90-day workplace probation

[MrTTTT]

Proposed changes to extend 90 day fire at will bill not good!!

[ChaosWulf]

Originally Posted by Stuff

The Government is poised to extend the 90-day probation period to all workers starting a new job as part of a major shake-up of labour laws. Other changes expected to be unveiled at National's annual conference this weekend include curbing union access to workplaces by requiring them to first gain consent from employers.
The Government signalled in March that it wanted to extend the 90-day probation period, which allows employers to dismiss new workers within the first three months without fear of a personal grievance, except in cases of sexual, racial or other discrimination. At present, the provision can be used only by companies with fewer that 20 employees, though a discussion document from Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson in March floated the idea of increasing that to 49 workers.
One News reported tonight that the Government was set to broaden this further to include all workplaces.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...to-be-extended

Sure, we all saw this coming a year or two ago, but it still fucking GMG.

[Lightspeed]

I was going to post about how I hate microwaves that don't clearly state their wattage, but your post GMGs much worse.

[TnT]

Originally Posted by ChaosWulf

Sure, we all saw this coming a year or two ago, but it still fucking GMG.

It's interesting how perceptions are so wildly different. I view unions with the same kind of disdain, that unions view employers

[ChaosWulf]

TnT - fair enough
I used to think that unions stopped being useful somewhere back in the 70s, however last year I had a pretty good demonstration as to how they can be utilised today. Most employees will join unions as a last ditch effort when they feel they're being screwed over by an employer, so to then make them go through that same employer to gain consent is a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Add this to a workforce that has practically no protection against sudden "restructuring", with new employers being able to fire at whim within a 3 month trial, and it all starts to add up.
Really pisses me off, as the people who will be most affected by this will be those who can least afford to be.

That last sentence pains me for some reason. Too tired to grammar proper, bro. Not writing good GMG. Sleep soon. Zzzz.

[David]

Originally Posted by ChaosWulf

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...to-be-extended

Sure, we all saw this coming a year or two ago, but it still fucking GMG.

This ONLY grinds the gears of people who do not understand functional business and want to reward incompetence, such as National Certificate of Educational Achievement supporters.

The fact is, it's VERY costly for an employee to hire a staff member. It's so costly in fact that it is simply NOT worth firing someone unless they're negatively impacting your business to such an extent that you have no other option and you're willing to pay a $6k cost in the courts to get rid of them.

Painting employers as nasty people who want no reason at all to fire someone is fucking pathetic, pedantic and grinds my gears, because it's usually from care bear type individuals with left wing views in life - sorry, did I say left wing? I meant socially fucking inept and retarded views in life.

[Ab]

Yeah, I fail to see the gear-grind here. Seems eminently sensible to me.

[ChaosWulf]

Originally Posted by David

...Painting employers as nasty people who want no reason at all to fire someone is fucking pathetic, pedantic and grinds my gears, because it's usually from care bear type individuals with left wing views in life - sorry, did I say left wing? I meant socially fucking inept and retarded views in life.

Guess thats me, poppet!
Just to clarify though, I haven't painted employers as nasty people. However there are those who will abuse this policy and trying to paint all employers as caring sharing group-hug types who only want the best for their employees is fucking deluded.

IF the employer has legitimate reason to get rid of an employee, they should have absolutely no problem firing them the old fasioned way.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by ChaosWulf

IF the employer has legitimate reason to get rid of an employee, they should have absolutely no problem firing them the old fasioned way.

This is basically it.

[David]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

This is basically it.

I'm guessing by this statement neither of you have been in the position of being an employer in a small to medium enterprise, attempting to get rid of a bad staff member?

There is a reason almost every single business course worth it's salt teaches you how to sack someone and simply pay the court costs when they're terrible.

This here allows employers a period of grace to see if an employee is workable without having to stump up with the 6-8k on average it takes to just sack someone. If you feel personally worried by that, be a better worker.

[David]

To further indicate what I mean by this.

Currently if you want to sack someone through "the due process", by law, you have to have a series of three meetings with the person to discuss performance.

After the first meeting and you ask them to correct their behaviour/reason you're having issues - you have to give a reasonable period of time (for their job) for their behaviour/skill to improve.

If it doesn't - you have a second meeting, same process, must give reasonable period of time - usually 30 days.

So you're now at two months after you've originally had an issue, you've had to go by the book and you now have to have a third meeting with the person, at which point, so long as you have objective reasoning that has been documented from day 1 about the performance of a person, that you have existing KPI's across the company that the person knew they needed to perform and these MUST be documented for the position, and that you've given them a reasonable period to improve..... you can fire them, they're still likely to take you to court and in something like 75% of the cases for SMEs, they win.

Mother and father businesses suffer most here because they generally have a product or idea they've worked hard to establish, they employ a shithead by accident and due to not having the business structure nor business acumen to have all the processes in place, they're basically fucked and keep the bad staff member because advice is hard to find without paying the world to it.

For these people, that type of staff member can be make or break.

[ChaosWulf]

Originally Posted by David

I'm guessing by this statement neither of you have been in the position of being an employer in a small to medium enterprise, attempting to get rid of a bad staff member?

Did you actually see what GMG in the first place? I didn't object when this first came in, as I do honestly see the value in being able to weed out inappropriate employees for small businesses (-20 people). To bring this in for ALL businesses as they're now planning to do is just fucking ridiculous.
Adding insult to injury, the employee can't even turn to a union for help in negotiations because they will now need their employers consent to even join a union.

Whatever way you look at it, that's bullshit, ref.

[David]

Originally Posted by ChaosWulf

Did you actually see what GMG in the first place? I didn't object when this first came in, as I do honestly see the value in being able to weed out inappropriate employees for small businesses (-20 people). To bring this in for ALL businesses as they're now planning to do is just fucking ridiculous.
Adding insult to injury, the employee can't even turn to a union for help in negotiations because they will now need their employers consent to even join a union.

Whatever way you look at it, that's bullshit, ref.

And obviously you've never dealt with a union in the workplace either...? If an employer doesn't want a union within it's workplace and sees it as a reason not to employ someone, why should that get our backs up? Unions as I see them are professional muck raking organisations who use a collective to not "ensure employees are looked after" but to "ensure employers are screwed over"

Me personally? The 90 day rule will never effect me as an employee because I'm good at my job and I don't fuck around with my employers time (beyond reasonable levels).

As an employer? It would be the difference between hiring someone on gut instinct or not.

[fidgit]

I'd suggest you could fire someone faster than that, with 3 warnings, as each warning doesn't need to be for the same thing at all.

I've moved someone from 'safely employed' to 'final written warning' in the course of a month, when they fucked up big time (costly), then had a sexual harassment complaint against them(which they didn't challenge). They were already on a verbal warning for an unrelated (very) expensive mistake. If they do anything that's significant enough for a warning now they're out the door.

That said, I remember the case of a woman that was getting hired, working well for 3 months, then turning to complete shit, getting dismissed and claiming wrongful dismissal through the employment tribunal, winning , getting paid out, and doing it all again. She'd done the same thing to several businesses in a row. It's gonna suck for employees in unscrupulous companies (and there will be some abusing this), but for the most part it'd be nice to know you've got a fall back if you take a punt on someone that turns out to be a complete goddam muppet (which has happened to us, and has resulted in having to carry said muppet until he got the message and left)

[ChaosWulf]

Originally Posted by David

And obviously you've never dealt with a union in the workplace either...?

Not for negotiations. I'm the sort of litigious bitch that knows when to call in the professionals.

Originally Posted by David

Me personally? The 90 day rule will never effect me as an employee because I'm good at my job and I don't fuck around with my employers time (beyond reasonable levels).

Jolly good, old chap. Now, for a second, I want you to imagine that I'm not talking about you. In fact, I'm not even talking about ME. There is a world out there full of factories, supermarkets etc.
A few years ago I was doing production planning for a few factories and it was a bit of an eye opener for me. The people who spend 12 hours a day standing on concrete floors glueing your weetbix packets and carding the wool for your new carpets - they don't know shit about employment law. And their employers know it.
Unions like the EPMU are the sole (loud and irritating) voice that stands between the workers and the managers, who I have personally seen fire people (on the spot, regardless of any employment law we have in the country) because they refused to work one Saturday or just pissed off the wrong asshole middle manager. Manufacturing is a dying business in this country anyway, long gone are the days when Joe Bloggs could walk out of a shit job at a tyre factory and straight into another shit job at a paper mill; so having your large factory bosses able to fire these guys at whim and deny them even the chance to negotiate is adding just another burden to the lower class. But hey, you're not lower class, why should you care? They just need to work harder, right? Because 12 hour days in absolutely disgusting conditions doing mind-numbing work for $13 per hour just isn't tough enough.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by ChaosWulf

Jolly good, old chap. Now, for a second, I want you to imagine that I'm not talking about you. In fact, I'm not even talking about ME. There is a world out there full of factories, supermarkets etc.
A few years ago I was doing production planning for a few factories and it was a bit of an eye opener for me. The people who spend 12 hours a day standing on concrete floors glueing your weetbix packets and carding the wool for your new carpets - they don't know shit about employment law. And their employers know it.
Unions like the EPMU are the sole (loud and irritating) voice that stands between the workers and the managers, who I have personally seen fire people (on the spot, regardless of any employment law we have in the country) because they refused to work one Saturday or just pissed off the wrong asshole middle manager. Manufacturing is a dying business in this country anyway, long gone are the days when Joe Bloggs could walk out of a shit job at a tyre factory and straight into another shit job at a paper mill; so having your large factory bosses able to fire these guys at whim and deny them even the chance to negotiate is adding just another burden to the lower class. But hey, you're not lower class, why should you care? They just need to work harder, right? Because 12 hour days in absolutely disgusting conditions doing mind-numbing work for $13 per hour just isn't tough enough.

Good call.

One thing though:

Originally Posted by ChaosWulf

Adding insult to injury, the employee can't even turn to a union for help in negotiations because they will now need their employers consent to even join a union.

I'm going off the Stuff article here. My understanding is the proposal is that unions be required to gain consent to enter a workplace (and I agree that's a shitty proposal). What I'm not seeing is anything about employees needing their employers consent to join a union. Fair analysis?

[Cynos]

Originally Posted by David

To further indicate what I mean by this.

Currently if you want to sack someone through "the due process", by law, you have to have a series of three meetings with the person to discuss performance.

After the first meeting and you ask them to correct their behaviour/reason you're having issues - you have to give a reasonable period of time (for their job) for their behaviour/skill to improve.

If it doesn't - you have a second meeting, same process, must give reasonable period of time - usually 30 days.

So you're now at two months after you've originally had an issue, you've had to go by the book and you now have to have a third meeting with the person, at which point, so long as you have objective reasoning that has been documented from day 1 about the performance of a person, that you have existing KPI's across the company that the person knew they needed to perform and these MUST be documented for the position, and that you've given them a reasonable period to improve..... you can fire them, they're still likely to take you to court and in something like 75% of the cases for SMEs, they win.

Mother and father businesses suffer most here because they generally have a product or idea they've worked hard to establish, they employ a shithead by accident and due to not having the business structure nor business acumen to have all the processes in place, they're basically fucked and keep the bad staff member because advice is hard to find without paying the world to it.

For these people, that type of staff member can be make or break.

Oh what a load of emotive Roger Douglas fellating bullshit.

"75% of the cases for SMEs, they win."

Prove it.

[Cynos]

Originally Posted by CCS

Good call.

One thing though:
I'm going off the Stuff article here. My understanding is the proposal is that unions be required to gain consent to enter a workplace (and I agree that's a shitty proposal). What I'm not seeing is anything about employees needing their employers consent to join a union. Fair analysis?

Yeah, ChaosWulf's interpretation is wrong. All it means that employers no longer need to use dubious health & safety regulations to keep unions off their premises.

[ChaosWulf]

Originally Posted by CCS

I'm going off the Stuff article here. My understanding is the proposal is that unions be required to gain consent to enter a workplace (and I agree that's a shitty proposal). What I'm not seeing is anything about employees needing their employers consent to join a union. Fair analysis?

Have re-read article at reasonable hour and yep, you're right - cheers for pointing that one out

[David]

Originally Posted by Cynos

Oh what a load of emotive Roger Douglas fellating bullshit.
Prove it.

I'll look through my notes from my MBA a few years ago where we were given all of these statistics and a complete run through of the situation that basically said "Pay the grievance costs of approximately 6k and save in the long run"

As for "Roger Douglas fellating bullshit" - fuck off, in case you weren't aware, before Roger Douglas became Mr Corporatisation NZ for the Labour Government, he was heavily involved in unions in key positions and to this day, would still probably have involvement.

You can cry all you like for people too stupid to get a bit of understanding around a topic that isn't that hard to understand. ps, from what I call, Factory/Production Workers have one of the lowest dismissal rates in the country for minimum wage work, so what the fuck are you smoking?

[fixed_truth]

Yep.
Opening the door for our low paid, unskilled & uneducated workers to get shafted is plain unethical. Employment legislation should be protecting these people.

John Key doesn't care about poor people.

[Fx.]

it works fine in CA and AU that i've dealt with..

on the other side of the coin tho employers can hire people they're not 100% sure about and give those people the chance to prove themselves

[fixed_truth]

The legislation shouldn't give employers the room to abuse this policy. It's as simple as that.

[ChaosWulf]

Originally Posted by David

You can cry all you like for people too stupid to get a bit of understanding around a topic that isn't that hard to understand.

Don't mind if I do
Does that settle things for you? Cool, as you were, soldier.

[xor]

If National had their way we'd still be up chimney's sweeping them out for 18hours a day.

[::Shocker]

My only problem with the original "90 day rule" was that it did not go far enough. Compare it with some other OECD countries:

In the UK, protection for unfair dismissal only begins after one year's service. In Germany, it's after 6 months. In both countries, the rule applies regardless of the size of the employer. Australia has a 6 month limitation period for employers with 15 or more employees, and a 12 month period for the smaller employers.

So the proposal goes some way to bringing us in line with international practice, even if the length of 90 days is still woefully short (presumably a sop to the unions).

As far as union access to workplaces, I don't know precisely what they're proposing, but denial based on "reasonable grounds" would seem to imply an objective standard. I highly doubt that they're proposing to give employers carte blanche to deny access.

[fixed_truth]

Originally Posted by Fx.

on the other side of the coin tho employers can hire people they're not 100% sure about and give those people the chance to prove themselves

I don't think that economic activity is created by employers hiring people. If a business needs a new employee then they will hire someone.

[fixed_truth]

Not to mention the 90-day trial is rewarding incompetent employers that can't even put in place a performance management framework.

[Lightspeed]

Or for ever having to learn effective interviewing techniques.

[fixed_truth]

Nearly one in four sacked in trial period

In case you still believe the propaganda.

[Lightspeed]

"Man, I could really use an extra set of hands for this project."
"Dammit, no one is applying for this temporary position."
"I know, I'll say it's a permanent position and then ditch them within 90 days!"

[::Shocker]

Every country in the OECD (except for Denmark) restricts claims for unfair dismissal until after the employment relationship has existed for certain minimum length of time. Even Germany, a workers' paradise with some of the strongest employee protection laws in the world, allows for a six month trial period (with no restriction on the size of the employer).

Originally Posted by fixed_truth

Not to mention the 90-day trial is rewarding incompetent employers that can't even put in place a performance management framework.

The law currently applies only to employers with fewer than 20 employees. A formal "performance management framework" is often impractical for these types of businesses, in which a single incompetent employee can cause irreparable harm. They don't have the luxury of being able to wait for performance management to either fix the employee's performance or run its course and provide the grounds for dismissal.

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

Or for ever having to learn effective interviewing techniques.

Well obviously the best way to avoid problems down the line is to start with a robust recruiting process. But the main, or at least a significant, purpose of the 90 day rule is to allow employers to take a calculated risk and employ someone that they might not otherwise have taken on.

You seem to be implying that the 90 day law lets employers kick back, not do their homework during recruiting and take someone on safe in the knowledge that they can be booted out with little consequence if they don't work out.

Except that's nonsense. The 90 day law reduces the potential costs of dismissal by removing the threat of legal action, but the cost of recruiting someone and bringing them up to speed generally makes dismissal the option of last resort. In fact, the report just put out by the DoL says:

"While the trial period eased dismissals for employers, the qualitative research showed employers recognised dismissals as an unfavourable outcome, and tried to avoid it. Employers were aware that the cost of recruitment and training made dismissals expensive, and some tried to work with the employee from the beginning to prevent a dismissal. Where employees were dismissed, there were cases of employers trying to find them other employment or training."

[::Shocker]

Anyway, what else do find out from the DOL report?

1. 74% of employees retained their employment after their trial period finished.

2. The latest employee hired by the survey respondents was likely to be aged between 15-24.

3. 40% of employers would not have hired that person (or would likely not have hired that person) if they couldn't use a trial period.

Why are you people against something that seems to be beneficial for youth employment?

[Ab]

(aggregated thread)

original discussion in 2008 starts about here

http://www.nzgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1623264

[::Shocker]

The Government today announced sweeping changes to labour laws, including changing the test for reasonable dismissal to make it easier for employers to fire workers.

NZ Herald

[Lightspeed]

Well, it will be interesting to see how the changes to dismissal laws pan out. I guess National are trying to reduce the number of employment cases heard by lowering the standards of the law to match the standards of employers.

Poor employers. All they want to do is make money. What's that? Employee number 327 wants to be treated like a human? Wtf? What's that got to do with increasing profit?

[Ab]

There are two sharp divisions of opinion here by the looks of things.

People who have started a business and/or have been personally responsible for hiring employees think the probation period is a great idea, people who haven't think it's terrible.

People who have worked overseas think it's a great idea, people who have never worked anywhere other than NZ think it's terrible.

[ChaosWulf]

Well, if someone who has started a business and been responsible for hiring people can explain it to me without coming across like a self-important cunt with severe Autism, I'd be happy to listen! I'm genuinely interested in how this can possibly be for the benefit of everyone. Not just businesses, but everyone. And no one has managed to come even close to answering that yet.

So far we have:
- All businesses able to fire people within a 90 day trial, no questions asked.
- Unions unable to access workplaces without employer consent.
- Employment Relations Authority being able to throw out what it considers to be "time waster" cases. At its own discretion, naturally.
- No more 'pedantic' scrutiny of employer processes, so employers no longer have to follow employment relation law to the word. Might as well call it the Employment Relations Guidelines.

Sounding great for the common people of NZ, go the National Government! Yet another blow for human rights in this country.

[A Corpse]

Nats are trying to sell this to sucke.... the voting public by saying that it opens up jobs that business would otherwise have not wanted to hire anyone for.

Clutching at straws IMO, but hey, politics = selling BS to voters who should by rights be voting for the other guys.

[xor]

The National party, looking after the working class man since ages ago