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Speaker 1: So Janative Shreni is The Herald's Wellington Business editor and

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Speaker 1: he's been looking at the story.

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Speaker 2: Hello, hi Andrew, how are you doing very good?

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Speaker 1: So to zero? So the minister is wanting to reduce

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Speaker 1: your money that an employee can get. But what if

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Speaker 1: the complaint has been upheld? You know, and Bori decided

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Speaker 1: it's zero. Do they not get money even though their

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Speaker 1: complaint has been upheld? This seems weird?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So basically, if you're an employee, you

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Speaker 2: can take your employer to the employment relations authority or

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Speaker 2: the employment court and you can bring forward a personal grievance.

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Speaker 2: So that's if you think you've been unfairly dismissed or

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Speaker 2: you know, harassed or humiliated or something like that in

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Speaker 2: the workplace, you can take take your complaint forward. Now,

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Speaker 2: the authority or the court could uphold your complaint. They

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Speaker 2: could say, yes, Janay, that's fine, you know you have

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Speaker 2: been treated badly by your employer. But what Brooke van

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Speaker 2: Valden is saying is that she reckons the authority in

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Speaker 2: the court should be able to discount the amount that

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Speaker 2: you get paid out if you've actually done something bad

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Speaker 2: as well in the process so currently that's the case.

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Speaker 2: Let's say I'm dismissed because I perform really poorly. Currently

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Speaker 2: they can say, well, you're not going to get the

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Speaker 2: full pay up because you actually haven't been a very

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Speaker 2: good employee. What she's saying is that if you've done

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Speaker 2: something really bad like stolen or hurt somebody, your employer

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Speaker 2: doesn't need to pay you out at all. So the

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Speaker 2: authority in the court can say, yes, actually you're you know,

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Speaker 2: you've been unfairly dismissed, but you've acted so badly your

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Speaker 2: employer doesn't need to pay you anything.

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Speaker 1: So as the idea will she have to will have

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Speaker 1: to therefore schedule all the various complaints that employee employees

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Speaker 1: can have off employers and vice versa, so that we

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Speaker 1: know exactly whether you're a zero, you're whether you're a

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Speaker 1: ten buck, or whether you're a one thousand.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. So currently the court and the authority

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Speaker 2: has some discretion to discount the amount that you get

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Speaker 2: paid out. But she wants to tweak the law to

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Speaker 2: say that actually, if the employee employee has engaged in

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Speaker 2: serious misconduct, now that has some sort of legal definition

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Speaker 2: serious misconduct, then you get nothing there's another thing that

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Speaker 2: she wants to change here, whereby if reducing the sort

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Speaker 2: of compensation you might get for hurt and humiliation again

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Speaker 2: if your behavior contributed towards the dispute. So there's already

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Speaker 2: a bit of a scale here where, you know, because

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Speaker 2: these things are never clear cut right. Often it's you know,

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Speaker 2: a bit of give and take, and it's a bit

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Speaker 2: of this and that, and the court and the authority

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Speaker 2: can already use that scale. But she wants to tip

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Speaker 2: things very much in favor of employers because she thinks

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Speaker 2: people are sort of taking the mickey a little bit,

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Speaker 2: and you know, and this is creating uncertainty and hurting businesses.

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Speaker 1: And whenever people, whenever people make these sorts of accusations

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Speaker 1: and they say we're doing this, you say, well, have

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Speaker 1: you got evidence? Has Brook van Alden van Velden got

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Speaker 1: evidence of employees exploiting personal grievances because there's money tree

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Speaker 1: at the end of it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's that is a good question. And you know,

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Speaker 2: she's just referred to some anecdotal evidence. For example, she

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Speaker 2: said there was a case where you know, no names

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Speaker 2: or anything, just where someone worked in health care they

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Speaker 2: abused a patient and then they got their job back

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Speaker 2: at the end of it. She said, well, that's that's

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Speaker 2: not on. But the thing here is that, you know,

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Speaker 2: if you do have a personal grievance, it still costs

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Speaker 2: you money to take it forward in most cases, depending

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Speaker 2: on you know, sorts of legal services you have access to.

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Speaker 2: So I guess the unions would argue that actually, as

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Speaker 2: an employee, you might already be on the back foot.

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Speaker 2: You don't want to cause a saga and go through

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Speaker 2: all that stress and everything unnecessarily. So the unions say, well,

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Speaker 2: there's already power and balance. But then the employers groups

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Speaker 2: they say, well, you know, Andy, and employers shouldn't be

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Speaker 2: penalized if they just did their paperwork incorrectly or did

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Speaker 2: something minor, but the employee actually did the bad thing,

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Speaker 2: like the employee actually didn't turn up to work or

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Speaker 2: punch somebody at work or stole. So it's a pretty

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Speaker 2: heated debate. I think it's actually it's quite complicated.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very abstract and very hard to actually quantify.

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Speaker 1: And you know, the employers feel like sitting ducks and

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Speaker 1: they feel that they're being exploited, and the employees feel

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Speaker 1: like they're just pawns at the end of the day

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Speaker 1: again getting exploited and so there we go. An interesting story.

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Speaker 1: Thank you Jane Janet de Breshani, who is our Wellington

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Speaker 1: Business editor. For more from Heather Duplassy Allen Drive, listen

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Speaker 1: live to news talks. It'd be from four pm weekdays,

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