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Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987

Rights and obligations after commencement of parental leave

46: Failure to return to work

You could also call this:

“What happens if you don't go back to work after parental leave”

If you take parental leave and your job is kept open for you, there are two situations where your job might end:

  1. If you don’t come back to work when your parental leave finishes, and you don’t have a good reason for not coming back.

  2. If you tell your employer before your parental leave ends that you’ve decided not to come back to work.

In these cases, unless you and your employer agree to something different, your job is considered to have ended on the day your parental leave started.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM121016.

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“Ending parental leave early or making it longer: what you can do”

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47: Failure to accept employment, or

“What happens if you don't go back to work after parental leave”

Part 5 Rights and obligations after commencement of parental leave

46Failure to return to work

  1. If an employee who takes up parental leave and whose position is kept open by the employer—

  2. fails, without good cause, to return to work at the end of that period of parental leave; or
    1. informs the employer, before the end of that period of parental leave, that the employee has decided not to return to work at the end of the period of parental leave,—
        1. the employee's employment shall, subject to any agreement between the employer and the employee, be deemed to have been at an end as from the day on which the period of parental leave began.

      Compare
      • 1980 No 162 s 20