Employment protections and decent pay for all workers.
The Green Party will protect rights, improve conditions and make things fairer for workers.
Work should provide dignity, security and a fair share in the prosperity we create together. Strong employment rights, decent pay and collective voice are essential for a thriving economy and a healthy democracy.
Workers should be valued for their contribution, protected from exploitation and supported to live well — not just survive.
Right now, too many people are locked into insecure, low-paid or unsafe work. Employers hold the balance of power and unemployment is used to suppress workers’ fair expectations for better pay and conditions.
The current Government has launched a sustained attack on workers’ rights — removing pay equity and fair pay agreements, cutting health and safety protections, and normalising insecurity. Meanwhile, industries producing important goods for Aotearoa are forced to close when international corporations aren’t happy with their bottom line.
The Green Party will implement a workforce system built on fairness, democracy and care, restoring the balance between workers and employers. This means standing up for pay equity, safe workplaces and secure employment.
We will undo this Government’s attacks on workers and build strong, future-focused employment protections. Our plan will support a flourishing economy that works for everyone — through the transition to a sustainable zero carbon economy.
Our plan
- Strengthen worker bargaining power by changing employment law to default union membership. This means people automatically join a union when they start a new job, but can opt out later.
- Expand the right to strike, including for breaches of collective agreements and political and solidarity reasons.
- Strengthen employment law to protect all workers’ free time with a right to disconnect. Ensure protection from unwanted contact or surveillance out of working hours.
- Explore legislating to put workers’ representatives on boards of publicly listed companies.
- Guarantee annual minimum wage increases that at least keep up with inflation. Pay all publicly funded roles a living wage. Work towards matching the minimum wage to the living wage.
- Increase paid parental leave to 15 months for the primary caregiver, with additional ring-fenced leave for partners, while also increasing payments.
- Protect platform and gig-economy workers by strengthening the test for whether a worker is a contractor.
- Close the gender and ethnic pay gaps by undoing the Government’s changes to the pay equity regime and resuming claims, pay transparency measures, and comprehensive pay gap reporting.