Written By: - Date published: 4:13 pm, July 7th, 2008 - 94 comments
Categories: national, same old national, workers' rights -
Tags: 90 day bill
In perhaps the most unsurprising announcement of the year, National has let slip it’s going to maintain its 90 day no rights policy, which basically means your boss can sack you for whatever reason he likes within the first 90 days of your employment.
Don’t be fooled by the spin there’s already a provision for probationary employment in the law provided there is a fair process. National simply wants to remove the fair process.
They’ve softened it a little
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there are going to be some safety mechanisms to ‘prevent exploitation’, but as usual there’s nothing on their website outlining what this would mean in practice or how a sacked minimum wage worker would enforce their rights.
It’s also been restricted to small businesses with fewer than 20 staff, which are ironically some of the worst employers and where workplace protections are needed the most. This would also apply to seemingly large employers like Subway, whose smaller individual franchisees would be free for example to sack an autistic worker for taking a sip of a free cup of coke. I guess that’s what National means when they talk about ‘giving opportunities to those at the margins of the labour market’.
It must be remembered that while all you hear from National these days is criticisms about how hard it is for average Kiwis to buy cheese and pay for petrol, the one workplace policy they’ve come out with would make it harder for workers to improve their pay.
We tried this path before and for most workers it meant wages failed to keep up with the cost of living because their rights at work had been stripped away from them. The result was our low wage economy, our lagging productivity and the opening up of the 30% wage gap with Australia. I’d be interested to hear why National thinks it would be any different this time.
Word is the Nats are going to release some more workplace relations policy over the next couple of weeks while Parliament is in recess. If the past is anything to go by they’ll be nothing more than bullet points filled with say-nothing words like ‘flexibility’ and ‘choice’. Call me old-fashioned, but I think working people deserve a little better than that.
[Oh and for anyone tempted to whinge about the personal grievance 'gravy train' have a read of this DoL report (PDF). Turns out it's a myth.]
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Billy,
Thanks. I thought I was going to get all the way through this thread without someone making that point exactly. It would be idiotic for someone to create this 89-day merry-go-round with employee after employee.
Anyone who’s had the responsibility of hiring new staff will attest to the fact that it’s a pain in the butt and the last thing anyone wants is more interviews and reference checks.
I’m sure if you graphed staff retention rates and productivity rates, they correlate quite nicely. Institutional knowledge and all that.
vto: “the workers would all vote for a party with a 50% pay rise policy every election and business be damned.”
Reductio ad absurdum. All but the most economically illiterate (or rabidly socialist, amounts to the same thing) workers can see the collateral effects of such huge changes; it’s categorically not the same as resisting a change which, for a small benefit to employers visits significant harm on employees; especially those already most poorly-paid and treated (see below). What I’m talking about isn’t a change: it’s resisting a change. Inertia is on the workers’ sides here.
Billy/Scribe: “What is it you guys think employers are going to do? Employ a series of people for 90 days and sack them at the end of it?”
Yes.
“So they get the full benefit of the first 90 days of the employees’ employment (when they don’t know shit and you have to spend half of your own time explaining what they have to do).”
Doesn’t follow. You seem to be under a delusion that all jobs are unique, beautiful flowers. In my industry and some others that’s largely true, but there’s plenty of generic work: once you’ve worked 89 days behind one bar, on one roading/forestry/labouring gang, behind one reception desk, in one data-entry farm, you’ll find it pretty easy to pick up any other. Hence the popularity of temping agencies. (and yes; I’ve done all these jobs, and more, except roading and forestry).
Please tell me you’d genuinely not thought of this and aren’t just faking innocence? I thought you guys were some of the decent ones.
L
Lew,
What advantage to the employer is there in sacking someone who is perfectly capable of doing one of the non-flowering jobs and taking a risk with someone new?
I have yet to meet an employer who enjoys the process of sacking or employing people. I do not understand why one would voluntarily submit oneself to that process. And what the employer would be gaining as a result.
I am in moderation. My comment contained no links and no reference to porcine carnal knowledge.
“I spent 6 months working in Ireland a while ago. I only got my job because of the probation period and a lot of other employees were the same. Essentially we were a range of foreigners with limited relevant experience. Most of us stayed in employment after 90 days but two absolutely useless lazy plonkers got the boot and were replaced with two Chinese immigrants that hadn’t been able to find work until then.”
I think Oliver’s comment above highlights how this policy could improve access to employment for some people.
Consider those with convictions or a chequered employment history who employers might normally stay clear of because it’s too difficult to dismiss them later. At least this policy might encourage some employers to give more people an opportunity to prove themselves.
Lew,
If National gets in, and this policy is implemented, please get back to me in 12 months’ time and we’ll discuss this again. I will gladly eat humble pie if it is as dire as you suspect.
Maybe it’s my middle-manager status that makes me have faith in others in similar circumstances to treat people with respect. Maybe I’m naive. Maybe both.
Please tell me you’d genuinely not thought of this and aren’t just faking innocence? I thought you guys were some of the decent ones.
Aw, Lew — group hug. The feeling’s mutual; nice to discuss issues without the mudslinging some people get into.
captcha: combined jacket. I like you, Lew, but maybe not that much
Billy: The point is not that they would sack them, the point is that they could, and this fact explicitly trades off employee rights for employer rights.
It means an end to job security, because employees can’t be sure they have a job 90 days from now. The implications of this are explained by elementary game theory.
Wages and conditions in these workplaces would freeze, since because employees know they can be replaced by others on the same 90-day conditions on the (starting) those new employees will be preferred on the ground of input cost reduction.
From this would flow an end to merit-based progression: if employees are unwilling to bite the bullet and accept real wage stagnation or reductions by being a `good employee’ they won’t be offered the opportunity to progress to supervisory or managerial roles. This is a form of Peter Principle, whereby those who are mediocre (and will accept wage freezes) get promoted, though they’re not necessarily the best employees.
This will have a long-term deleterious effect on productivity, though it will take time to show since the initial wage freeze will provide an apparent productivity boost, but the effect of long-term productivity shrinkage is further cost-cutting and wage-cutting and concessions to businesses who are `feeling the pinch’.
Ultimately this is short-termism.
L
Scribe: “If National gets in, and this policy is implemented, please get back to me in 12 months’ time and we’ll discuss this again.”
I don’t think it’ll bite in 12 months; I think it’ll bite in the medium term. But: accepted. Loser buys the winner a pie of their choice. Shall we call the test real median wage stagnation in the listed jobs at the time of the 2011 election?
“Maybe it’s my middle-manager status that makes me have faith in others in similar circumstances to treat people with respect.”
Hah. It’s my status as a reluctant manager which makes me not have faith in businesses (it’s not people we’re talking about here) to treat people with respect!
L
“The point is not that they would sack them, the point is that they could, and this fact explicitly trades off employee rights for employer rights.”
I still do not see what incentive the employer has to sack an employee unless they’re just not up to the job.
“It means an end to job security, because employees can’t be sure they have a job 90 days from now.”
I thought it was only for the first 90 days. In which case it would be true that there is no job security for the first 90 days. Thereafter the same security employees now enjoy.
And I think the rest of your nightmare scenario falls down for the same reason: after 90 days it’s business as usual.
Lew,
Shall we call the test real median wage stagnation in the listed jobs at the time of the 2011 election?
No, that sounds too complicated. It sounds like it would require one of those graphs Steve creates that make my head spin.
How about we call the test “loudness of moaning from people being screwed over by this new legislation”?
captcha: vulgar Work. Yep, but someone’s gotta do it.
lprent,
Help! Your infernal machine thinks I am D4J or someone. My lucid comments keep being moderated.
Scribe: “How about we call the test “loudness of moaning from people being screwed over by this new legislation’?”
It sound a bit vague, but ok
L
Billy
Exactly.
Even the job of stuffing random prize cards into Weetbix packets has some level of skill, some level of learning about the role and the culture of the organisation. Now why would you want to chance upsetting something like 2m children because the ‘new guy’ thought that when you said each card has a ’1 in ten chance of winning’ that you wanted 1 card in every 10th box…. No…
It’s the ‘You can’t wear that tie’ example that is Reductio ad absurdum. Pity so many people have no idea what really goes on in the ‘nasty side’ of the employer/employee relationship.
Scribe/Billy.
Why is it that you feel the policy delivers something useful/necessary?
I agree that in the majority of cases things will probably continue as they always did – people will not be fired/let-go/whatever.
Presumably you want employers to have the ability to fire workers who are slack/stupid/bad workers.
They already DO have that ability.
What National is proposing is that employers can fire workers for whatever the hell reason they like.
Explicitly stated, Nationals policy is:
“Employers will have the right to fire employees for reasons that are totally unfair, unfounded, and the result of petty bitterness”.
Why is it a good idea to give employers the right to be jerks?
Bryan Spondre
I can’t read that either. Tane can read it, he must have the user/password or already be authorized to read that based on his network logon. I wonder which it is….
I’ve been in the position of hiring people in a small business. And I found it pretty simple – after the interview we asked them to come in for a day/afternoon, with no obligation on either party to continue afterwards. (We’d pay them for their time of course)
It wouldn’t work for all jobs. Some might best be suited by asking for a sample of their work. But it isn’t like employers have to go into the situation blind – it is their choice to hire a person after all, and if they turn out to be a rotten apple they can fire them under present law anyway.
Giving employers the right to fire for whatever reasons they want for 3 months is just madness.
T-rex,
Because lots of employers are unwilling to take a chance on a potential employee out of fear of getting the wrong person. This is because, despite your technically correct claim that an employer can sack someone who is useless, the process is so tedious and the consequences of getting it wrong so heinous, many of them just prefer not to take the risk. And the more factors going against the potential employee (poor English, criminal record etc.) the less likely the employer is to take the risk.
And no-one has yet been able to explain to me why it would be in an employer’s best interest to sack a good employee for whom the employer had work after 90 days and replace him or her with an untested employee. I need to understand what that employer’s motivation would be.
Yay. No moderation.
George,
I doubt your one afternoon’s probation is legal. Did you follow a fair procedure with those you chose not to employ on a full time basis? Did you sit them down and explain the areas in which their performance was deficient? Did you give them an opportunity to improve?
Billy – agreed – if that was a problem it would be reason to have a policy of streamlining the process and clarifying appropriate reasons for dismissal.
You’re a strong advocate of an employers protection from bad employees (which already exists, even if it is in a cumbersome form) yet you’ve no reservations about sacrificing an employees protection from a bad employer?
A couple of reasons I can imagine a BAD employer firing a good employee; reasons I consider completely inappropriate, reasons I think an employee should be legally protected from dismissal for.
1) Employee is gay
2) Employee is muslim
3) Employee votes Labour
4) Employee turns out to be friends with employers ex
The list goes on (and please nobody get on my case about making assumptions with any of the above, the point is obvious).
These are all bad reasons.
A good employer should not have to worry about being stuck with a bad employee.
A good employee should not have to worry about being fired by a bad employer.
Billy, well this was actually in Australia! But it is still legal in NZ to hire someone on a contract with the option of extending it as far as I know. In this case, the contract is one day, and both sides were quite aware of that fact.
Hi Steve,
Re: Bastiat (way back up the thread)
‘If you want to know something about the moral status of a state action, you have to think, “What would we think about it if a private person did the same thing?”
1. Judicial System: Apparently Bastiat’s greatest work is “The Law”. I dont think that his quote immediately disqualify a judicial system but it certainly does warrant further thought.
2. Military: I think the analogy holds up if as long as the military is used only for defensive purposes.
3. Taxation: I agree, taxation is ludicrous when viewed through the lens of Bastiat’s quote
Billy – there is nothing to stop the employer re-employing the same employee into the same job. If you think this wouldn’t happen then you have obviously never worked in the fast food industry. I have watched dozens of fast food workers have their work rights attacked in the form of things like:
reducing casual hours to the point of effective dismissal
use of a large pool of casual workers to play everyone off against each other for hours (in one case this power was used to extract sexual favours)
workers being forced to work two and, on one occasion I am aware of, three shifts in a row
targeting of “trouble” workers with accusations of theft (in a Dunedin McD’s a few years ago this tactic culminated in the illegal strip search of a worker by her manager)
Just about every time this has happened because someone is deemed to not be a cultural fit or has joined a union/started to complain about conditions. They do this to stop workers organising to get a better deal and more often than not they use management in the form of 20 year olds to do the dirty work for them – think of lord of the flies but with burgers/fried chicken. Now take out the last vestiges of protection these young and naive workers have. Nice.
Bear in mind that many franchise outfits would employ less than twenty people…
George: But it is still legal in NZ to hire someone on a contract with the option of extending it as far as I know.
George, no. Sorry, you’re wrong. If employing someone on a fixed term, there must be a good reason for the fixed term unrelated to the employee’s suitability for the job.
T-Rex, the answers to your arbitrary dismissals is to be found here.
‘Sod: there is nothing to stop the employer re-employing the same employee into the same job.
Don’t tell me National have actually produced draft legislation? Where can I find it?
Um, billy who’s to say the job lasts any longer than the trial? Anyway bro – with a decent youth unemployment rate (and as I recall the Nats got it up around the high 30′s last time around) you’d only need to keep turning the poor buggers down. Or would you limit the number of people who could trial for the one job?
Anyway bro I thought I gave you a pretty good answer to your question:
And no-one has yet been able to explain to me why it would be in an employer’s best interest to sack a good employee for whom the employer had work after 90 days and replace him or her with an untested employee. I need to understand what that employer’s motivation would be.
And an explanation of how it happens even now – so why should we weaken our already under-policed and poor labour laws again?
‘sod, darling, I must have missed the bit where you explained why it would be in an employer’s best interest to run a series of employees on revolving 90 day trials.
As I just explained to George, if you have a job that lasts a limited time, you can already employ them for a fixed term. So no benefit there.
Assuming an employer has a job that needs doing, generally he or she is going to be best served by, I don’t know, getting someone to do it. If someone can show that he or she is up to it, I still do not understand how the employer benefits by getting rid of that person.
In each of the abuses you highlight, there is an advantage to the employer. I still don’t get what it is in this case. But then, I am notoriously thick.
Billy,
It may not be in the employer’s best interest to get rid of every employee at 89 days, but it is in their best interest to be able to hold that threat over every employee.
IMO that is the key problem with the model; it screws up the employer-employee relationship – for the first three months the employer can fire the employee on a whim, and the employee is in by far the weakest position.
Bryan, don’t know why but it’s locked for me too now. it’s just the Stats 1978-2007 productivity report – here’s the link to the title page http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/hot-off-the-press/productivity-statistics/productivity-statistics-1978-2007-hotp.htm
Burt, seeing conspiracies where there are none is a sure sign of paranoia. Assuming the conspirators would be stupid enough to give their conspiracy away in such a fashion is a sure sign of arrogance.
Anita
I think that framing it as “for the first three months the employer can fire the employee on a whim” is getting toward the “I told you not to wear that tie” argument. Is that really what you think this is designed to enable?
In each of the abuses you highlight, there is an advantage to the employer. I still don’t get what it is in this case. But then, I am notoriously thick.
Sigh. When you have the ability to fire any worker in your fast food outlet without prejudice you have the ability to pay them all bugger all and thus the ability to ensure they cannot organise. Keeping rates down by even a couple of dollars an hour could save you eighty dollars a week per worker. Many fast food outlets already do this through keeping the base rate down, squeezing an hour or two of free end-of-shift overtime from each worker, removing breaks, making them wash their own uniforms (or pay for part of them). This “labour cost saving” could be taken even further if resistance can lead to dismissal without redress.
If you’ve got twenty – that’s $1600 a week extra on the bottom line or a little over $83k for the year.
That’s why you would do it. Now what about workers in cleaning firms…
burt,
I’m not saying it’s designed to mean that employers fire people on a whim for wearing a silver tie. It does, however, make that threat possible, along with the threat to fire for not working an extra two unrostered hours, or going to the toilet “too often”, or refusing to work without safety goggles, or …
The point is not whether they are fired, it’s whether they believe that can be and whether that makes them less able to stand up for themselves.
burt: What it’s designed to enable is less relevant than what it could enable.
For those of you, such as Billy, who are operating under some happy delusion that the policy won’t result in exactly this 89-day rolling-contract situation – I suggest you read Wayne Mapp’s unsuccessful bill from 2006. It’s very brief.
L
Burt – that’s the argument that was run by the retarded chimps at Kiwiblog this morning. F*ck off and come back when you have your own line.
Like you even even know what “framing” means – wee parrot burty boy…
Robinsod
I hadn’t been into that thread, I thought it would just be full of left/right wing nut jobs doing their National good, National bad banter. roger nome gets hammered as usual.
However we have been over this fast food thing before. I you think that people at fast food outlets are getting a rough deal, don’t go there or better still – go there and tip the staff that serve you. If you want to see them earn more (and therefore acknowledge that you will pay more for your food) then either choose outlets that pay more than min wage or leave a $2-$5 tip directly in the hands of the people you want to help. You can make a difference, feel empowered by that because it looks like you are farting against thunder opposing National on this policy.
Robinsod
Here is a song ‘Live – Waitress’, get some advertising going, raise awareness of the issue, protest outside fast food outlets, make a difference.