The Labour Minister is going on another anti-business offensive with her plans to give new powers to unions to shut down workplaces under the guise of concerns about safety, National Industrial Relations spokesperson Max Bradford said today.

"The review of Health and Safety in Employment Act has laudable aims to make workplaces safer - but there's some worrying aspects of the Government's plans.

"The proposals to give employee health and safety representatives the power to close down production in hazardous situations have significant potential to be abused by unions.

"If industrial relations are getting strained, or employees are in the middle of an industrial dispute a union could shut down production at whim citing health and safety.

"It gives unions another tool to use to get control of workplaces.

"Expanding the right to prosecute to any individual is likely to lead to vexatious litigation without proper research into the cause of the accident.

"As Helen Clark tries to extend an olive branch to business - Margaret Wilson comes up with another idea that snaps the branch.

"The answer to improving health and safety is to strike the right balance in the workplace, but instead the Labour Minister has again gone too far in favour of the union," Max Bradford said.

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