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Employment Relations Act 2000

Personal grievances, disputes, and enforcement - Compliance orders

139: Power of court to order compliance

You could also call this:

“The court can tell people to follow the rules or stop doing something wrong to make sure they obey the law.”

If someone doesn’t follow the rules in Part 8 of this Act, or doesn’t do what the court has told them to do under this Act, the court can step in to help. This also applies if the court has said that someone has broken the rules.

When this happens, the court can tell the person to do something specific or to stop doing something. This is to make sure they don’t keep breaking the rules. The court will give the person a set time to follow these instructions.

If you’re an employee, employer, union, or employer organisation, and you think someone hasn’t followed these rules, you can ask the court to make an order to fix this. You do this by starting a case against the person who broke the rules.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM60396.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Crime and justice > Courts and legal help
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138: Further provisions relating to compliance order by Authority, or

“ Extra rules about how the Employment Relations Authority can make people follow their orders ”

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140: Further provisions relating to compliance order by court, or

“Rules about how the court can make and enforce orders to fix problems at work”

Part 9 Personal grievances, disputes, and enforcement
Compliance orders

139Power of court to order compliance

  1. This section applies where any person has not observed or complied with—

  2. any provision of Part 8; or
    1. any order, determination, direction, or requirement made or given under this Act by the court.

      1. This section also applies to a person in relation to whom the court has made a declaration of breach under section 142B.

      2. Where this section applies, the court may, in addition to any other power it may exercise, by order require, in or in conjunction with any proceedings under this Act to which that person is a party or in respect of which that person is a witness, that person to do any specified thing or to cease any specified activity, for the purpose of preventing further non-observance of or non-compliance with that provision, order, determination, direction, requirement, or (in the case of a declaration of breach) the provision that the declaration relates to.

      3. The court must specify a time within which the order is to be obeyed.

      4. Where any person (being an employee, employer, union, or employer organisation) alleges that that person has been affected by a non-observance or non-compliance of the kind described in subsection (1), that person may commence proceedings against any other person in respect of the non-observance or non-compliance by applying to the court for an order of the kind described in subsection (2).

      Compare
      • 1991 No 22 s 56(1), (2)
      Notes
      • Section 139(1A): inserted, on , by section 15(1) of the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2016 (2016 No 9).
      • Section 139(2): amended, on , by section 15(2) of the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2016 (2016 No 9).