Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill

Explanatory note

The purpose of this bill is to amend the Employment Relations Act 2000 to provide employees with young and dependent children the statutory right to request part-time and flexible hours, and a framework in which they can negotiate reduced working hours.

It will introduce a duty on employers to consider seriously, requests for flexible working arrangements from the parents of young children. The duty to consider will apply in respect of parents with children under the age of five where the parents are employees and have worked for the same employer for a minimum of six months. For the parents of disabled children, the children's age limit will be 18 years of age.

The intention of the amendment is to foster dialogue and better relationships in the workplace; to increase the employment rate for parents of young children by offering them expanded flexible working opportunities, and assist parents to balance work and family life.

Parents will make a request in writing, setting out the working pattern they want and how it could be made to work.

Employers will have a duty to seriously consider any such request and to make a formal business assessment of how such flexible working arrangements could be achieved. If a request is turned down, employers will need to demonstrate, if challenged, that a clear business case exists for rejecting the request. The bill sets out the reasons which would justify rejecting a request — including the burden of additional costs to the business and inability to organise work within available staffing.

The employee, in turn, will be able to challenge a decision through an appeals procedure. Parents will be given two weeks to appeal in writing against the decision, and setting out the reasons for the appeal. Where cases cannot be resolved in the workplace, binding mediation and arbitration will be available, and the opportunity for an employee to take a case to the Employment Tribunal.

Placing a legislative duty on employers to seriously consider request from parents with young children to work flexibly will be an important step in making parents' lives easier. For the first time parents will be encouraged by law to start a dialogue about working parents that better meet their childcare responsibilities.

Research has repeatedly identified the tension of balancing paid work and family responsibilities as a major social issue in New Zealand.

Over 41 per cent of New Zealand families with dependent families have a youngest child of pre-school age (0-4).. Women in particular who are often the main care givers of children are frequently burdened with the extra stress from having to do both paid work and domestic labour. With the ability to work flexibly, there should be greater opportunity to achieve a life balance in the responsibilities for caring for children and those presented by work.

This Act will benefit businesses as well as parents. Work and family balance impacts on job satisfaction, workplace productivity and safety at work. Overseas studies show that family friendly strategies in the workplace such as are proposed in this bill reduce staff turnover and therefore recruitment costs, lower absentee rates, improve morale levels and employee loyalty and increase workplace productivity.

Research suggests that many parents drop out of the labour market because they cannot find ways of combining paid work and the demands of looking after young children. Greater opportunities for flexible working will enable some parents who would otherwise leave the labour market to remain in employment at the end of maternity leave. An increased employment rate for parents of young children will have benefits for employers in terms of reduced turnover costs and increased skills retention and continuity of employment.