The New Zealand employment dispute resolution system has drifted far from its original intent. What was designed to be an informal and relationship-centred process has become an adversarial, slow, and cost-prohibitive environment that often penalises efficiency and rewards speculative litigation.
At Franks Ogilvie, we operate at the intersection of commercial reality and law. We are interested in smarter solutions and better drafting, not the vague, ideological concepts that have created the current settlement trap for employers. In our recent submission to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) on its consultation on the disputes system, we identified a number of recommendations to restore balance and move the system toward a model based on commercial reality rather than aspirational "fluff".
We have proposed:
- Compensation Guidance - Issuing clear information on non-economic loss awards to manage expectations.
- Increased Cost Awards - Moving to a presumptive cost-recovery framework to deter weak claims and enable respondents to more readily defend them.
- Binding Precedent - Requiring the Authority to follow Employment Court decisions on questions of law to eliminate inconsistent outcomes and unpredictability.
- Clarified Good Faith - Amending the definition of good faith to provide tangible clarity on obligations and consequences.
- Advocate Regulation - Establishing a formal regulatory framework for employment advocates to protect the integrity of the system.
- Statutory Distinction for Grievances - Creating a clear distinction for when a personal grievance is formally raised to enable genuine, informal early resolution.
- Voluntary Mediation - Making mediation a genuinely voluntary option rather than a quasi-mandatory pre-requisite to pursuing proceedings.
- Enhanced Authority Resourcing - Increasing funding to meet time targets for investigations and determinations, eliminating current institutional delays.
You can read our full submission, here. For any employment law related queries, please contact our Managing Director, Brigitte Morten.
