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Employment Relations Act 2000

General provisions - Transitional provisions

246: Expiration of existing collective employment contracts

You could also call this:

“This law explains how workers and bosses can vote to change when their work agreement ends”

If you are part of a group of employees who are covered by a collective employment contract that was continued by section 243, and you are members of a union, there are some important things to know.

Your employer or your union can ask you and other union members to vote in secret on when you want the contract to end. They can suggest 1 July 2001 or a later date, but it must be before the original end date of the contract.

If most of you vote for a new end date, this becomes the new expiry date for union members. The contract is changed to reflect this new date.

However, if you work for the employer but are not in the union, the contract doesn’t end on the new date for you. It keeps going as it was before.

Also, if the union that held the vote was part of the original contract, they stop being part of it on the new end date.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM61494.

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Work and jobs > Worker rights
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Part 11 General provisions
Transitional provisions

246Expiration of existing collective employment contracts

  1. Where any employees who are covered by a collective employment contract that is continued in force by section 243 are members of a union,—

  2. an employer of employees covered by that collective employment contract; or
    1. a union whose members are bound by that collective employment contract—
        1. may conduct a secret ballot of such of the employees covered by that collective employment contract as are members of the union for the purpose of determining whether a majority of those employees is in favour of the date of the expiry of that collective employment contract being 1 July 2001 or some other specified date (being a date after 1 July 2001 but before the date on which that collective employment contract is expressed to expire).

      1. Subject to subsection (3), where a majority of the valid votes recorded in any secret ballot conducted for the purposes of subsection (1) is in favour of the date of the expiry of the collective employment contract to which the ballot relates being 1 July 2001 or some other specified date, that date becomes, in relation to such of the employees of the employer as are immediately before that date members of the union in respect of which the ballot was conducted, the date of the expiry of that collective employment contract and that collective employment contract is deemed to have been amended accordingly.

      2. Where the date of the expiry of a collective employment contract is changed under subsection (2), that collective employment contract—

      3. does not expire in respect of any employee of the employer who is covered by the collective employment contract but who, immediately before the new date of the expiry of the collective employment contract, is not a member of the union in respect of whose members the ballot was conducted; but
        1. continues in force according to its tenor in relation to any employee to whom paragraph (a) applies; but
          1. if the union in respect of whose members the ballot was conducted was a party to the collective employment contract, that union ceases, on the new date of expiry, to be a party to the collective employment contract.