The Government’s latest change to the Employment Relations Act has no justification apart from making it easier to sack employees without having to follow due process.

“The Minister of Workplace Relations clearly is more interested in protecting the rights of big business rather than employees,” Labour workplace relations spokesperson Camilla Belich said.

“Regardless of how much someone earns, everyone deserves fairness and due process. This is a dangerous change that will leave workers with no ability to raise a grievance if they are unjustifiably dismissed, unfairly treated, or discriminated against for a protected reason, like pregnancy. 

“Brooke van Velden’s war on workers has already seen this Government move to reduce sick leave, rush to reinstate 90-day trials and scrap Fair Pay Agreements. It is also unclear how this will impact part-time workers; will this change be pro-rated and affect those on lower incomes?

“There is also no acknowledgment of the fact that as wages grow over time, a greater percentage of workers will be affected by this fire at will policy. 

“National and ACT are choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights that have been hard fought for by generations of workers that have gone before,” Camilla Belich said.