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allow employers to fire at will workers who are unjustifiably dismissed and earn more than $200,000 - they cannot access a personal grievance process for unjustified dismissal.
I don't understand what is being said here, especially "allow employers to fire at will workers who are unjustifiably dismissed".
Isn't someone "unjustifiably dismissed" someone who is fired without cause? Are they saying currently you can fire at will with cause and this will allow without cause as well?
It reads like an editing error... or unedited at least.
My read is that in a case of unjustified dismissal (being fired for no reason) and the employee earns $200k+ they cannot use a personal grievance to contest the dismissal.
Ah ok, so what kinds of things would be no longer possible to contest vs what could still be fought?
Is it like if you get fired for catching your colleague committing fraud then you can fight it (but only for cash not to be reinstated if I understand correctly) but if you get fired for poor performance you can't fight it (not even to say you didn't have poor performance)?
I have no idea. I'm not sure who is being targeted with the 200k limit either... the vast majority of (the most vulnerable) employees in NZ are nowhere near that.
It's only for employees earning over $200k right? I'm assuming they are making it easier to ditch upper management and CEOs as needed, without needed a full redundancy process.
Loophole though, can't you just do a pay review, bump them up over $200k, then fire them? I haven't read the Act, but if you are on $190k and your employer doesn't like you, I'd still be worried for your job.
My somewhat cynical take is that this is to get a foot in the door. Once the policy exists, it's much easier to lower the threshold than it is to introduce it at a lower point. After all, only a small percentage of the population will be earning over $200k, so not much reason to protest.
First they came for the people earning over $200k, and I did not speak out for I did not earn over $200k. Then they came for the people earning over $150k.....
Even easier, they don't have to change the threshold, worse case scenario they just wait, a larger and larger proportion will be above $200k each year due to inflation and wage growth.
Wage growth in line with inflation?
Bwahahahahahaha!
Wage growth historically is higher than inflation! It's why National (or was it Act?) promised to index NZ Super to inflation - because inflation is generally lower than wage growth and Super was already indexed to wages. People vote for it because it sounds good even though it's actually worse.
From what I can find, inflation long term sits a little under 2% with wage growth sitting a little over 2% per year. The last few years are bad measuring sticks though.
I wonder what the distribution of that what growth is over the wave range.
My cynical suspicion is that most of that growth is at the upper end... I.e. the people at the low end, most affected by inflation, don't keep up.
I suspect you're right. When we bargain (healthcare decay) we get percentage increases. So people on a higher wage get a larger increase than those on a lower.
I think a good way to test this is to look at minimum wage.
Since 1997, when minimum wage was $7, it has grown to $23.15 in 2024 (sorry, the data I used only went to 2024 and I didn't think to grab the 2025 number).
The "average" here is 4.9% per year. I use "average" in quotes as it's the value needed each year to reach the end number (the Compound Annual Growth Rate), not actually an average. I used this calculator: https://cagrcalculator.net/
High end civil servants....that is it.
The current govt wants to be able to fire highly paid people in various roles without having to go through the courts for a whole bunch of them.