This article discusses some key legal developments related to Covid-19 and employment law. As will be seen, some legal issues which arose were specific to the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic while others raise more broadly applicable questions which are yet to be resolved. One very clear thread that emerges is that the need for employers to consult and engage with employees in good faith was not negated by the fact of a public health crisis and national state of emergency.

The key legal issues that arose can conveniently be divided under two headings: those related to the economic impact of Covid-19 and those related to vaccination requirements.

This article presents an analysis of the Covid-19 Income Relief Payment (CIRP) scheme that was instituted for a limited time in 2020 to support those who had lost their income as a result of the pandemic. More specifically, it analyses the ways in which CIRP recipients were discursively constructed as deserving of a higher level of support (albeit for a limited time) than that available for other unemployed people and other welfare recipients. To this end, this article conducts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of relevant policy documents, parliamentary debates and media coverage to assess how key actors constructed the deservingness of CIRP recipients, as well as how these constructions were contested by other groups. While the CIRP was positioned as a short-lived response to an exceptional event, the design and the discourses of this scheme reveal how policymakers understand the deservingness of different groups of New Zealanders. It is important to understand these discourses of deservingness, especially as the architects of the CIRP scheme linked it to the development of a permanent scheme for supporting displaced workers. 

This research note uses national survey evidence collected in May 2021 to explore the views and attitudes of employees in Aotearoa New Zealand towards workplace ethics. We compare these findings with data from a previous Ethics at Work employee survey in 2018 to highlight key trends in workplace ethics over time. Results show several improvements over time but also some areas of concern. To show how New Zealand employees have responded during the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 results from Australian employees – as well as the 2021 global results of employees from 13 countries which include both New Zealand and Australia – are also presented. Our findings are discussed through a moral economy framework, which positions employment as a relationship with significant dependencies and mutualities between labour and capital. Importantly, this relationship is intended to enhance human and societal flourishing. We conclude that this framework provides an opportunity to rethink how employment relations in Aotearoa New Zealand might be understood and practised.

The Employment Relations Authority Te Ratonga Ahumana Taimahi (Authority) is the principal adjudicative institution in Aotearoa New Zealand’s employment jurisdiction. This article, which is written from a participant/observer perspective, examines how the Authority, which operates as an “investigatory” rather than a more traditional adversarial tribunal, responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and considers and evaluates what lessons might be learned. It also reflects on the future of the Authority’s expanded collectivist jurisdiction within the context of pandemia and structural economic change.

In times of crisis, organisations implement cost-cutting measures, including retrenchment. Research on employee redundancy often focuses on the processes performed by organisations. This paper, however, reports on the expectations of New Zealand and Australian employees (n=613) during the later stages of the pandemic-lockdown environment, circa late 2021, regarding their organisation’s messaging of imminent redundancy. Employees in both countries indicated that they seek dignity and directness, and to be told face-to-face by their immediate line manager, senior line manager, or CEO that they are being “made redundant”. Interestingly, being told by Human Resources personnel was a least favoured option. This research informs organisations of their organisational justice and corporate social responsibilities in times of retrenchment.

It has been three years since Aotearoa | New Zealand experienced its first nationwide lockdown in response to the global outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. Challenges stemming from the pandemic have been far reaching and pervasive as well as particularly severe in the employment context. Less than a year into the pandemic, Maria Hayes and I published a gender sensitive analysis of some of these challenges, outlining the disproportionate gender impact of various measures adopted to meet the disease.1 Our article showed that, at least in the early days of the pandemic, a raft of gendered inequalities appeared in relation to occupational health and safety risks; the value of care; unemployment; old age; and violence and abuse. Our analysis, moreover, concurred with that of Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman,2 in that it revealed an intersectional negative disproportionate effect on Māori and Pasifika women.
Overall, while the Aotearoa | New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic was largely effective in containing the outbreak until the vaccine rollout could be implemented, we found that its policy response distinctly lacked gender analysis which, in turn, contributed to widening the gender equality gap.3 We argued that the Covid-19 pandemic represented a crucial juncture and an opportunity for rethinking accepted labour standards and concepts under a gender lens. Based on our analytical reflections, we invited reflections on the relation between the economy and employment law and, in particular, we supported the reassessment of the value of work with a view to include production on an equal basis with reproduction.

In the context of a community-based participatory project, we interviewed 84 community support workers to explore their experiences through the Covid-19 pandemic; participants highlighted significant workplace health and safety (WHS) concerns that either arose during, or were heightened due to, the pandemic working conditions.  Participants detailed their efforts to activate employee voice mechanisms across the ‘staircase of voice’ (Wilkinson et al., 2010).  However, despite significant efforts to employ these mechanisms, participants’ messages were not received.  This reinforces the importance of both workplace and societal conditions that support both the delivery and receiving of employee voice messages (Romney, 2021).  Within the context of significant gendered regimes and poor societal perceptions of care work, the effectiveness of voice mechanisms was diminished, leading to significant erosion of WHS conditions.

The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model suggests that job resources can buffer the detrimental effects of job demands. This remains untested in New Zealand within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic leaving researchers to question the importance of resources and whether the pandemic’s impact means that job demands are not as easily buffered. In this study, we test a moderated mediation model with job demands predicting turnover intentions, flourishing as a mediator and job resources buffering. Using data collected across eight New Zealand organisations in 2021 (N=934), the current study supports the necessity for organisations to take stock of the risk factors associated with job-related demands, and work to provide employees with necessary psychosocial job resources to buffer their effect on flourishing and turnover.

The move towards digital technologies for employee training and development is increasingly imperative for organisations in a globalised and digitally connected society. This trend has been accelerated by a Covid-19 work environment where employers grapple with training and development through remote technologies. Consequently, employees are increasingly expected to make multifaceted decisions about their personal development in an uncertain technological environment. Within this environment, organisations are also under pressure to leverage their digital offerings to be more innovative and strategic. The adoption of digital learning solutions (DLS) for employee learning and development strategy has profound implications for their development and relationship with the organisation. This research note explores the implications of moving towards DLS through strategic reflections from human resources managers in New Zealand. Our findings suggest three critical strategic tensions that dominate HR managers’ thinking on adopting DLS: strategic rationales, organisational imperatives, and cognitive barriers. Finally, we discuss the implications of these critical tensions in technology adoption for employee development and employee relations. 

This study draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with a cohort comprising 31 Samoan CEOs and senior managers across various New Zealand industries to explore the phenomenon of a ‘brown glass ceiling’. The results reveal that Samoans encounter barriers in their career trajectories, hindering or stalling their progression into senior management roles. Our study indicates that cross-cultural differences in communication led to missed opportunities in addition to issues, such as racism, occupational segregation, and tokenism. Notably, some Samoan women experienced interracial and gender discrimination, particularly as afa-kasi (half-caste). Samoan career facilitators included mentorship from ‘white’ New Zealand Europeans, establishing future legacies, and a commitment to embracing their Samoan cultural identity. Our results have significant implications regarding how barriers to the glass ceiling shape and impact the careers of Samoans within New Zealand organisations. Consequently, our study contributes to the existing glass ceiling literature by incorporating insights from indigenous Samoans, who have received limited attention in glass ceiling and management research.

The 2016 Australian census data showed that one in 10 Australians aged 15-24 years was not in education, employment or training (NEET). The assumption that NEET harms wellbeing underpins theoretical and policy discourses on youth disengagement from work and study. However, despite the extensive literature on the profiles of Australian NEET youth, the evidence on the consequences of NEET for future labour force participation and career progression is limited. Using data from the Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset, this study shows that a spell of NEET at ages 15-24 years is significantly associated with reduced full-time employment prospects and increased risks of being out of the labour force at ages 25-34 years. Even if NEETs find a job later in life, they are more likely to end up in low-skilled occupations. Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between full-time and part-time employment while measuring long-term impacts of NEET status. We also showed that some NEETs face higher future labour market risks than others.

This article illustrates how vignettes were utilised as prompts in a semi-structured interview study of multiple job holders during the Covid-19 pandemic, to overcome challenges created by the latent nature of the topic under investigation and the atypical situation created by the pandemic. Our illustrative qualitative study sought to understand how multiple job holders identify their ‘main job’. Three key benefits of using vignettes are outlined. The first of these was the ability for vignettes to encourage participant reflexivity (introspection) in a way that was conducive to ‘unpacking’ a tacit research problem to produce rich data. The vignettes also enabled efficient use of participants’ scarce time, helped significantly by providing an interesting experience rather than a laborious one. Lastly, focusing participants’ attention on the hypothetical vignette situations helped to enable some sense of normality in an atypical context which could have otherwise considerably skewed the data. On this basis, we present vignettes as a useful research tool that other employment relations researchers may wish to employ.

New Zealand was once at the vanguard of international adoption of neoliberalism in labour market policy. However, international institutions have weakened or even reversed their commitment to these ideals over time. In addition, economic theory has moved towards a model that takes account of monopsony and power. Fair pay agreements, briefly introduced and the abolished in 2023, were considered a crucial legislative change, but they cannot be the full solution to the problem of low worker power in New Zealand. Instead, consideration needs to be given to broader factors behind the continuing loss of employee influence. Finally, the concrete effects of neoliberalism are likely much more persistent than the ideas themselves.

Working in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs) is associated with high physical and mental workload for Registered Nurses (RNs) and Healthcare Assistants (HCAs). In particular, workplace-related injuries often accompany manual hazardous tasks that include lifting, holding, carrying, pushing, and pulling. This research aimed to investigate the frequency of manual hazardous tasks and respective physical workloads in kilograms conducted by RNs and HCAs according to shifts and RACF providers to demonstrate the risk level for workplace-related injuries and overloading of the human musculoskeletal system.

Our research showed that RNs implemented 10 high-risk nursing actions and moved 546 kilograms of weight, whereas HCAs experienced a physical workload of 1,175 kilograms and 18 manual hazardous tasks per shift. HCAs are exposed to a 53 per cent higher physical workload and implement 80 per cent more manual hazardous tasks than RNs per shift. The most intense work demand for RNs was during the night shift, while for HCAs, it was the morning shift.

If a health and safety practitioner aspires to be regarded as a professional, they need to be or become “critical consumers” of research, including grey literature that can inform a risk assessment or decision. However, some free-to-access grey literature may be of variable reliability. As part of a continuing research project, some sources of grey literature believed to be reliable are identified and criteria are suggested to enable judgement of reliability of grey literature. A downloadable set of bibliographic records of some grey literature is described that will help search for potentially relevant, reliable documents.