The perfect example

The Employment Relations Authority has just provided the perfect example of why Wayne Mapp’s Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill should be passed.

Imagine this – you are a small employer, and you hire a new plasterer. Within a few weeks he tries to steal from you, by using a company fuel card on his personal car, at 12.30 am after a night out drinking (I wonder how he was driving!). You do the proper thing and give him a warning.

Then while out on a job he and a colleague scrawl obscene words and swastikas on the windows and framings. The owners are rightly offended (especially as one had a parent who was a Holocaust survivor). Now even at this stage you don’t sack the employee outright, nut do the right thing and give him another warning.

Finally the new employee just simply is not turning up to work on time, so you dismiss him.

What happens? The ERA gives the employee $2,400 for “hurt and humiliation”, to be paid by the employer.

As I have said many times, it is near impossible for a small or medium sized employer to legally sack even the worse of employees. The ERA puts huge reliance on minor procedural flaws over the substance of whether the dismissal was justified.

Under Wayne Mapp’s bill, that employee who turns up late, tries to steal from the employer and graffitis a client’s home would not be getting $2,400 for “hurt and humiliation” as the employer could just within the three month period have let him go.