October 12, 2004

National will let young workers be fired at will

The National Party has revealed plans to allow employers to fire new workers at will.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said that a supplementary order paper tabled in Parliament yesterday by National’s employment spokesman, Wayne Mapp, outlined plans which would strip new workers of their rights to challenge unfair dismissals.

“This policy would hit young people, especially those working in the service industries, particularly hard,” he said.

“Effectively, their bosses would be allowed to hire them for three months, fire them for no reason at all and pick up somebody else.”

Mr Little said that while National paid lip-service to the concept of good faith, it would remove all penalties for employers who breached good-faith requirements, and would deny unionised workers the ability to negotiate the best possible deal.

“Mr Mapp and his colleagues want to take industrial relations back to the dark ages,” Mr Little said.

“He can be sure we won’t let them, and we will this week be circulating details of National’s industrial relations plans to our delegates.”

ENDS

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