Our athletes and sportspeople have been doing us proud in Birmingham. Our attention is drawn to male and female events alike with no disparity. If a medal is achieved, our nation basks in their success.

The New Zealand team in Birmingham is fronting more female athletes than males. When the excitement of the Birmingham games dies down, we can reflect on progress in some of our professional teams and pay equity.

Sport fans will have read recently of the ground-breaking news that the United States’ national women’s soccer team has scored a pay agreement that equalises the rate they receive for game appearances and tournament victories as the national men’s team.

The agreement will end the women’s guaranteed-salary system they previously had and put both national teams on a pay-for-play model. The previous salary system offered the women players security and a constant wage, but failed to reward players for their time on the field as the men’s wages did.

Top players will now receive higher match payments, shared World Cup pay-outs with the men and revenue-sharing splits with US Soccer. The shared World Cup pay-outs means that the prize money won by each team will be pooled and split between the teams equally, which corrects the imbalance that FIFA (the sport’s international governing institution in charge of the World Cups) pays the men’s tournament players significantly more than the women’s tournament players.

Another part of the agreement relates to revenue-sharing. This part could see the women players receive millions more from their cut of US Soccer’s commercial revenues each year. It is clearly a comprehensive accounting of the imbalance between the two teams’ pay.

A downside of the agreement is that it takes away resources that could be used to support all levels and all facets of the game.  This is a similar problem faced by New Zealand Rugby. Indeed, lack of funding for women’s rugby and grass-roots clubs is part of the attraction behind the investment agreement by US private equity firm Silver Lake with New Zealand Rugby. Read more...

Managing health and safety at work is everyone’s responsibility. People often get hurt because nobody has thought about how the work might be dangerous. Sometimes people are harmed because they have not been trained to do their job safely.

Accidents at work are very common. The statistics are frightening. It is reported that about 50 people are killed at work in New Zealand every year, and more are seriously injured. Each year, an estimated 600 to 900 people die from work-related disease. If that is correct, a worker is more than 10 times likely to die from a work-related disease than from an accident at work.

Two recent sentencings in the District Court illustrate the importance of taking health and safety seriously, no matter the size or complexity of the work environment. Read more

Don’t sack someone because they are pregnant. It should be obvious, but some employers still seem to ignore such basic rules, to their significant financial peril. Eventually.

Pregnant workers in New Zealand are protected by three main pieces of legislation – the Employment Relations Act, the Human Rights Act and the Parental Leave and Employment Act. All three acts provide protections for pregnant workers – the first two in the form of anti-discrimination rules, the latter by setting rules around taking parental leave and protecting the employee’s right to return to work.

A worker who claims to have been unlawfully discriminated against can choose to bring a claim either under the Human Rights Act or the Employment Relations Act, but not both.

Typically, workers will bring their claims under the Employment Relations Act, because it means other non-discrimination claims can be dealt with at the same time. It is also typically a quicker process, although the wait can still be much longer than is ideal. Read more

Restructures and potential impact on mental health .... This recent ACC case may provide further redress for employees: 

While restructures in our workplaces are often categorised by our courts as being part of management’s prerogative, employers should be mindful that it does have an impact on their employees.

Losing your job may be one of the most stressful things a person may experience. It may lower self esteem and worthiness. It may cause financial turmoil. It may effect family and loved ones. And it may effect a workers health, sometimes significantly.

Ironically, the effect on the health of an ex-Accident Compensation Corporation employee was so significant that she appealed ACC’s decision not to accept her work-related mental injury in the Wellington District Court.

Ms Phillips was employed by ACC for about six years. Originally based in Whangarei, when her dream job came up in Christchurch, she successfully applied for it. Ms Phillips, her husband and two teenage daughters sold up and moved to Christchurch in 2017.

In 2019 ACC underwent a significant restructure. Ms Phillips’ position was disestablished and she was required to apply for alternative roles or face redundancy.

The medical evidence concluded that during the redeployment phase that Ms Phillips’ mental health was severely effected. The first instance arose when Ms Phillips raised her concerns about ACC failing to fulfil its obligations to her while she was in the “redeployment pool”. Her manager requested a meeting with her and a HR Representative. The meeting was said to be confrontational and aggressive. Ms Phillips says that she was not shown any support by her manager, instead the manager made it clear she was to stop pursuing her grievance. She left the meeting in tears and was extremely distressed. She consulted her doctor and was placed on stress leave.

Later, Ms Phillips accepted a lesser role that was two bands below her disestablished position. She was placed at 110% of the remuneration banding and was told that it was the maximum allowable in accordance with ACC policy. Ms Phillips shortly after found out that a colleague had been moved to a lower band but was offered 119% of salary to align her old and new pay. Ms Phillips asked to be treated similarly, but her request was declined. She consulted her doctor and was again advised to take stress leave.

There followed a further incident where Ms Phillips tried to return to the workplace to email an updated medical certificate to her manager from her work laptop. There she was confronted by her new team leader and the assistant Branch Manager and humiliated and demeaned in front of about 20 other staff.

Ms Phillips was diagnosed with acute stress reaction, depression and post traumatic symptoms. This was confirmed in a later report by another psychiatrist.

In coming to his decision, the District Court Judge accepted that Ms Phillips had an identifiable mental injury, and that the injury was caused by a series of events, the most notable being the meeting when she sought to understand the redeployment process with her manager. The Judge said that the test is whether or not people generally in Ms Phillips’s position would suffer mental injury in the way she did. He concluded that the answer was yes: people generally who had uprooted family from Whangarei to pursue a dream job in Christchurch would suffer mental injury from the events Ms Phillips went through.

The decision means that Ms Phillips can get financial support through ACC and the therapy she needs to help recover.

Successful claims for work-related mental injuries are not common. ACC says that it accepted 81 claims for work-related mental injuries last year, but it could not easily identify how many of those related to workplace bullying.

Claims for compensation for “humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings” are a common form of remedy sought in personal grievance claims in the Employment Relations Authority. In redundancy situations, compensation awards tend to be at the lower end of the scale for the manner of the dismissal, rather than compensation for the shock and injury to feelings for losing the job. Egregious behaviour on behalf of the employer will usually significantly increase this.

Whatever jurisdiction a worker seeks redress in, they will need to establish solid evidence of their injury and its impact on them. Given that it should be clear that the loss of a job will be a significant and a potentially damaging event in a workers life, it is important that they are treated respectfully and fairly.

Ms Phillips’ case may make it easier for workers to pursue a further avenue of redress if their mental health is significantly damaged in the workplace.

David Burton is an employment law barrister and can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..