KEY POINTS:
Business New Zealand's broad welcome to proposed amendments to the Employment Relations Act was tempered by one concern. The changes could, in fact, make matters worse if they produced prescriptive rules or inflexibility, warned chief executive Phil O'Reilly. His anxiety was warranted.
The proposals, which provide minimum meal
and rest breaks for all workers and give women the right to breastfeed their babies at work, could prove counterproductive if they impose too great a degree of compulsion. This could introduce tensions, timekeeping or unintended consequences into workplaces, the vast majority of which have coped quite easily without such legislation.
The new law will make it compulsory for employers to provide a minimum of two 10-minute paid rest breaks and a half-hour unpaid meal break during a standard eight-hour day. That, as Mr O'Reilly suggests, is "very uncontroversial". The crucial point is that the legislation must not make it mandatory for workers to take those breaks. Employees must retain the flexibility to stay at their place of work if they so wish, for whatever reason. This understanding is implicit in the collective agreements that currently govern rest and meal breaks for most workers. These acknowledge that some people feel the need to take such breaks, while others are content to work through with little or no respite.
Fully 93 per cent of collective agreements provide for breaks. For most workers, therefore, the law change will be largely academic. But in some non-unionised workplaces, in particular, there is no such provision and staff may feel pressured to work without breaks. The Government suggests many of these businesses are in the service and manufacturing sectors. Typically, they seem likely to be small concerns, in which a limited number of staff and heavy individual workloads make it important for employees to be at their desks or benches as much as possible.
This may suit some people. For others, it is a cue for stress and dissatisfaction. Kudos for pitching in for the good of the business go only so far. Employees in such workplaces should have the same right to minimum breaks as workers who operate under standard collective agreements. It is fair that they are enshrined in the law.
More problematic is the right for women to breastfeed at work. Employers will need to provide private facilities and breaks for breastfeeding where reasonable and practical. It is not difficult to see this being a big imposition on small businesses. Space may be tight and a special room a considerable problem. In such instances, reasonableness and practicality must be critical, and the law must not be inflexible.
The shortcomings do not end there. While the right to breastfeeding might encourage some women to return to work, those able to take advantage of it are likely to be either among the better off or those doing a significant job. Such women could have their children brought into work for feeding, or delivered from a nearby creche. That situation is unlikely to apply to unskilled workers.
It is perhaps surprising that meal and refreshment breaks are not already guaranteed in law. That probably suggests little need was seen for it. The vast majority of employers recognised that breaks were beneficial for staff morale and long-term productivity. It does no harm now, however, to plug any gap, provided the new law is not tainted by inflexibility. The same yardstick must apply to breastfeeding. Reasonableness must be the foremost factor for both employer and employee.
