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Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act 1987

Protection of employment

52: Special defence relating to dismissal during the 26 weeks following parental leave

You could also call this:

“Employer's reasons for ending your job after parental leave”

If your job ends within 26 weeks after you come back from parental leave, your employer can defend their decision. They need to prove two things:

First, they must show that they couldn’t keep your job open or find you a similar job. They also need to prove that they couldn’t change how they do things to keep you employed.

Second, they need to show that between when you came back from leave and when your job ended, they tried to give you a job like your old one. They must prove that even though they wanted to give you the job before anyone else, they couldn’t find one that was very similar to what you did before.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM121024.

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51: Special defences relating to dismissal during parental leave, or

“When an employer can let you go while you're on parental leave”

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Part 6 Protection of employment

52Special defence relating to dismissal during the 26 weeks following parental leave

  1. Where the termination of employment is proved to have taken place during the period of 26 weeks beginning with the day after the date on which any period of the employee's parental leave ended, it shall be a defence for the employer to prove—

  2. the matters set out in paragraphs (b) and (c) of section 51; and
    1. that, during the period between the end of the period of the employee's parental leave and the termination of the employee's employment, the employer had (despite being prepared to accord the employee preference over other applicants) been unable to appoint the employee to a position which was vacant and which was substantially similar to the position held by the employee at the beginning of the employee's period of parental leave.

      Compare
      • 1980 No 162 s 30