How New Zealand actually works, work

Work, the floor under every job, and when it goes wrong

Every job in New Zealand sits on the same floor: a written agreement, a minimum wage, leave, breaks, and a duty of good faith running both ways. The Employment Relations Act 2000 is the frame; the detail below it is what the floor is actually made of.

The agreement comes first

Every employee must have a written employment agreement, an individual one, or a collective one negotiated by a union. It must name the parties, the work, the place, the pay, the hours, and the dispute process; an employer who never gave you one is already in breach, and a labour inspector can order it fixed — Employment Relations Act 2000, ss 63–65.

Whatever the agreement says, it can only go above the statutory floor, a clause below the minimums is void on its face, and "but they signed it" is no defence. The floor is not negotiable, which is the whole point of a floor.

The floor, itemised

• Pay, $23.95 an hour adult minimum from 1 April 2026 ($19.16 starting-out and training, 80% of adult). It applies to every hour worked, salary, piece rates and commission can't average their way under it — Employment NZ, minimum wage.
• Leave, four weeks' annual leave after each year; twelve public holidays; ten days' sick leave a year (accumulating to twenty); bereavement leave; and up to 26 weeks' paid parental leave for eligible parents, funded by the state, not the employer — Holidays Act 2003.
• Breaks, rest and meal breaks are prescribed by law, not by custom: the longer the day, the more owed, and a break you can't take is owed in time or money.
• KiwiSaver, enrolment is automatic at a new job (you can opt out inside the window); the employer contribution is at least 3.5% on top of pay, lifted from 3% on 1 April 2026, not carved out of it unless the agreement explicitly makes the total package inclusive.
• Final pay and deductions, money can't be docked from your pay without your written consent or a court order; a till shortage isn't automatically yours to cover.

Go deeper, the holiday-pay arithmetic and the consent rules on deductions

Annual leave pays at the higher of your ordinary weekly pay or the average of the last twelve months, commission-heavy jobs often mean leave pays more than base, and underpaid leave is the most common payroll breach labour inspectors find.

Casual and fixed-term workers under a year can take the leave as 8% on top of pay instead, "pay-as-you-go", but only where the agreement says so and the work is genuinely intermittent; calling a permanent part-timer "casual" to skip leave is a misclassification the ERA reads through.

Deductions need a specific written consent for that deduction or a lawful authority, a general "we may deduct anything" clause is not enough, and an employer who deducts anyway has taken a wage debt, recoverable like unpaid wages.

The 90-day trial

Any employer may hire on a trial period of up to 90 days: dismiss inside it and the dismissed employee cannot bring an unjustified-dismissal grievance. Since December 2023 it has been open to every employer, and since February 2026 a valid trial dismissal also can't be reframed as an unjustified-disadvantage claim — ERA 2000, ss 67A–67B.

But the clause only works when it's done exactly right: in writing, signed before the first day of work, and only for a genuinely new employee. Trial clauses are read strictly, a worker handed the agreement after starting, or re-hired under a "trial", keeps every right the clause was meant to suspend. And the rest of the floor survives intact: minimum entitlements, discrimination, harassment and union claims all still run inside the 90 days.

When it goes wrong

The claim is called a personal grievance, unjustified dismissal, unjustified disadvantage, discrimination, harassment, duress. It must be raised with the employer within 90 days of the act (12 months where the grievance is sexual harassment). The clock runs from the act, not from when you noticed, the single most common way a good claim dies is the date.

The ladder after that is free at the bottom: MBIE's mediation service costs nothing and settles most cases that reach it; unresolved grievances climb to the Employment Relations Authority (investigates and decides) and then the Employment Court. Remedies run to reinstatement, lost wages, and compensation for humiliation and injury to feelings.

Go deeper, what mediation actually looks like, and what "justified" means

Mediation is a room (or a phone line), an MBIE mediator, and usually an afternoon. The mediator doesn't decide anything, they keep the parties talking until the money or the apology lands. Most grievances that reach mediation settle there, and settlements can be signed off as final and binding.

"Justified" has two halves: a substantive reason (the thing genuinely warranted it) and a fair process (the concerns put to the employee, a real chance to respond, a decision maker who kept an open mind). Employers lose grievances on process as often as on substance, a real reason executed badly is still unjustified.

Constructive dismissal counts too: resigning because the employer made continuing intolerable, bullying ignored, pay withheld, hours slashed, is treated as a dismissal you were pushed into, and the same 90-day clock runs from the resignation.

The famous gap

New Zealand has no statutory redundancy pay. When a role genuinely disappears the employer owes a fair process, real consultation before the decision, genuine consideration of alternatives, the notice the agreement promises, and the agreement's redundancy clause if it has one. If it doesn't, the payout is whatever was negotiated, which may be nothing. It is the largest hole in the floor, and every few years a bill proposes filling it.

Collective power

Unions negotiate collective agreements covering every member on the site; strikes to support collective bargaining are lawful, and the ERA protects union membership itself, joining, not joining, or being pressured either way are all protected choices. The Fair Pay Agreements system, industry-wide floors, was legislated in 2022 and repealed at the end of 2023 before any agreement was concluded.

The label isn't the test

Calling someone a "contractor" doesn't make them one. Section 6 of the ERA asks what the relationship really is, who controls the hours, who supplies the tools, whether the work is integral to the business, whether there's a real right to say no. A courier labelled an independent contractor who works like an employee can claim the floor: leave, the minimum wage, the grievance rights. The gig economy keeps testing the line; the courts keep answering with the substance over the signature.

Where to read the primary source

• Employment Relations Act 2000: the frame: agreements, good faith, grievances, trials
• Holidays Act 2003: leave, public holidays, sick days
• Employment NZ, minimum wage rates: the current numbers
• Employment NZ, resolving problems: the free mediation door

The Canterbury of it

The rebuild ran the country's clearest demonstration of what labour demand does. Filled jobs in Canterbury fell 4.9 percent in the year to March 2012; from September 2012 to September 2017 they rose 23 percent, with total employment up 17 — Stats NZ, Canterbury: the rebuild by the numbers. The crews came from everywhere, and the floor this page describes was the difference between a labour boom and a labour racket on the sites where it held.

It was the second time a single force organised the city's work. The Addington railway workshops, the country's main locomotive-building site from 1889 to the late 1920s, employed hundreds of tradesmen for over a century before closing in 1990; the site is now Tower Junction and the railway station — Te Ara, the workshops era. The suburb carries it: /addington.

The hinterland runs a labour market of its own, dairy conversions, harvest, the shearing calendar, and the visa data shows it: even at the rebuild's height, livestock farmers were among Canterbury's most-approved Essential Skills occupations — MBIE, regional migration trends 2015/16.

Last reviewed 2 October 2026, sources: legislation.govt.nz (ERA 2000, Holidays Act 2003), employment.govt.nz (minimum wage, mediation), MBIE (Minimum Wage Order 2026). Explainer, not legal advice. Corrections: /corrections.