Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Sorry - use which law?

In another fantastic piece of reporting the NZ Herald tells us employers should be using the Holidays Act to crack down on fake sickies.
This is as Ruth Dyson tries to defuse the outrage from employers over their skyrocketing wage bills over public holidays due to Labour's changes to the Act.  Labour managed to be its typical self when it introduced provisions in the Holidays Act that allow employees to take sick leave, but still qualify for the same rate they would have received had they gone to work; relying on the fact that employees would be good people and not screw over their employers.  Which of course will never happen.

However what they manage to quote as being in the Act to help combat this is:
"An employer may require an employee to produce proof of sickness or injury for sick leave taken ... if the sickness or injury that gave rise to the leave is for a period of 3 or more consecutive calendar days, whether or not the days would otherwise be working days for the employee."
Which given that we do not have any public holidays that span 3 consecutive calendar days means that this advice is completely useless.  They then state "Employers can also seek proof of illness within the three-day period if they believe the illness is being faked" - but without any backup from the Act itself.

Why do I get the impression they were trying to prove an un-proveable assertion from the Minister of Labour?  It was certainly always my impression that the latter was only true where it was in the employees contract, so again sorry employers?
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