Nothing highlights the scumbag subservience to corporate interests by ACT and National better than their bullshit response to Helen White’s remarkable private members bill that will stop corporations from enslaving their workers…
Put simply, the clauses, which are increasingly common, restrict an employee who quits a job from working in the same or a similar role for a competitor.
Traditionally, they have been used where an employee holds trade secrets or knowledge of clients that it would be unfair for a rival business to obtain.
As such – as noted in the United States – you might expect to see them imposed on senior executives or workers in high-tech industries. However, they are increasingly popping up among doggy-daycare workers, hairdressers and yoga instructors.
In New Zealand you can add baristas at Starbucks to the list.
They are particularly prevalent in individual employment agreements. We do not keep records of individual agreements, but in the US and Australia they appear in about one in five agreements.
White, who was an employment lawyer for 25 years, has prosed some key restrictions in her bill.
It would ban NCCs from applying to those earning less than three times the minimum wage. Currently that would be $141,648 a year.
Above that figure they would be allowed, but the employer must have a definite proprietary interest to protect. The employer would have to pay half the former worker’s salary for the duration of the restraint, which could be no more than six months.
It would not limit or change the existing common law duties of confidentiality or fidelity, so it would not mandate open slather on taking information to a rival business.
At the moment many NCCs are unenforceable, but it is expensive for individual workers to challenge them in court. They have a chilling effect on anyone planning to move to a new job with better wages or conditions, as well as on anyone looking to recruit new staff. Not being able to work in your area of expertise for perhaps six months is too high a hurdle for many.
Beyond the limited roles where they are clearly justified, they are bad for current employees, future employers, the economy and the flexibility of the labour market. NCCs widely used would stifle job mobility and competition, curb wage rises, and limit employers’ access to the job market.
In the US, 40% report turning down a job offer from a competitor because of one.
On the weight of all that, you might expect National and ACT would take a nuanced stance towards White’s bill with a view to improving it – especially lowering the very high $141,000 threshold.
Wrong.
National’s Paul Goldsmith did concede there was a kernel of an issue around excessive restraints and said National might consider a better bill, but not this one.
ACT’s Chris Baillie went full-naive, ignoring the inherent power imbalances in employment relations, ignoring the limits NCCs place on labour market mobility, and tuning a blind eye to the fact that most individual agreements are written by an employer’s lawyer.
“What happens now when a business needs a worker and a worker needs a job is they have a meeting, they work out what’s fair, agree to the terms of employment and sign a contract. Then they shake hands and they start work,” he said.
…what fucking planet does Nation and ACT live on?
Fantasy Island?
That’s not how it goes in the real world when you are desperate for a job, the Bossman has all the power and locking you into trade deals that screw your ability to advance is one step away from indentured slavery!
Why the fuck should Starbucks or McDonalds be able to chain you to them forever?
That National and ACTs immediate position is to defend the Corporations right to enslave you highlights the kind of Government they will champion!
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Sounds bad.
But less bad than apartheid.
Said the chief turd polisher for NatAct. Were you screaming apartheid when National oversaw co governance initiatives?
But OK if its brown at the back of the bus.
I just watched our bullshitting future PM address the funding for infrastructure. Good chance it will be owned by the Chinese. It is f’ing laughable that these a’holes freak out about any debt for the future but no problem that you are owned by someone else, and have a massive influx of cheap foreign labour that will want to settle here ( though he denied that of course). He then in his typical right wing, supposedly not woke approach, screamed xenophobia when that fact is pointed out. Tosser.
I suspect that you are correct regarding the future PM although his honeymoon in the job won’t last very long when he has to handle the increased problems, while there is division now I can only see an increased divide with their control.
Chris Baillie is talking total crap. He has clearly never had to sit down and negotiate for a job. Job seekers will agree to almost anything when they need jobs. If they have to bring in lawyers, which few can afford to do, they’re already starting off on an adverse foot. Goldsmith was always a simplistic fool.
Hats off to Helen White. This is an issue where a decent Human Rights Commissioner could be invaluable, if we had one.
Someone needs to start a trade union faction that isn’t just a lapdog of the liberal political machine, and start electing some proper union leaders.
When you support ACT, like Anker does. This is the shit that you sign up with.
Does Anker really feel comfortable with slapping NCC’s on bar workers, shelf stackers and call centre operators.
Obviously she does. No right wing policy is too evil for her, as she is determined to crush those LGBT’s once and for all.
What utter crap. How can National fuck up this country ane more than Jacinda, chippy and this bunch of fuctards.
Labour are destroying your country and you fuckwits want more of it..
Fill ya boots!… I’m off!
Well make it quick Dude, nurses now teachers have got the biggest pay rises in history. The most important people are being looked after, after years of National fucking our country. Labour are finally starting to get us on track so fuckwits like you leaving will make NZ a better place and take Bob with you, he’s one less liar to have to put up with.
6 Years of waiting and strikes a drop in their polling dragged Labour to commit to pay roses .Labour have not made any friends on the way especially the way the nurses were treated by Andrew Little.
While the increases are good they are still short of what is needed to keep nurses and teachers from going to Australia or promoting their jobs to friends as worth joining their ranks
bye Felecia!
“Non-Compete Clauses” to use the full term, are already rampant in NZ.
I know from family members that work in graphic design production work, and the “companion animal” industry, one at Animates and a friend who is actually a dog groomer, that their contracts (not union agreements) state they agree that they cannot work for a competitor, or start a business in the industry for X months to 2 years.
Go to Aus dude hope you don’t get sick you will have to come running back and join our que for health treatyment.
They “all” serve corporate and financial interests over the interests of the people. If there is one difference, it is that the Left may have to hold their nose to some of the crap they end up doing, but they end up doing it nonetheless. Politics is broken, suggesting that only one side has coursed this damage irresponsibly lets the other side off the hook.
Comments are closed.