Meal Breaks Law
The Herald reports:
The Government has introduced a law change that will allow bosses to withhold workers’ regular breaks, and instead pay for the time or trade the breaks for time off later.
National’s bill allows bosses to replace regular breaks with “compensatory measures”.
These include being able to start work late or leave early, or stockpile the missed breaks and trade them for a day off.
Some history:
The bill will repeal the law passed by Labour last year which gave workers two 10-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch break at reasonably well-spaced times each day.
Before that, there was no statutory requirement for paid breaks, although most workers negotiated them as part of their employment contracts.
And you know, despite no statutory requirement, I don’t know of any great plethora of complaints from workers not allowed a break. Most employers are reasonable people.
Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson said the changes were aimed at restoring flexibility for employers, by allowing them to time breaks in a way that did not disrupt their businesses.
It is partly aimed at solving problems in workplaces such as sole-charge air traffic control watchtowers.
You actually had airports having to close down twice a day, because Labour’s law didn’t allow for flexibility.
But Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly said last year’s law was flexible enough to cater for different businesses while giving “the most vulnerable” protection.
The new bill replaces the minimum rest break lengths with the more general guideline requiring employers to give workers “a reasonable opportunity … for rest, refreshment and attending to personal matters”.
Again I’d love same actual examples (ie name the employers) who had not allowed staff meal and refreshment breaks.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Set breaks work in some jobs but not in others. Shearers stop at regular intervals but the people bringing the sheep in for them don’t stop until the animals are where they need to be when the shearers start working again.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:14 am
The “most vulnerable” seem to have their own private army of legislators!
October 28th, 2009 at 10:20 am
We have laws against murder and theft, not because most people would otherwise kill and steal, but because of the minority who would.
Why should unreasonable employers, who the law was aimed at, be allowed to gain a competitive advantage over the majority of good employers by abusing their employees?
[DPF: Pete have you ever worked in a business? If an employer abuses their employees they tend to become less profitable as they lose experiences staff and suffer high recruitment costs]
October 28th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Meal breaks? Regular breaks? Luxury.
We used to get 5 minute breaks from the keyboard every hour (separate from lunch breaks) until Labour renationalised workplace accident insurance in 2000. Then it didn’t matter so the software was removed from our PCs.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Yeah, right on. Lets stop air traffic controllers and ambulance drivers doing what they do well in order to assuage your middle class socialist guilt
October 28th, 2009 at 10:47 am
The problem that this law has caused in the home care industry [of both the aged and intellectually disabled] is immense. Some workers, backed by their union, have pushed for their rights under the law, thereby resulting in a need for more staff to cover breaks, and siphoning off monies that would have been better spent on the people in need.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Most workers in New Zealand could probably do with missing a meal break. It would reduce their food carbon footprint and the size of their arses at the same time. Would work for me
October 28th, 2009 at 10:54 am
“Some workers, backed by their union, have pushed for their rights under the law, thereby resulting in a need for more staff to cover breaks…”
Which was the ultimate goal of the legislation. You just know if they were re-elected they would have instituted a 30 hour working week to combat the unemployment caused by the GFC. How is what that did any different?
October 28th, 2009 at 10:57 am
“These include being able to start work late or leave early, or stockpile the missed breaks and trade them for a day off.”
The fact that these werent options until the change is astounding! Labour effectively stole from workers when they brought in their silly law.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:27 am
A bit off topic, but there is an employment law area where employees should be given simething – the ‘restraint of trade’ area. Nowadays employment contracts frequently contain ‘restraint of trade’ clauses that forbid employees from working for a competing employer for x months within y area in z type of business. One I heard about was a health professional employee (not a doctor) forbidden from working for two years in Wellington-Manawatu-Wairarapa in a certain health field. This was ridiculous, three months within say 10km was all that would be justified even if there was an interest to be protected (and in the case of employees that excludes competition).
What is worrying however is that recently the Court of Appeal granted an injunction sought by Tory Street coffee stand A to stop an ex barista working at stand B, on the basis that ‘a contract is a contract’. This could unfortunately be taken as a message that ‘restraint of trade’ clauses will be enforced via interim injunction even where the clause is dubious. Therefore I think that the ability to impose restraint of trade clauses be severely limited in employment legislation.
By the way the situation seems to have got so serious that a coffee stand advertised for a ‘barrister’ (sic) who presumably both makes the coffee and takes any immediate legal action against threats to business.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:38 am
My boss doesn’t allow me to take breaks at all until the statutory seven hours are completed.
Miserable bastard!
Still I suppose that’s what happens when you’re self employed.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Seven hours!!!
You bloody slacker
October 28th, 2009 at 11:44 am
“If an employer abuses their employees they tend to become less profitable as they lose experiences staff and suffer high recruitment costs”
Probably true in the long-term, but it doesn’t help the current workers if the employer eventually goes out of business.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:44 am
This is true in some sectors, but won’t hold generally. Some business models are based on low-skill high-turnover labour.
Even where the market works over the long term, the short term inconvenience for workers and customers can be considerable (see, e.g., NZBus).
If there aren’t any employers that don’t want to abuse this, why not just fix the flexibility problem instead of removing the right altogether?
IIRC, you had the same blind spots when it came to the Fire-at-will legislation.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
“Again I’d love same actual examples (ie name the employers) who had not allowed staff meal and refreshment breaks.”
Books & More Rotorua Circa 1999. Though only “know” this anecdotally via a mate who worked there for as short a period as possible.
Providing chairs/stools for the counter staff to use during their unbroken 4-hour stints on deck is socialist claptrap, you’re here to work not here to lounge around. But I seem to recall DPF laughing this off as “obviously a lie” because he was “sure no employer would do this” last time I mentioned it here
October 28th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Those who whine about fixed breaks and lunch hours seem to be people with very limited work and life experience. Have they ever:
– Raced all day to get 10 truck-loads of hay in before it rains?
– Driven a tractor all day to get a crop sown before the rain comes?
– Worked all-night to get a computer program working for a client demo the next day?
– Worked long hours to get tender documents out to keep a project on schedule?
– Worked long hours to earn extra money for something?
– Worked 12 hours-a-day, 7-days a week for 3 months to make money for a fantastic 2 month trip around Europe?
Have they ever felt the great satisfaction from getting a job done, against the odds? Unfortunately most of our politicians are these very people and we’re all the worse for their lack of understanding how the world works and how most people can organise and prioritise their own lives and work without clumsy regulations.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I take it you guys have never worked in hospo…
October 28th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Obviously DPF is correct, you don’t know how a business works.
I am an employer in a low-skill high turnover area. Managing turnover is a key to my success, if it is high I am stuffed because it is very expensive.
The industry average in my area is 300% I am told, I have maintained less than 150% for years. I have at least 12 staff most of the time, If I (very) conservatively value the hiring of a new staff member at $2000. This includes the hours of my highest paid staff interviewing & training, overstaffing for trainees, uniforms, keys, costs of the reason a previous staff member left (non-performance, theft, bad service), or the difference of productivity between a good experienced staff member leaving versus a new one.
Hiring 18 staff per year instead of 36 leaves at least $36,000 on my dinner plate that wouldn’t have been there.
As an employer I care a lot more than any government official or lawmaker about retaining my good staff, as an employer it is my profession and area of expertise.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
i.e. you’re not a typical employer for your industry.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I would assume there is a lot more to this case than making people stand for 4 hours without a stool.
If you seriously consider having to stand for 4 hours a problem you are delusional. If I was running a bookstore I sure as hell would not put stools around for staff to sit on outside of the lunchroom.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
I am not saying there is a “case”. But the 19th-century facilities certainly had a role in increasing their turnover by at least one!
(Disagrees with Sonny Blount = “delusonal”. Noted for future reference.)
October 28th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Oh sorry, I forgot that left wing policy is to deligitimize the values or experience of anybody who has succeeded at anything as irrelevant.
By doing a little more for my staff, I am putting those that don’t out of business. If someone else is able to offer lower prices by paying less for their staff, the customers will tell us whether the service my staff provide for the extra money is worth it.
The way to deal with bad employers is not to work for them and recommend the good ones to others. Not to make stupid rules that increase the costs (and lower wages) for the majority (95%) of reasonable employers.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
If the reason was because the person wouldn’t stand for 4 hours then this is a positive for the business.
Sorry, you haven’t convinced me of any thing here, if you have an issue with having to stand for 4 hours at work, you are delusional.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Stupid rules like minimum wage, statutory holidays, health and safety rules, 40 hour work week, anti child-labour rules.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
get a grip pete, even I don’t think all those laws are stupid! Are you some sort of slaver or something?
October 28th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I’m guessing you’ve given up on defending the meal break regulations then pete.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Sorry RightNow, that was meant to be ironic!
If you’re guessing that, it’s probably due to your poor grasp of logic. Perhaps you should try thinking instead of guessing.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
peterwn – re: restraint of trade clauses, I once was offered a contract where that clause was so draconian I consulted my lawyer about it first. He laughed at it and said it worked in my favour, because it was so unreasonable he said there’d be no problem defending a breach of it.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Honestly, if you want to spend your working day sitting on stools or not selling drunk people pies at 2.00am then work harder at school.
If you choose not to then don’t complain when you have to do a crap job with no breaks.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
DPF – this is legislation at its worst.
The Explanatory Note to the Bill states:
And it will have to be rushed through under urgency with little, if any, Select Committee scrutiny to meet the 30 December target date the Government has set for it to come into force.
Surely, whatever you think of the substance of the Bill, you have to admit this is an appalling way to legislate.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
The hospitality industry has pretty poor standards when it comes to giving employees proper meal breaks. In particular I worked at a very popular cafe which gave staff one 15 minute break in a 9 hour day, on my feet serving customers. But as a result they had a high turnover of staff.
@ Le Grande Fromage – before you tell me that I have no education and shouldn’t be even commenting on this blog, I was and still am working in hospitality for close to the minimum wage…because I am a uni student and don’t get money handed to me by my parents!
October 28th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I suspect this would be an exageration if you say this is the day to day practice, but I imagine it would happen on busy days. Most people have days like that in their jobs occasionally. As a manager and owner it would be similar to how I worked every day for years.
If you were involved in open-heart surgery, would you expect your gun surgeon to stop for morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea? Would you like the anesthetist and nurses to be replace by their number 2′s for this period (who legally would not be able to have been observing the entire operation as they need their breaks)?
It may be an extreme case but there are simply times and places where a set of rules is inappropriate.
This is why the regulation is unnessecary, these things will take care of themselves. If anyone is overly unreasonable they would eventually not have any staff or business, if this is not the case then obviously their practises are tolerated by some.
In a lot of cases if you set the bar at being the best it is too hard for most people (or ‘turnover is good’ as a person I admire used to say)
This pretty much disqualifies you from this discussion. You most likely don’t know jack yet
If we need laws to tell us how to do everything, I would like one included that states that any time a staff member spends socialising while on work time including non-work related conversations or periods of inactivity be deducted from either their wages or break time.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Students that are still at the stage of including this admonition almost assuredly don’t know jack!
October 28th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Sonny Blount by comparison knows everything, including Farky’s typical work day better than Farky himself does!
(“I suspect this would be an exageration if you say this is the day to day practice”)
October 28th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
RRM,
I am happy for Farky to come back and say it was the case for every staff member every day. That is why I said ‘I suspect’, rather than ‘I know’. The original statement was not particularly defined.
So from your statement, can it be concluded that you believe every claim that people make on a blog?
October 28th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
You may note I never said in my post that I disagreed with the proposed law change, you just assumed that I did. In fact I think it will be better than the change that came into force earlier this year because of the situations you and others have described. I am merely responding to DPF:
Again I’d love same actual examples (ie name the employers) who had not allowed staff meal and refreshment breaks.
I don’t want to name that particular cafe because it was a few years ago and the situation has hopefully changed since then. And the 15 minute break is definitely not an exaggeration – every day was a busy day. As for the assertion that I “don’t know jack yet”, I guess I will have to resist engaging in political discussion until I do
October 28th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
And you may note in my post that I never said that you, in particular, disagreed with the law change, you just assumed that I was posting about your opinion on the law change, rather than people who disagree with the law change in general.
There of course will be poor employers out there, they are probably still poor employers after the law change. The way to deal with them is still the same, find the good employers and get a job with them. Up until last year it was ‘very’ hard to find workers.
The difficulty I oberve that socialists tend to have with capitilism is they demand that it works instantaneously, that cause and effect come to their full fruition today. People who are not as good often survive for some time before they finally give up, and it might be in 20 years that the good operator has multiple business’ or becomes a large chain.
A blanket statement of poor standards in the hospitality industry could just as well be said about the workers (my point is neither statement is especially accurate or useful).
Just about how a workplace operates. Even engineers and lawyers with brilliant grades often find they don’t have clue how it all works at the workplace when they enter their chosen profession.
BTW I always teach my managers to value their part time staff highly and value the resource. I know that the smartest people I will probably have as employees will be young people in their first jobs. The Stephen Hawkings and Bill Gates of the future all had first jobs and those people love to be stimulated and challenged.
I tell my full timers that they don’t have any income without someone to work at night and weekends because we simply couldn’t run the business if we were only open during their shifts so they need to respect and support the ‘smart arse kids’ we have working for us.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
The idea that an employer could withhold worker’s regular breaks is appaling. Indeed it is true that one does not want a nurse or a traffic controller to take a break in the middle of doing something important. I agree this isn’t reasonable but I do not agree that it is reasonable to have workers (such as nurses and traffic controllers) who are responsible for people’s lives completely wired because the havn’t had a break to eat in seven hours.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Tree Ella De Vil,
People had meal breaks before the law was introduced.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Documented cases of the law of unintended consequences vs union hysteria. Go figure.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:18 am
A bit off topic, but there is an employment law area where employees should be given simething – the ‘restraint of trade’ area. Nowadays employment contracts frequently contain ‘restraint of trade’ clauses that forbid employees from working for a competing employer for x months within y area in z type of business.
Most of these RoT clauses are just the wet dreams of some flunky with nothing better to do. They are virtually unenforceable except in rare circumstances and then there better be gardening leave/golden parachute type provisions.
It is the exception to be able to prevent someone from working.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Don’t like your employment condictions?…….then complain and try to get them changed…..or leave and seek work somewhere else that better suits you.The market at work.
Thats all thats required….”problem” solved…next issue please DPF.