The Labour Minister is trying to impose employment rules on private sector employers that the Government itself won't accept, says National's Industrial Relations spokesperson, Lockwood Smith.

"Margaret Wilson has set up a group to look at implementing a CTU initiative which gives employees an extraordinary deal if a business is sold or contracted out.

"The deal effectively allows employees to choose whether or not they stay with a business in the event of it being sold and, if not, they would be entitled to a redundancy payout.

"Of course, the employees can then be re-employed by the new owners of the business in almost exactly the same job.

"Successive governments have never accepted this onerous redundancy liability themselves, so this is sheer hypocrisy of the Labour Minister to try to impose these rules on private sector employers.

"To make matters worse, it comes at a time when the Government has a bill in Parliament to strengthen protection for itself from this very liability.

"It's quite clear in technical redundancy situations that the Government is careful to avoid redundancy payouts to transferred employees. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that the private sector would expect the same protection that the State gives itself as an employer," Dr Smith said.

Ends

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>