Unite Union hails legal end to zero hour contracts
Unite Union has welcomed the legal end to zero-hour contracts in New Zealand.
This is a product of the successful campaign that Unite Union waged last year to end their use in the fast food industry.
When we named the type of contracts these employers were using as zero hour contracts there was an immediate and overwhelming response from the public and sections of media.
We discovered that probably hundreds of thousands of New Zealand workers were on these contracts. Virtually every family in the country could count one of their members suffering under these contracts. Everyone understood immediately what we were talking about.
We are pleased that the government has backed off from forcing through a law that seemed to legalise these contracts.
By failing to get support for the draft law from their support parties the Maori party and United Future, National was forced to talk to the Labour party on amendments to make the promise to end zero hour contracts a reality.
That appears to be the case now.
The new law will force employers to guarantee some hours. They will also need to have good reason to have an availability clause for additional hours and offer reasonable compensation for that.
Unite Union is proud of the role it has played in achieving this victory.
Regards,
Mike
Unite Union & it’s workers can be justifiably proud.To start from nowhere & unionise a notoriusly difficult group of workers & then go on to a victory which has a huge potential for other groups of workers in different industries is something to cheer about