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.

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