ERB block to directorships
"Companies will find it increasingly hard to find people willing to face the personal risk of taking on directorships because of the savage personal liabilities they'll face under the Employment Relations Bill," Opposition Labour spokesperson Max Bradford said today.
"New Zealand already has a small pool of potential company directors - and the Employment Relations Bill will make it worse.
"I've had people ringing me who are astonished at the provisions in the Bill that make them personally liable for staff wages, holiday pay and other money.
"Directors and company officials are taken aback that the legislation is so out of step with today's modern workplaces and that almost everything in the Bill spells more costs and more hurdles to do business.
"Margaret Wilson needs to explain why she is legislating to cross the boundary into people's personal lives in this manner.
"Clause 245 is one of the many parts of the Bill that tips the balance.
"Employers are worried about doing business in the changed environment. As a nation we need to be providing an environment for business that promotes growth, innovation and development. The Employment Relations Bill doesn't do that."
Clause 245: Where a body corporate that is an employer fails to pay to any employee of that body corporate any wages or holiday pay or other money payable by the body corporate to the employee under the Minimum Wage Act 1983 or the Holidays Act 1981, any of its officers, directors, or agents who directed, authorised, assented to, or acquiesced in the failure to pay are, with the body corporate, jointly and severally liable to pay to the employee the wages, holiday pay, or other money that the body corporate has failed to pay.
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