The original statute governing employment relations in New Zealand was the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 (ICAA).

The ICAA and IRA gave the most power to a government agency to force employers and employees to reach an agreement.

[3] The ERA specifically includes homeworkers, for example, a person who buys material from a provider to make shirts at home and then sells the shirts back to the provider, and persons intending to work, that is, those who have accepted a job offer but not yet started working.

When the ERA was introduced in 2000 the Government's policy statement stated that it is ... based on the understanding that employment is a human relationship involving issues of mutual trust, confidence and fair dealing, and is not simply a contractual, economic exchange.

In one case a sales rep was given a company car but wasn't achieving sales targets or satisfactorily accounting for his time so the employer covertly installed a GPS tracking device in his car to monitor his movements, and discovered that most of his days were spent at golf courses around Auckland.

The employee was dismissed and he challenged his sacking by appealing to the Privacy Commissioner, claiming the company had been underhand in installing a GPS device in his car without his knowledge.

The commissioner upheld the employer's right to use it since the company had reasonable grounds to suspect that the employee was behaving dishonestly.

Part 6 of the ERA allows workers to preserve their working conditions if they choose to transfer to a new employer through restructuring.

[20] On the other hand, in December 2007, the Employment Relations Authority found that a sports journalist who told his editor to leave "his f...ing copy alone" was fairly dismissed.

In NZAE&MU v AirNZ the Employment Court said that employees engaged in "safety-sensitive" areas, such as flying planes, could be drug tested.

In MUNZ and Ors v TLNZ and Anor the Employment Court said the drug testing policy must be "reasonable in all the circumstances".

In 2006 a woman was sacked for forwarding an email containing pictures of naked people but the ERA awarded her $9000 for unjustified dismissal.

Violence, drunkenness, disobeying reasonable orders, and insubordination on the part of the employee may be grounds for summary dismissal if the conduct is bad enough.

Many claims of constructive dismissal arise when an employer changes the working conditions to the employee's disadvantage, e.g. more responsibility but no more pay.

In a case from April 2006, the Employment Relations Authority awarded a woman $6000 for constructive dismissal when she felt she had no choice but to resign because she could no longer trust her company's managing director, who broke a promise not to disclose her name to a "very unstable" colleague that she had reported for making threats, and because she felt unsafe at the company.

According to section 103 of the ERA, an employee that believes they have been; may pursue a personal grievance under the Employment Relations Act 2000.

In BP Oil v NDU:[43] the Court of Appeal said: The question is essentially what it was open to a reasonable and fair employer to do in the circumstances.

In IUOW v Unilever NZ the court also said: ...the employer's conduct of the disciplinary processes is not to be put under a microscope and subjected to pedantic scrutiny.

For a detailed example see Pixie Eruera Morrison v New Zealand Post[44] (discussed in Investigating misconduct : a delicate tea ceremony?

However Tony Skelton, managing director and CEO of ACE Training, believes that small to medium-sized employers find it so difficult to comply with the requirements of the ERA 2000 that they pay one to three months salary to underperforming employees to leave rather than dismiss them through the process outlined under the Act.

[45] If we as business owners don't follow the process correctly, irrespective of the reasons and the legitimacy of a disciplinary action, we are in default of the Act and we are going to get done for it.

An example of a procedurally fair process is as follows: 1 The employer conducts a proper investigation into the alleged wrongdoing.

In response to an employer who wants to sack an underperforming worker on a probationary period, lawyer Lyndal Yaqub of DLA Phillips Fox gives the following advice:[48] Under The Employment Relations Act probationary periods do not affect the application of the law relating to unjustifiable dismissal.

You will leave yourself vulnerable to a personal grievance action based on unjustifiable dismissal if you do not follow a fair process.

Examples are: Section 103A, the "Test of Justification" also applies to disadvantage, so the employer must show that their action was justified substantially and procedurally.

In November 2007 the Employment Relations Authority found that Air NZ had breached its good faith obligations to the Service and Food Workers' Union (SFWU) by sending letters to 269 employees it believed to be members of the SFWU, trying to entice them to leave the union.

Go-slows, black bans on persons or products, work-to-rules, reducing normal output and refusing to do overtime are all strike actions.

The Employment Court has exclusive jurisdiction to hear claims based on tort law related to strikes, lock-outs, and picketing (section 99&100).

A common example of free loading is where a union negotiates a collective agreement for its members at a workplace and the employer then gives the same conditions to non-members.

Kate Wilkinson, the Minister of Labour, said that the Act allowed businesses to employ new staff without a concern that they would face time-consuming and costly grievance procedures if the person was not right for the job.