July 2, 2006

Media Release

Mapp is wrong over current rules: union

‘If you can’t manage them, you shouldn’t be managing people’

Any employer who cannot manage the current simple rules around probationary periods should not be managing people, says the union leading the Work Rights, Our Right! campaign.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said that all employers had to do under current law was give probationary workers feedback.

“It’s that simple,” he said.

“You tell workers on probation how they’re doing and whether they’re likely to be kept on at the end of the probationary period, and that’s it. If you can’t manage that, you shouldn’t be employing people.”

Mr Little said that a claim today by National Party industrial relations spokesman Wayne Mapp that employers faced “thousands of dollars in termination costs” if a person did not work out were rubbish.

“You follow the simple rules and there are no termination costs,” Mr Little said.

“The real issue here is not whether or not you can get rid of people, but whether you have to treat them fairly and decently. Dr Mapp and his supporters want employers to be able to sack people at will. That is the real agenda behind his Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill.”

Mr Little said that Dr Mapp’s no-rights-for-new-workers bill would affect all workers starting new jobs, whether they were 15 or 45.

The EPMU is organising mass rallies against the bill, including Wellington on July 20 and Christchurch on July 22. Political, industrial and advertising campaigns mobilising workers against the bill continue this week.

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