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131: Arrears
or “You can get back money your boss owes you, even if you agreed to less pay before.”
You could also call this:

“If an employer doesn't keep good records, the worker's story about their pay and hours might be believed”

If you want to recover wages or other money owed to you by your employer, you can bring a claim to the Employment Relations Authority. When you do this, you can show evidence that your employer didn’t keep or share the required records of your wages and hours worked. You can also show that this made it hard for you to make an accurate claim.

If you give this kind of evidence, the Authority might believe your claims about the wages you were paid and the hours you worked. This can happen unless your employer proves that your claims are wrong.

Your employer can’t use any wage and time records that aren’t allowed under section 232(3) as evidence.

Remember, the Authority can accept your claims as true if your employer didn’t keep proper records, and this made it difficult for you to make an accurate claim about your pay or hours worked.

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Next up: 133: Jurisdiction concerning penalties

or “The court decides who gets in trouble and how much they pay for breaking work rules.”
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Part 9 Personal grievances, disputes, and enforcement
Recovery of wages

132Failure to keep or produce records

  1. Where any claim is brought before the Authority under section 131 to recover wages or other money payable to an employee, the employee may call evidence to show that—

  2. the defendant employer failed to keep or produce a wages and time record in respect of that employee as required by this Act; and
    1. that failure prejudiced the employee's ability to bring an accurate claim under section 131.

      1. Where evidence of the type referred to in subsection (1) is given, the Authority may, unless the defendant proves that those claims are incorrect, accept as proved all claims made by the employee in respect of—

      2. the wages actually paid to the employee:
        1. the hours, days, and time worked by the employee.

          1. A defendant may not use as evidence any wages and time record that would be inadmissible under section 232(3).

          Compare
          • 1991 No 22 s 50
          Notes
          • Section 132(2): replaced, on , by section 7(1) of the Fair Pay Agreements Act Repeal Act 2023 (2023 No 65).