National’s employment law policy

NZPA has a good summary of National’s employment law policy. Most of it is just correcting the terrible bribes and slants twoards the unions.

I think the best part of the policy is the 90-day probation period for new workers to reduce barriers to employment. This will considerably lessen the disincentives employers have to take the risk of employing someone whom they have doubts about. At present if you get it wrong, it costs $20,000+ to sort it out, and that can be crippling for small businesses.

Some on the left paint a picture that nasty employers would abuse a 90 day proibation period and sack all their staff just before 90 days is up, and hire new ones, so they can have a workforce with no employment grievance rights.

Anyone with this view has never employed people, and has an academic view of how business works. Losing good staff is hugely costly to an employer both in terms of experience lost and recruitment and training costs.

In a job interview last week, someone commented that of all the assets a company has, all of them depreciate in value over time except for staff who appreciate in value the longer you have them. An excellent way of expressing it.