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Labour Party on Employment
Labour strongly supports the rights of workers to bargain collectively. Labour policy says, “Since its earliest days, Labour has had the protection of workers’ rights as a founding value... We believe that employment relations legislation should recognise that the balance of power and influence between workers and employers is not equal and the best way to redress this imbalance is to promote collective bargaining as the preferred means of establishing the rights and obligations of workers”. It “will amend the Employment Relations Act to provide greater statutory support for multi-employer collective bargaining”.
Labour supports increasing the minimum wage and had planned to announce an increase in this campaign, but changed its mind due to the global financial crisis. A spokesperson says, “While current economic conditions have meant we are unable to commit to increase the minimum wage to $15 during the next parliamentary term, we are committed to increasing it each year by the greater of the increase in CPI or the increase in the average wage”.
Labour does not support a three month probation period. Leader Helen Clark said in July 2008 that the policy amounted to the "right to fire workers at will policy" and was "worse than the Employment Contracts Act which didn't go down that track". A party spokesperson says, “Current legislation does allow employers to take on new employees for a trial period, where it is agreed between the employee and employer and there is a clear about what is expected from the employee”.
Labour does not support the fourth week’s annual leave being able to be negotiated away.