Employment contracts place obligations on both parties. Almost all cases before the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court are brought by workers suing their employer.

One exception relates to restraints of trade. Another exception has recently had more use. More...

Sean Miller was an employee of Fonterra until November 2002 when his employment was terminated on the grounds of redundancy.

In 2004, he, along with others, were charged with an offence under the Crimes Act in relation to the "Powdergate" dairy product export scandal. More...

Natural justice in almost all circumstances requires that an accuser's identity is revealed.

Readers will be aware of the case of a woman dismissed from Hutt Hospital for inappropriately looking up patient records. The employer received an anonymous letter under the Protected Disclosures Act, alleging that an employee had been accessing patient records. More...

Readers will have seen the recent news about engineers employed by a Telecom subsidiary picketing outside Telecom offices.

The engineers are complaining because 600 of them are to be made redundant. Telecom has contracted out their work to an Australian firm, Visionstream. It appears that Visionstream is going to offer work to the affected engineers anyway, so why so much protest? More...

In September 2006 an employee of one of the airlines operating in New Zealand failed a random drugs test and was dismissed. The Employment Relations Authority ordered that the employee's identity was not to be published. Let's call him Mr X. More...

Phillip Dickson was employed by IHC through a company called Idea Services. He was paid a sleepover allowance when he was sleeping in the group home for intellectually disabled people he worked in.

His freedom to do as he wished was constrained and he had responsibilities during his sleepover period. His work benefited the employer. Mr Dickson said that he should be paid the minimum wage when he slept over and not just the sleepover allowance because he said he was working. More...

Alison Wheeler was dismissed as a police officer because she claims colleagues thought she was "too posh" for the police.

The 39-year-old former officer with Surrey police in England was fired after colleagues accused her of standing by while a fellow officer was punched and kicked to the ground outside the front doors of her police station in New Zealand Ave, Walton. More...

Our firm has had a number of inquiries about whether an employer is liable to pay the wages of its workers who might be off work because of swine flu.

If an employee is ill, whether because of swine flu or for any other sickness, the normal rules apply. That means that if an employee has sick leave owing, they will be paid sick leave while they are away. If they do not have sick leave when they are too sick to report to work, they will be on leave without pay. More...

Tiemaen Corporaal was employed as a farm manager by Grant and Megan Catley on their sharemilking farm in Whakatane.

Mr Corporaal was made redundant in April 2008. He claimed he had been unjustifiably disadvantaged in employment and unjustifiably dismissed. More...