While You Were In Lockdown – Employment Law Changes You May Have Missed

If you spent lockdown managing staff, subsidies and the financial impact on your business, chances are you may have overlooked some important changes to employment law.

With businesses getting back to work, now is a good time to get up to date.  Here are some of the key changes you should know about:

• The minimum wage increased to $18.90 an hour on 1 April 2020.
• The Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Act 2019 will come into force by 28 June 2020. This is where an employee is employed by one company (e.g. a temp agency), but another company directly exercises control over the employee (the controlling third party). Employees will be able to apply to join the controlling third party to an existing personal grievance against their employer. Employers will be able to apply to join a controlling third party to a personal grievance.
• Paid parental leave will increase to 26 weeks for parents of babies due on or after 1 July 2020.
• A new class of “dependent contractors?”. A discussion paper on better protections for contractors was published on 26 November 2019 and closed for comment on 14 February 2020.  This may have been given fresh impetus by the recent Employment Court decision in Leota v Parcel Express, where a driver was declared to be an employee, despite having signed an agreement stating he was an independent contractor.

If you would like to discuss how to ensure you comply with any employment law changes please contact Lucy Nolan.