Nash’s second look at ‘shonky’ contracts
Revenue Minister Stuart Nash has asked the Inland Revenue Department to ‘‘check again’’ whether contracts through which it will be provided with casual staff by recruitment company Madison Recruitment are legal.
The extraordinary request came amid a claim from Wellington employment lawyer Barbara Buckett that the contracts – which offer workers no certainty over the length of their employment, hours, wages or place of work – were ‘‘legally dubious’’.
That has been denied by Madison Recruitment, which says it sought independent legal advice and understood the contracts and accompanying work briefs were fully compliant with employment legislation.
Inland Revenue selected Madison to provide ‘‘contingent labour’’ to the department from September, replacing an existing contractor, Salmat.
But Unite Union said dozens of callcentre workers who had been employed by Salmat to answer calls for Inland Revenue had quit after seeing the new contracts.
They state that workers would be employed on a temporary basis by Madison, with hours and pay only agreed prior to each ‘‘client assignment’’ and with ‘‘no guarantee of continuous work’’.
The contracts also require workers to agree that Madison might be unable to give them written confirmation of their hours or pay – or details of where they would work or what they would do – even after they started an assignment, because these would vary and be ‘‘short term’’.
One worker who had been employed to work in Inland Revenue’s offices in Wellington since November, Ben Chipping, said the new contract was the worst he had ever seen.
Another said she felt as though she had ‘‘been treated like I am nobody and my skills mean absolutely nothing’’.
Buckett said that, in her view, the contracts were ‘‘legally dubious’’ and appeared to be trying to defeat the rights people had under common law.
‘‘I think they would have a lot of difficulty standing up . . . Why would a state-funded body try to get into something that is really quite shonky?’’
The contracts also ‘‘sat uneasily’’ with the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill currently going through Parliament. This bill was designed to ensure people’s contracts were with their ‘‘real employer’’, she said.
A spokeswoman for Nash said he was aware of concerns raised by Unite Union. He had been told by Inland Revenue that the contracts were not ‘‘zero hours’’ contracts.
But she said Nash had asked Inland Revenue ‘‘to check again to be sure the contracts comply with the law’’.
Madison said in a statement that it had sought independent legal advice and understood that the contracts and the job brief that accompanied them were ‘‘fully compliant with the minimum entitlement provisions of New Zealand employment legislation’’.
The firm said it updated its agreements to keep pace with any law changes, and was working with Inland Revenue to provide ‘‘an agile and flexible contingent workforce solution’’.