”. 135 He concluded that it was “to prevent or reduce, so far as possible and taking into accounttechnical progress, all of the risks to the safety and health of workers that are actually foreseeable”.136

132
133

Edwards v National Coal Board [1949] 1KB 704 at 712.
Buchanans Foundry Ltd v Department of Labour, above n 131, at 333.

134

Commission of the European Communities v United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland European Court
Reports Case C-127/05.
135
Advocate General Mengozzi “Opinion” 18 January 2007 European Court Reports 1-04619 at [100].
136
At [111].

96

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):He then went on to express these reservations as to whether the “reasonably practicable” standard wascompatible with this duty:137
In my view, since it introduces a criterion for assessing the appropriateness of the preventive measurestaken which is less rigorous than sheer technical feasibility, the reference in section 2 (1) of the HSW
Act to the concept of what is reasonably practicable is incompatible with the cope that should attach to
the general duty to ensure safety laid down in Article 5(1).

Perhaps, the question whether the “reasonably practicable” test adequately safeguards worker rights tohealth and safety might yet be revisited.
In the meantime, the new Australian Model Work Health and Safety Act 2011 appears to raise thestandard slightly with the introduction of the following “…regard must be had to the principle thatworkers and other persons should be given the highest level of protection against harm…as is reasonably
practicable”. An “although the cost of eliminating or minimising the risk is relevant in determining what
is reasonably practicable, there is a clear presumption in favour of safety ahead of cost”.
It will be interesting to see what effect these new provisions have on Australian jurisprudence in the area.
Rights to Information
To expose someone to risk without their knowledge seems intuitively wrong, and as Spieler points out, it
is also inconsistent with an economic perspective on work, since markets cannot function properly(thereby, producing market solutions) unless the participants in the market exercise informed choices. In
the context of employment negotiations, as Spieler explains, imperfect information transfer results inmarket failure, whereas:138
if a worker knows of the risks, she or he can make effective choices: the worker can consent toexposure to the risk, or bargain for a compensating wage differential or refuse the employment. The
labor market will thereby create optimal incentives for safety and compensation for injury.

At the very least, therefore, workers must have access to information about the dangers they face on thejob. The New Zealand HSE Act recognises this, providing at s.7 that employers must identify and assess
workplace hazards, including new hazards as they arise, and at sections 11 and 12 that the results ofmonitoring of the workplace are to be given to employees.
However, Spieler argues that even good faith attempts to communicate may not be effective, withworkers making poorly informed choices because they have not understood the implications of theinformation provided, or out of desperation because there is no alternative work available. From a humanrights perspective, therefore, rights to information are “necessary but not sufficient to the right to healthyand safe working conditions”.139
Freedom to Raise Concerns or Decline Unsafe Work137

At [113].
Spieler, above n 59, at 98.
139
As above.
138

97

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):The level of risk associated with a job may not be constant over time as the circumstances in place at thestart of employment may change. Unforeseen hazards may emerge when equipment fails, new technology
or work methods are introduced or when the broader environment changes. A worker who, in a perfect(hypothetical) labour market, has evaluated and accepted a particular level of risk in return for an agreed
rate of pay may subsequently re-evaluate the risk in light of such developments.
Spieler argues that many such changes, and the risks associated with them, will be outside the control of
the workers who are affected by them. If they are, simply knowing about the risks will not do the workers
much good: they will need to be able to raise their concerns and (if those concerns are not addressed, or
cannot be addressed in a timely fashion) to decline to perform the unsafe work.140
By this, of course, she means free to do so without retaliation or punishment from the employer. She
acknowledges that (given the core right of freedom from forced labour) any employee is free, in theory atleast, to quit a dangerous job. If the labour market were working perfectly, it would follow that it would
become hard to find staff to work somewhere that was known to be dangerous, forcing the employer toremedy the situation. However, Spieler points out that those workers who are subject to the worst andmost dangerous working conditions are often also the ones who often lack any ability to move to anotherjob.141
The right to refuse unsafe work (a subset of rights to refuse an unlawful or unreasonable instruction froman employer) exists at common law.142 Section 28A (1) of the HSE Act 1992 enshrines that right byproviding that “an employee may refuse to do work if the employee believes that the work that theemployee is required to perform is likely to cause serious harm to him or her”.
Section 28A (2) places the employee under an obligation to attempt to resolve the matter with theemployer “as soon as practicable” but if the matter is not resolved and “the employee believes on
reasonable grounds that the work is likely to cause serious harm to him or her” the employee may
continue to refuse work.
The right is qualified by s.28A (5) which provides that an employee may not decline work that: “becauseof its nature, inherently or usually carries an understood risk of serious harm unless the risk has
materially increased beyond the understood risk.” This provision ensures that those engaged inparticularly hazardous work (such as firefighters) are not at liberty to decline what are (for them) normal
duties.
Rights of Participation
Spieler also draws a connection between the right to protest or refuse dangerous work and the core rightto freedom of association which she says gives rise to the right to organise and “the choice to “stay andfight” rather than to quit.” It could be inferred that this gives rise to a right on the part of employees toparticipate in decisions that affect their health and safety. As noted already, the Robens report was, tosome extent, predicated on the continued predominance of the male-dominated, unionised blue-collar

140

At 99.
As above 99.
142
BB Ltd v Dohrman (2006) 7 NZELC 98, 436 (ERA).
141

98

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):workplace of post war Britain. In that environment, trade unions provided a ready-made mechanism forparticipation in identification, monitoring and enforcement of health and safety rights.
By the time New Zealand came to adopt a similar model, union density here was already trending
downwards, especially in the private sector. Since then, our statutory participation provisions have been
through a couple of iterations. The purpose of participation in the current scheme, as set out in s.19A of
the HSE Act is for “all persons with relevant knowledge and expertise” to “help make the place of work
healthy and safe” and for employers engaged in making health and safety decisions to have the benefit of“information from employees who face the health and safety issues in practice”.
Section 19B requires every employer to provide “reasonable opportunities” for employees “to participate
effectively in ongoing processes for improvement of health and safety in the employees’ places of work”,
but what is reasonable depends on a range of factors, including the number of employees, the number andgeographic spread of work sites, the type of work and work systems, “the likely potential sources orcauses of harm in the place of work” and the willingness of employees and unions to develop employee
participation systems.” In the event that a functioning health and safety committee or health and safety
representative makes a recommendation regarding health and safety in a place of work, the employer
must either adopt the proposal or provide a written statement to the health and safety committee or healthand safety representative setting out the reasons for not adopting the proposal.
It is suggested that these protections, which have been in place since 2003, are considerably weaker than
the right to active participation that Spieler seemed to be supporting. They are, indeed, weaker than theprovisions they replaced, which required employers to involve employees in the development of healthand safety procedures.
Monitoring and Enforcement: the Role of the StateThe role of state parties in relation to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights(ICESCR) was the subject of high level consideration in 1986 when the International Commission ofJurists, the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights of the University of Limburg and the Urban Morgan
Institute for Human Rights at the University of Cincinnati brought together a panel of academics andUnited Nations personnel to discuss the implementation of the ICESCR. This exercise produced the“Limburg Principles” which Jochnick and Petit have described as “an authoritative summary of the stateof international human rights law” at that time.143
However, Dankwa et al. consider the Limburg Principles to be only a “first effort to substantiate themeaning of violations of economic, social and cultural rights”.144 Ten years later, the subject was revisitedwhen a similar group produced the “Maastricht Guidelines” (the Guidelines).145 As with the Limburg
Principles, the Guidelines were intended primarily for use by the Covenant Committee (to aid theinterpretation and application of the ICESCR) but also provide a tool for use in the interpretation andapplication of other domestic and international human rights instruments.146
143

Chris Jochnick and Javier Mujica Petit (1999) 2 Yale Hum Rts & Dev L J 209 at 212.
Victor Dankwa, Cees Flinterman and Scott Leckie “Commentary to the Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights” (1998) 20.3 HRQ at 710
145
Alston et al “Maastricht Guidelines,” above n 12, at 691.
146
Dankwa, Flinterman and Leckie, above n 144, at 705.
144

99

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):The overarching theme of the Guidelines is the continuing need for states to acknowledge the legitimacyof economic, social and cultural rights. Guideline 2 reiterates that “as a matter of international law, thestate remains ultimately responsible for guaranteeing the realization of these rights”.147 A similar point ismade in Guidelines 4 and 5, respectively, which provide that “states are as responsible for violations of
economic, social and cultural rights as they are for violations of civil and political rights” and that failure
to comply with economic, social and cultural obligations under the ICESCR (and other instruments) is aviolation of those treaties.148
Guideline 6 breaks down state responsibility into component “obligations to respect, protect and fulfill”(a characterisation of what states are required to do which is attributed to Special Rapporteur Asbjorn
Eide).149 The separate obligations are explained in the following way:150
Like civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights impose three different types ofobligations on States: the obligations to respect, protect and fulfill. Failure to perform any one of thesethree obligations constitutes a violation of such rights. The obligation to respect requires States torefrain from interfering with the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights. Thus, the right tohousing is violated if the State engages in arbitrary forced evictions. The obligation to protect requires
States to prevent violations of such rights by third parties. Thus, the failure to ensure that private
employers comply with basic labour standards may amount to a violation of the right to work or theright to just and favourable conditions of work. The obligation to fulfill requires States to takeappropriate legislative, administrative, budgetary, judicial and other measures towards the full
realization of such rights. Thus, the failure of States to provide essential primary health care to thosein need may amount to a violation.

The first component, the obligation to respect, correlates to what is often regarded as the predominantfeature of “negative” rights. In the context of workplace health and safety, it would restrict any activity on
the part of the state which might undermine or reduce workplace health and safety, arguably including
action by the state in its capacity as a major employer.
The second, the obligation to protect, comes in to play in relation to the actions of third parties. As Sarah
Joseph says:151
The ‘protection’ obligation corresponds with the state’s obligations to prevent or punish human rights
violations by non-state actors. Such obligations are discharged by the enactment and enforcement oflegislation, and the taking of reasonable steps to appropriately control the actions of private entities.
The latter obligations are important in the arena of labour rights, given the increasing dominance inmost countries of the private sector over the availability of work.

The employment related example set out in the Guidelines is, of course, specifically relevant for our
purposes. It illustrates the application of the guideline by asserting that the state is required to act to147

Alston et al “Maastricht Guidelines,” above n 12, at 691.
As above.
149
Dankwa, Flinterman and Leckie, above n 144, at 705.
150
Alston et al “Maastricht Guidelines,” above n 12, at 691.
151
Joseph, above n 18, at 335.
148

100

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):ensure that employers do not breach workers’ rights, such as rights to work and to reasonable conditions,which include safe conditions.
As discussed already, the New Zealand HSE Act imposes on employers a general duty to take allpracticable steps to ensure the safety of employees at work 152 as well as duties to identify and manage
hazards.153 A breach may be prosecuted by the Department of Labour and will be classified as an
infringement or offence depending on how serious it is, and on the level of knowledge the employer hadof the risk involved.154 Sanctions extend to imprisonment of up to two years.
In practice, however, the Department of Labour prosecutes only a small proportion of accident cases, andwhile few prosecutions fail, it is rare for sentences imposed by the courts to utilise the full range ofpenalties available. Although a maximum fine of $500,000 is possible, the highest fine awarded to date(in Department of Labour v Fletcher Concrete and Infrastructure Ltd t/a Stresscrete) was less than halfthat. That fine was imposed after a crane rope broke, causing the lifting beam to fall and kill a worker
below.155 It was found that the company knew that the crane required a replacement part and also knewthat without it the rope was at serious risk of breaking. (A quote for the necessary part had been sought
and arrived the day of the fatality.) Nonetheless, workers were instructed to continue to operate the cranein order to avoid production losses.
The third element, the obligation to fulfill, is linked to the duty to work for the progressive realisation of
economic, social and cultural rights.156 Dankwa et al. consider that this duty requires states to be proactive in respect of “legislation, administration, budget and the judiciary”.157
In the context of workplace health and safety, this may mean that the state has an obligation to provide(along with effective enforcement mechanisms) specialist technical advice and services relating toinspection, monitoring, and reporting. The legislation required to deliver all this would seem to be inplace in New Zealand. The HSE Act provides for the imposition of codes of practice and regulations,158
the warranting of inspectors with rights to enter and inspect workplaces, 159 the issuing of improvement,
hazard and prohibition notices,160 and powers for coroners to call for reports into fatal accidents.161
However, whether the system is adequately administered and resourced may be another matter, as will be
discussed below.
Guideline 7 deals with obligations of conduct and result that run through all three of the elements justdiscussed. The guideline provides that:162

152

Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, s. 6.
Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, ss 7, 8, 9 and10.
154
Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, ss 49 and 50.
155
Department of Labour v Fletcher Concrete and Infrastructure Ltd t/a Stresscrete DC Papakura CRN 05000000763, 26
March 2007.
156
International Convention on Cultural, Economic, and Social Rights, art. 2(1).
157
Dankwa, Flinterman and Leckie, above n 144, at 705.
158
Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, s 20.
159
Sections 29, 30, 31, 32 and 33.
160
Sections 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, and 45.
161
Section 28.
162
Alston et al “Maastricht Guidelines,” above n 12, at 693.
153

101

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):The obligations to respect, protect and fulfill each contain elements of obligations of conduct andobligation of result. The obligation of conduct requires action reasonably calculated to realize theenjoyment of a particular right…The obligation of result requires States to achieve specific targets tosatisfy a detailed substantive standard.

Dankwa et al. note that the conduct obligation is consistent with the idea of progressive realisation, andsignals a departure from earlier notions that placed most emphasis on outcomes.163 They also suggest thatit emphasises the “permeable, intertwined and equal nature” of rights.
In respect of workplace health and safety, the obligation of conduct will include effective monitoring andassessment, capture and benchmarking of data on accident and mortality rates, and the adoption of plans
to maintain or reduce accident rates. Obligations of result will require states to meet appropriate targets
that have been set in this way.
Also of particular relevance to this discussion are Guidelines 9 and 10 that relate to minimum coreobligations and availability of resources. Guideline 9 provides that:164
Violations of the Covenant occur when a State fails to satisfy what the Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights has referred to as “a minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of,at the very least, minimum essential levels of the rights…

Guideline 9 also provides that these obligations apply whatever level of resources is available to the state
concerned. Guideline 10 reinforces this principle with the comment “resource scarcity does not relieve
States of certain minimum obligations in respect of the implementation of economic, social and culturalrights”. As Dankwa et al. put it, states which have taken on the legal obligations set out in the ICSCR
must ensure provision of the minimum core: “under all circumstances, including periods characterized byresource scarcity”.165
So how is our own track record in meeting these obligations?
In April 2012, in the wake of the Pike River disaster, the government established an Independent
Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety (the Taskforce). It was charged with conducting a fullstrategic review of the workplace health and safety system.166
In September 2012, the Taskforce issued its consultation document: “Safer Workplaces”.167 Presented
largely in the language of management and economics, with rights and duties rarely mentioned, it showedno sign of having been informed by a rights-based perspective. Instead, it suggested that employers are to
be incentivised and influenced to provide safe working conditions, and drew attention to the cost of lost
productivity compared to the cost of health and safety protections.168 The Terms of Reference for the163

Dankwa, Flinterman and Leckie, above n 144, at 711.
Alston et al “Maastricht Guidelines,” above n 12, at 694.
165
Dankwa, Flinterman and Leckie, above n 144, at 705.
166
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety “Strategic Review of the Workplace Health and Safety System”<www.hstaskforce.govt>.
167
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety, above n 10.
168
At 79-81.
164

102

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):Taskforce also required it to “identify the net and gross fiscal and economic costs and benefits of ourrecommendations and, if applicable, how they should be financed”.169
More promisingly, however, this is how it describes the role of government: “…government sets the rulesof the workplace health and safety system and determines the approach that is taken to enforcing theserules and the level of resourcing provided for support, guidance and enforcement activities”.170
It also makes three points about effective regulation which are consistent with the approach set out inGuidelines 8 to 10. The first is that a regulator must have a clearly defined role and functions. Mention ismade of the new Australian Model Health and Safety Act 2011 which sets out, in greater detail, than ourown (or any previous Australian legislation) what a regulator must do in respect of monitoring andreporting, and in respect of provision of advice and information.171 The second is that the regulator must
operate within a legislative framework that will enable performance of the role and functions. 172 Finally,
the point is made that the system must have the capacity and capability to deliver.173
The Report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety (the report) was issued in
April 2013.174 A full discussion of the work of the Taskforce is outside the scope of this paper, but a brief
overview of the report indicates that the existing health and safety regime in New Zealand is unlikely tocomply with the Maastricht Guidelines.
The report notes our poor health and safety performance compared to other countries, which adopted the
Robens model, and describes the existing New Zealand model as “Robens Light” in part because ofresource constraints that dated from its implementation.175 While the report continues to see that model assound, it identifies a number of key weaknesses of the New Zealand system.176 These include confusing
regulation,177 a weak regulator,178 poor worker engagement and representation,179 poor data andmeasurement,180 insufficient oversight of major hazard facilities,181 and a lack of support for small andmedium enterprises.182
To address these issues, the report recommends the enactment of new workplace health and safety
legislation based on the Australian Model Law.183 This would include strengthened provision for, andpowers of, worker representatives.184 It proposes making the “reasonably practicable” test more explicit
169

As above.
At [14].
171
At [74].
172
At [75].
173
At [73].
174
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety “Report” (April 2013) <hstaskforce.govt.nz/documents/report-ofthe-independent-taskforce-on-workplace-health-and-safety-pdf>.
175
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety, above n 174, at 20.
176
At 21.
177
As above.
178
At 22.
179
At 24.
180
At 30.
181
At 33.
182
At 34.
183
At 47.
184
At 57.
170

103

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):and strengthening the legal framework for worker participation. The report also recommends that theobject of the new legislation should include:185…a principle to inform duty holders and regulators on the level of health and safety being sought. We
need to adopt the principle in the Model Law that “workers should be given the highest level ofprotection against harm to their health, safety and welfare from hazards and risks arising fromwork…as is reasonably practicable.

The report also recommends the establishment of a new regulator: a health and safety agency withstatutory independence, legislative and monitoring functions and tripartite governance. 186 It does not shy
away from acknowledging that more resources are needed in this area. It specifically recommends that,over a two to three year period, the ratio of frontline inspectors to workers be lifted from the current 0.84
per 10,000 workers to the mean level in Australia (1.07 per 10,000 workers).187
This paper has sought to make the case that (subject to appropriate definition) safe and healthy work is ahuman right. It appears that this right has not been adequately respected, protected, and fulfilled in New
Zealand. While the recent Taskforce has not adopted a rights-based approach to its review of workplace
health and safety, it has identified a pressing need for the state to establish and resource an effective
framework to support, monitor and enforce the safety of New Zealand workplaces.
If the Taskforce recommendations are adopted, it will be a significant step toward securing the right tosafe and healthy work for all New Zealand workers.

Conclusion
Hazards and diseases at work are major causes of death and impairment. The development of a global
economy is compounding these problems in the medium term, as the size, influence and mobility ofmultinational corporations make workers just as vulnerable to abuses of power by these entities ascitizens are to abuses of state power. Legal remedies based on the contractual nature of the employment
relationship obscure the fact that many workers have no choice about taking unsafe, unhealthy jobs.
This makes a rights-based approach an increasingly attractive strategy to combat abuse, exploitation anddanger on the job. The suggestion that workers’ rights are human rights is supported by positivist,
instrumental and normative analysis. At least some labour rights will meet the tests of moral weight,
stringency, universal applicability and timelessness. A human rights approach is also grounded in thebasic premise that labour is not a commodity and frames workplace issues in terms of human dignity andequality.
However, difficulties in establishing consensus around which labour rights amount to human rights has
led the ILO to prioritise a narrow group of four core rights. These four rights mirror relatively
uncontroversial civil and political rights and impact on the formation and composition of the labour
185

At 52.
At 47.
187
At 120.
186

104

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2):market rather than its operation. Matters relating to working conditions are excluded. They are regarded
as social rights, at most, or as claims that should be left to bargaining.
Health and safety issues relate to working conditions and do not, therefore, fall within the core group.
This paper, however, argues that a case can be made for the inclusion of health and safety in the corefour. This argument is based on an assertion that the right to safe and healthy work meets the four tests set
out above and is a matter of the right to life, dignity and equality. Finally, it can be argued that, like theother core rights, it is essentially a process right, in that it is about retaining the capacity to have a place inthe workforce.
However, it is acknowledged that the right needs to be carefully defined if it is to be elevated to corerights status. It is crucial to identify its boundaries and component elements. The current review of New
Zealand’s statutory health and safety framework provides an opportunity for us to establish that a safe andhealthy workplace is indeed a human right.

105

New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116

Corporate Manslaughter – does it have a place in NZ law?
ANNE-MARIE McINALLY*
There can be no more fundamental work right than the right not to be killed atwork.
Sadly, this right is denied to many New Zealand workers with persistent regularity. Most
dramatically in recent years was the explosion of the Pike River mine on 19 November 2010, which
resulted in the deaths of 29 workers.
The Royal Commission on the Pike River coal mine tragedy1 concluded thateven though the company was operating in a known high-hazard industry, the board of directors did
not ensure that health and safety was being properly managed and the executive managers did notproperly assess the health and safety risks that the workers were facing. In the drive towards coalproduction the directors and executive managers paid insufficient attention to health and safety andexposed the company’s workers to unacceptable risks.2

As a result, 29 workers lost their lives.
The commission called for “legislative, structural and attitudinal changes”.3
This paper addresses one aspect of that challenge – how do we hold companies and their senior
managers responsible for workplace deaths? Are we sending the right message to those responsible
for workers deaths? Do our laws reflect this? Or is there a need for change?
In approaching these issues, I will review the current legislative framework, including those changes
on the horizon in Bill form. Secondly, I will look at the approach taken to corporate manslaughter in
the United Kingdom and Australia. Thirdly, I will consider what we can and should do, now, torespond appropriately to instances where companies cause workers to be killed.

The Current Legislative Framework
Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992
The Commission on the Pike River Tragedy considered the Health and Safety in Employment Act
and noted that there is a need to pay legislative attention to company directors whose responsibility
for health and safety is not currently recognised in legislation.
The object of the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 is:4*

LLB(Hons), Solicitor, NZ Engineering, Printing & Manufacturing Union [EPMU]

1

Graham Panckhurst, Stewart Bell and David Henry Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy Te
Komihana a te Karauna mot e Parekura Ano Waro o te Awa o Pike (October 2012).
2
Volume 1, at 12.
3
Volume 1, at 35.
4
Health and Safety Act 1992, s 5.

106New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
to promote the prevention of harm to all persons at work and other persons in, or in the vicinity of, aplace of work by –a)promotingexcellenceinhealthandsafetymanagement,inparticularthrough promoting the systematic management of health and safety; andb)defining hazards and harm in a comprehensive way so that all hazards and harm are covered,including harm caused by work-related stress and hazardous behaviour caused by certain
temporary conditions; andc)imposing various duties on persons who are responsible for work and those who do the work;andd)setting requirements that –i)relate to taking all practicable steps to ensure health and safety; andii)
are flexible to cover different circumstances; ande)…
f)recognising that successful management of health and safety issues is best achieved throughgood faith co-operation in the place of work and, in particular, through the input of thepersons doing the work; andg)providing a range of enforcement methods, including various notices and prosecution, so as toenable an appropriate response to a failure to comply with the Act depending on its nature andgravity; andh)prohibiting persons from being indemnified or from indemnifying others against the cost offines and infringement fees for failing to comply with the Act.

The Act creates a general duty on every employer to “take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of
employees while at work”.5,6
To understand the flavour of the HSE Act, two definitions are important to note: firstly, “seriousharm” includes death7; and, secondly, “all practicable steps” means the steps it is reasonably
practicable to take in the circumstances, having regard to the nature and severity of the harm that
may be suffered, the current state of knowledge about the likelihood of harm of that nature andseverity, the current state of knowledge about the means available to achieve the result and the likely
efficacy of each of those means, and the availability and cost of each of those means. 8 This is anobjective test, and the obligation to take all practicable steps applies only to circumstances that theperson knows or ought reasonably to know about.9 The focus of the Act is on foreseeable andpreventable harm, with an emphasis on prevention rather than punishment.
How, then, does it deal with situations where the employer fails to take all practicable steps andworkers are killed? There are two offences under the HSE Act and section 49 deals with offences
likely to cause serious harm, providing:
Where a person who, knowing that any action [or failure to take any action] is reasonably likely tocause serious harm to any person, takes the action [or fails to take the action]… contrary to a
provision of the Act, then the person is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not morethan 2 years; or a fine of not more than $500,000 or both. 10

For this most severe offence under the HSE Act, the offender must have failed to meet therequirement of taking all practicable steps and must have knowledge of the reasonable likelihood ofserious harm.
5

Section 6.
Sections 15, 16 of the Act also impose general duties on employers to ensure employees actions or inaction do not harm
any other person and extend these duties to people in the workplace or its vicinity.
7
Section 2.
8
Section 2A.
6

9

Section 2A(2).
Section 49.

10

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116

Section 50 of the HSE Act, on the other hand, is targeted towards breaches of duties under the Act
where knowledge of the likely harm does not have to be established.11 For those offences, one isliable to a fine not exceeding $250,000 and there is no potential for imprisonment.
A point to bear in mind about the offences under the HSE Act is that the emphasis is on the offenderhaving created risk (whether knowingly or unknowingly). The offences do not focus on theconsequences of the offender’s actions or inaction, and the degree of harm that has occurred is only
one of the factors to be taken into account in sentencing.12
Nowhere in the HSE Act is there an offence that singles out for punishment an employer whose
action or inaction causes workers deaths. While such offences could be captured by either s49 ors50, those offences are more diffuse and do not reflect, by language or penalties, the public
opprobrium with which killing is generally met.
Health and Safety Reform Bill
The Health and Safety Reform Bill is due to be introduced into parliament in December 2013. It has
been a year in the making and reflects a new emphasis, in the wake of the Commission on Pike
River.
The purpose of the Bill is described at section 3:(1)
The main purpose of this Act is to provide for a balanced framework to secure thehealth and safety of workers and workplaces by –(a)protecting workers and other persons against harm to their health, safety, andwelfare through the elimination or minimisation of risks arising from work orfrom specified types of plant;(b)providing for fair and effective workplace representation, consultation,
cooperation, and resolution of issues in relation to work health and safety; and(c)encouraging unions and employer organisations to take a constructive role inpromoting improvements in work health and safety practices, and assisting
persons conducting businesses or undertakings and workers to achieve ahealthier and safer working environment; and(d)promoting the provision of advice, information, education, and training in
relation to work health and safety; ande)securing compliance with this Act through effective and appropriate
compliance and enforcement measures; and(f)ensuring appropriate scrutiny and review of actions taken by persons
performing functions or exercising powers under this Act; and(g)providing a framework for continuous improvement and progressively higher
standards of work health and safety.
(2)
In furthering subsection (1)(a), regard must be had to the principle that workers andother persons should be given the highest level of protection against harm to theirhealth, safety, and welfare from hazards and risks arising from work or from specified
types of plant as is reasonably practicable.13

11

Section 53 makes it a strict liability offence, with no need to prove the defendant intended the action or inaction that
constitutes the offence.
12
Section 51.
13
Health and Safety Reform Bill (192-1), cl 3.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
The emphasis in the HSR Bill is slanted towards viewing enforcement measures as a tool to achievecompliance. Neither the HSE Act nor the HSR Bill aims to punish for punishment’s sake.
The Bill’s use of a standard of providing the highest level of protection as is “reasonably practicable”
is new and represents a shift from the current “all practicable steps” test.
“Reasonably practicable” means:that which is, or was, at a particular time, reasonably able to be done in relation to ensuring
health and safety, taking into account and weighing up all relevant matters including –a. the likelihood of the hazard or the risk concerned occurring; andb. the degree of harm that might result from the hazard or the risk; andc. what the person concerned knows, or ought reasonably to know, about –i.
the hazard or the risk; andii.
ways of eliminating or minimising the risk; andd. the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimise the risk; ande. after assessing the extent of the risk and the available ways of eliminating or
minimising the risk, the cost associated with available ways of eliminating or
minimising the risk, including whether the cost is grossly disproportionate to therisk.14

It can be seen that the tenor of the Bill remains preventative, but the shift in emphasis given to cost
factors signals less tolerance for sub-optimum standards of care.
The HSR Bill also introduces the concept of “a person conducting a business or undertaking” (a“PCBU”) and imposes on a PCBU stringent and specific duties that flesh out the “reasonably
practicable” requirement and which emphasise an intention to have work environments without risks
to health and safety. 15
This sharper focus on eliminating sources of potential harm is complemented by an obligation on
officers of PCBUs. Section 29 of the Bill is a clear response to the call for action from theCommission on Pike River. It provides:
1. If a PCBU has a duty or an obligation under this Act, an officer of the PCBU16 must exercise due
diligence to ensure that the PCBU complies with that duty or obligation.
2. In this section, due diligence includes taking reasonable steps –a. to acquire and keep up-to-date knowledge of work health and safety matters; andb. to gain an understanding of the nature of the operations of the business or undertaking of
the PCBU and generally of the hazards and risks associated with those operations; andc. to ensure that the PCBU has available for use and uses appropriate resources andprocesses to eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety from work carried out as partof the conduct of the business or undertaking; andd. to ensure that the PCBU has appropriate processes for receiving and considering
information regarding incidents, hazards, and risks and responding in a timely way to that
information; ande. to ensure that the PCBU has, and implements, processes for complying with any duty or
obligation of the PCBU under this Act; and14

Clause 9.
Interestingly, there are specific duties on PCBUs who design plant, substances or structures. This is perhaps areflection of the widespread concern about the design of the CCTV building that collapsed during the Christchurch
earthquake.
16
An officer is defined in section 4 of the Bill and means a company director; any partner in a partnership; or in moreloosely structured organisations, any person in a position comparable to that of a director of a company and it includes
anyone who makes or participates in making decisions that affect the whole or a substantial part of the business of the
PCBU such as the chief executive or a chief financial officer.
15

109New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116f.

to verify the provision and use of the resources and processes referred to in paragraphs (c)to e).

In addition to those obligations on officers of PCBUs, the HSR Bill proposes three new offences.
The most serious of these is where a person has a health and safety duty under the Act and,without reasonable excuse, engages in conduct that exposes any individual to whom that duty is owed
to a risk of death or serious injury or illness; and is reckless as to the risk to an individual of death orserious injury or illness.17

Under this offence, the proposed penalties are graduated, depending on the status of the offender.
For individuals, there would be a maximum term of imprisonment of five years or a fine notexceeding $300,000 or both. For an individual who is a PCBU or an officer of a PCBU, themaximum five years imprisonment is retained but the maximum fine increases to $600,000. And fora body corporate, there would be a fine not exceeding $3 million.
For an offence of failing to comply with a health and safety duty that exposes an individual to therisk of death or serious illness or injury, without the element of recklessness, there is no
imprisonment and the fines proposed are $150,000 for individuals, $300,000 for a person who is a
PCBU or an officer of a PCBU; and for a body corporate, a fine not exceeding $1.5 million.18
The proposed fines reduce further to $50,000 for individuals, $100,000 for PCBUs and officers of
PCBUs and $500,000 maximum for a body corporate convicted of a simple breach of a health andsafety duty.19
Whereas the current HSE Act offence under section 49 is concerned with the knowing creation ofrisk, the HSR Bill calls for a subtly different inquiry into whether the offender has created a risk towhich an individual is exposed and the offender is reckless as to whether the potential harm ensues
from that risk.
Under the HSR Bill, the penalties for directors and senior managers who cause workplace deaths
would be more substantial than those available under the current HSE Act.
The Crimes Act 1961
No review of the legislative framework in the area of workplace deaths is complete without
considering the criminal statute.
The Crimes Act 1961 defines homicide20 as the killing of a human being by another, directly or
indirectly, by any means whatsoever. Under section 160(2) homicide is culpable when it consists inthe killing of any person by an unlawful act; or by an omission without lawful excuse to perform orobserve any legal duty; and culpable homicide is either murder or manslaughter, the penalty forwhich is life imprisonment.21

17

Clause 32.
Clause 33.
19
Clause 34.
20
Crimes Act 1961, s 158.
21
Section 177.
18

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
While greater than what is currently available under the HSE Act, a potential penalty of five years
imprisonment under the HSR Bill, even with a substantial fine imposed, is a relatively low level
penalty compared with the potential outcome of a conviction for manslaughter.
One may, therefore, question whether a corporate killer and the senior management of companies
who kill should continue to be treated more leniently than a private citizen who commits
manslaughter.
Crimes (Corporate Manslaughter) Amendment BillThe Crimes (Corporate Manslaughter) Amendment Bill (“the Corporate Manslaughter Bill”) is a
private members’ Bill that has been put forward by Andrew Little, MP. The purpose of the Bill is to
add the offence of corporate manslaughter to the Crimes Act 1961. The general policy statement at
the commencement of the Bill summarises it thus:
Corporate manslaughter is culpable homicide when committed by a body corporate. It will be a chargethat is appropriate to situations where the actions or omissions of the directors or senior managers of abody corporate cause a person’s death when those actions or omissions amount to a gross breach of a
relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased. The introduction of this charge
remedies a gap that currently exists in New Zealand law, as demonstrated by the Pike River Mine
tragedy.22

This Corporate Manslaughter Bill proposes that an organisation will be guilty of an offence:
if the way in which any of its activities are managed or organised by its senior managers causes a
person’s death and amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to
the deceased.23

A “relevant duty of care” means any duty of care which, but for the accident compensation system,
may be said to exist as a matter of law, whether the law of negligence or any other law. 24
Under this Bill there will be a “gross breach” of a duty of care if the conduct alleged to amount to abreach of that duty falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation in thecircumstances.25
In terms of penalties for the offence of corporate manslaughter, the Bill proposes that an organisation
be liable to a maximum fine of $10 million; that any senior manager whose acts or omissions
contributed materially to the offence be liable to imprisonment for up to 10 years; and that the Court
have the discretion to make a “publicity order” requiring the organisation to publicise, in a specified
manner, the fact that it has been convicted of the offence; specified particulars of the offence,
including the names and positions of any senior managers who are convicted; and publicising theamount of any fine or term of imprisonment imposed. Orders would specify a time in which theymust be complied with and may specify the manner and form of publication including whether
publication should be in the organisation’s statutory or other annual report.26
This private members’ bill goes significantly further than the HSR Bill in holding companies andtheir officers accountable for workplace deaths; and it represents a substantial departure from the twoyears imprisonment and $500,000 fine available under the HSE Act.
22

Crimes (Corporate Manslaughter) Amendment Bill (Draft for Consultation) (explanatory note).
Proposed s 177A.
24
Subs (3)(b).
25
Subs 3(c).
26Section 177A.
23

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116

Whereas the HSR Bill requires evidence that the accused person has recklessly exposed theindividual to a risk of death, the Corporate Manslaughter Bill (CMB) shifts the focus from riskcreation to the occurrence of harm. Under the CMB, liability accrues because there has been conduct“far below” what can reasonably be expected. While this is evaluated objectively against the standardof what a fair and reasonable employer would be expected to have done in the circumstances, it also
carries a nuance of disapproval of those who fall far below reasonably expected standards. And by
avoiding the need to show recklessness, the Corporate Manslaughter Bill adopts a more objective test
that is more likely to be able to be enforced.
The United Kingdom
The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 (CMCHA) abolished the common
law offence of manslaughter by gross negligence in relation to organisations covered by the Act. 27
Prior to the Act coming into force in April 2008, there were prosecutions under the common law but
the great majority failed to secure convictions because of the difficulty of identifying an individual towhom blame could be attributed. The larger the company, the harder that task became. Most of theliterature in this area focusses on that shortcoming in the common law and contrasts this with theapproach under the CMCHA.
New Zealand’s Corporate Manslaughter Bill mirrors some aspects of the CMCHA, mostsignificantly in the definition of the offence and in the adoption of the concept of publicity orders.
For that reason, those provisions are not duplicated here.
However, the CMCHA also utilises “remedial orders” by which the organisation can be required to
remedy the breach in issue or “any deficiency, as regards health and safety matters, in theorganisation’s policies, systems or practices of which the relevant breach appears to the court to be
an indication”.28
The CMCHA has the same definition of “gross” breach of a duty of care as appears in the NZ
Corporate Manslaughter Bill. That is, that there is conduct that falls far below what can reasonably
be expected. But in addition, it requires the jury to consider whether the evidence shows that theorganisation failed to comply with any health and safety legislation that relates to the alleged breach
and, if so, how serious that failure was and how much of a risk of death it posed.
This intertwining of the general health and safety law with the offence of corporate manslaughter isinteresting. It both reinforces acceptable standards of conduct and acknowledges there is perceived to
be a difference between general health and safety offences and the over-arching crime of killing
people at work.
In addition, the jury may also consider, when deciding if there has been a gross breach of duty, theextent to which the evidence shows that there were attitudes, policies, systems or accepted practices
within the organisation that were likely to have encouraged any such failure or to have produced
tolerance of it.29
These considerations indicate a seismic shift from the common law search for responsible individuals
who can be said to embody the mind of the company, and allow an aggregation of responsibility that27

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 (UK), s 20.
Section 9(1)(c).
29
Section 8.
28

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
may have its source at a systemic level of the organisation, spread amongst a number of individuals
no one of whom is individually responsible for the failings but whose collective shortcomings giverise to fault on the part of the organisation.
The CMCHA provides that an organisation that is guilty of corporate manslaughter or corporate
homicide (as it is known in Scotland) is liable to a fine. The level of fines is open ended andaddressed through sentencing guidelines.
Australia
Like the UK, Australia has, at times, invoked common law corporate manslaughter charges, withequally little success. Taylor and MacKenzie30 have summarised that the position in Australia
regarding corporate manslaughter remains similar to the UK’s pre-CMCHA position, except as
regards the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and it is extremely difficult to successfully prosecutecorporations due to the frequently insurmountable difficulties associated with identifying a seniorindividual in the corporation who is or was both the “directing mind” of the corporation and someone
also personally guilty of the crime of gross negligence manslaughter.
In R v Denbo Pty Ltd31 the company was prosecuted, under the common law, when one of its drivers
was killed when his truck’s brakes failed. It was found that the company’s vehicle service record wasappalling. The company pleaded guilty to a charge of corporate manslaughter so a conviction
resulted, and it was fined $80,000. But overall, achieving a conviction under the common law isdifficult, with good cause: It has been said that:
The criminal law was not developed with companies in mind. Concepts such as mens rea and actus
reus, which make perfectly good sense when applied to individuals, do not translate easily to an
inanimate fictional entity such as a corporation. Trying to apply these concepts to companies is a bit
like trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.32

In 1995, the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act introduced the notion of corporate liability into
Australian law, but the Code only applies to Commonwealth offences, and manslaughter is not a
Commonwealth offence. Only in the ACT has industrial manslaughter legislation been introduced,
other States having considered and rejected similar proposals.
The ACT’s Crimes (Industrial Manslaughter) Amendment Act 2003 makes it an offence if a worker
dies in the course of employment and the employer’s conduct causes the death of the worker; and theemployer is reckless about causing serious harm to the worker or negligent about causing the death.
The maximum penalty for this offence is 20 years imprisonment.33
There is also an offence by a senior officer of an employer if that senior officer’s conduct causes thedeath of the worker and the senior officer is reckless about causing serious harm or negligent about
causing the death. This, too, carries a maximum penalty of imprisonment for 20 years.34,35

30

Des Taylor and Geraldine Mackenzie “Staying focused on the big picture: Should Australia legislate for corporate
manslaughter based on the United Kingdom model?” (2013) 37 Crim LJ 99 at 106.
31
R v Denbo Pty Ltd (1994) 6 VIR 157.
32
James Gobert and Maurice Punch Rethinking Corporate Crime at 10, as cited in Rick Sarre “Sentencing thoseconvicted of industrial manslaughter” (paper presented to National Judicial College of Australia Sentencing Conference,
Canberra, February 2010).
33
Crimes (Industrial Manslaughter) Amendment Act 2003 (ACT, Australia), s 49C.
34
Section 49D.
35
A senior officer is a person occupying an executive position who makes or takes part in making decisions affecting all
or a substantial part of the functions of the entity: see section 49A.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
Interestingly, where there is a conviction of corporate manslaughter, under the ACT Act, the Court
may (as in the UK and as proposed in the NZ Corporate Manslaughter Bill) order the company topublicise the offence, the deaths and the penalties imposed.
But it may also, alone or in conjunction with other penalties, require the company to “do statedthings or establish or carry out a stated project for the public benefit even if the project is unrelated tothe offence”.36
The cost of compliance is capped at $5,000,000, including any fines, and the court must take into
account the financial circumstances of the company. 37
The carrying out of a project by way of making amends to the community is potentially a powerfultool to provide a legacy for those whose lives were lost; to stand as an ongoing caution and deterrent
to other companies; and to make a meaningful response to the killing in circumstances where acompany is cash-strapped or, at the other extreme, so substantial that a fine has little impact.
While it is yet to be tested, I suggest the ACT Act has harnessed a suite of responses to the whitecollar crime of corporate killing that should prove flexible, robust and effective whatever thecircumstances of workplace deaths.

Options for New Zealand to Consider
The HSE Act is aspirational. It sets out to promote excellence in health and safety management and it
is not particularly prescriptive about how this will be attained. Such standard setting is a legitimate
function of legislation that can influence community attitudes over time.
But some members of society require more than gentle persuasion. Thus, deterrence plays a role in
our law-making. Companies that kill must know that they are likely to be held accountable and thatthe consequences will not be desirable. The senior office holders in such companies must receive themessage that they will be personally responsible for their actions and inactions if workers are to bemade genuinely safe at work.
Wong38 notes that some commentators believe that the existence of the HSE Act renders otiose theneed for a corporate manslaughter offence. They contend that the only added advantage of such an
offence is stigma. One can imagine that this refrain is likely to be heard even more loudly in light of
the increased levels of fines and duration of imprisonment available under the HSR Bill. But sightmust not be lost of the value of stigma in society. It has its place. As Wong observed, current
legislation fails to properly reflect the moral outrage that the community feels when a death occurs
through the gross negligence of the employer, and fails to reinforce the notion that all workplace
fatalities are unacceptable.39
Similarly, there is intolerance in society for the idea that companies are beyond the reach of the law.
Almost 170 years ago Lord Denman CJ remarked that:36

Section 49E(2).
Section 49E(4),(5).
38Jonathan Wong “Corporate Manslaughter: A proposed Corporate Killing Offence for New Zealand” (2006) 12
Canterbury Law Review 157.
39
At 167.
37

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
There can be no effectual means for deterring from an oppressive exercise of power for the purpose ofgain, except the remedy by indictment against those who truly commit it, that is the corporation,acting by its majority; and there is no principle that places them beyond the reach of the law for suchproceedings.40

Sarre41 points to the way in which white collar crime has increasingly been captured by the reach of
the criminal system, and he considers that causing death in the workplace is another type of whitecollar criminal activity for which the offender should be held accountable. It is a view this writer
endorses.
But he has identified a limitation in the way we tend to punish companies who break the law. The
problem is that fines do little or nothing to address the wrongdoing if they are not paid. In R v
Denbo, for instance, a fine of $80,000 was levied against the company for causing the death of atruck driver. But at the time of its conviction, Denbo was in liquidation. The company was wound up
six months before sentencing and never paid the fine. Later, it was reborn as another company andrecommenced operations. The successor company did not pay the fine either. In reality, no one washeld accountable for the worker’s death.
Again, in 2006, Lydia Carter died at a work function at a go-kart track in Victoria. Her seatbelt did
not fit properly and safety barriers were incorrectly installed. The company was convicted and fined$1.4 million but it had already gone into liquidation and will never pay the fine.
A similar problem arose in New Zealand following the Pike River tragedy when substantial
reparations were ordered to be paid to the families of the deceased, in relation to offences under the
HSE Act, but the company had gone into liquidation and shareholder companies refused to assume
the burden of liability for that cost.
Nothing in the common law or the legislation considered in this paper, including the two Bills, fully
addresses this concern. The conviction and sentencing of individual office holders may go some way
towards ensuring tangible results from a successful prosecution, but it is timely to consider how
companies can be prevented from escaping the consequences of their actions. Perhaps we need toconsider a prohibition on going into liquidation in circumstances where a company is facing
prosecution, or a mechanism whereby reparation orders and fines take priority in the distribution offunds from such companies. Innovative thinking by both company and criminal lawyers and otherdisciplines is needed to ensure that responsibility is sheeted home when companies kill.
In a similar vein, we should not adopt an escalating scale of fines without working through thebenefits and drawbacks. For instance, it would not necessarily serve the public good if a fine is so
substantial that the company is forced into liquidation with subsequent job losses. But Taylor andMackenzie42 have made the point that, when we look into this area of the law, the quantum of fines is
not the issue. They say that the purpose of the (UK) legislation is not to increase the fines that can be
imposed … its purpose is to make the prosecution of corporations for corporate manslaughter easierand more likely to be successful.43
This, surely, needs to be New Zealand’s main objective too. The formulation of the offence in the
Corporate Manslaughter Bill would meet that objective. As to sentencing options, publicity orders
40

R v Great North of England Rly Co (1846) 9 QB 315 at 327 cited by Rosemary Craig “Tho shall do no murder: a
discussion paper on the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007” (2009) 30(1) The Company Lawyer
17 at 20.
41
Sarre, above n 33.
42
Taylor and Mackenzie, above n 31.
43
At 108.

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New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 39(2): 106-116
naming responsible individuals within an organisation may go some way towards holding companies
genuinely accountable, and deterring other companies from indulging in a similar lack of care forworkers safety. This is a feature of the Corporate Manslaughter Bill that is noticeably absent from the
HSR Bill.
Thought should also be given to the ACT option of requiring the organisation to carry out a projectof benefit to the community, but I would suggest it is also desirable to impose such an obligation on
individual office-holders in the event that the company has ceased to exist or if the Court thinks, forother reasons, that it is desirable to do so.
Arguably, the HSR Bill’s potential for officers of a PCBU to face up to five years imprisonment will
provide a deterrent effect. So, too, would the potential for imprisonment of up to 10 years under the
Corporate Manslaughter Bill. The mechanism of imprisoning senior managers has the potential toachieve accountability on the part of those responsible for workplace deaths even if the company
itself goes into liquidation.
It is time for the introduction of an offence of Corporate Manslaughter in New Zealand. This does
not mean that there is no place for the proposals in the HSR Bill. But there are instances, like thekilling at Pike River, that cry out for greater accountability than the health and safety legislation
provides. Corporate killing should be criminalised and the Courts empowered to hold criminal
employers to account.
But we can do better even than the Corporate Manslaughter Bill. We have the opportunity to glean
from other jurisdictions ways in which convictions can best be assured and penalties meted out thatare appropriate to the offence. We also have an opportunity to rethink what can be done aboutcompanies that go into liquidation to avoid being held accountable.
One thing is certain, in a country like New Zealand, with such a poor record of workplace deaths, weare poorly served by legislation that has proven to be ineffectual in responding to those events. We
have a responsibility to every worker and their families to send out a clear message that corporate
killing will not be tolerated or met with lenience.
We cannot bring back the Pike 29. But we have no excuse to tolerate a legislative framework thatfails to hold companies who kill to proper account. An offence of corporate manslaughter is long
overdue.

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