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Employment Relations Act 2000

Additional provisions relating to enforcement of employment standards - Pecuniary penalty orders

142G: Maximum amount of pecuniary penalty

You could also call this:

“The court decides how much money someone has to pay as a punishment for breaking the rules.”

If a court decides to make a pecuniary penalty order against you, there are limits on how much they can fine you. If you’re an individual person, the most they can fine you is $50,000. If you’re a company or organisation, the fine can be bigger. For a company, the court can choose the larger amount between $100,000 or three times the amount of money the company gained from breaking the law. This means if a company made a lot of money from doing something wrong, they might have to pay a much larger fine.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6803074.

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142F: Matters court to have regard to in determining amount of pecuniary penalty, or

“The court looks at many things when deciding how much money someone should pay as a punishment for breaking employment rules.”

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142H: Chief executive or Labour Inspector may enforce payment of pecuniary penalty, or

“The boss or worker helper can make someone pay a fine if they break the rules at work.”

Part 9A Additional provisions relating to enforcement of employment standards
Pecuniary penalty orders

142GMaximum amount of pecuniary penalty

  1. If the court determines that it should make a pecuniary penalty order, the maximum amount it may specify in the order is,—

  2. in the case of an individual, $50,000:
    1. in the case of a body corporate, the greater of—
      1. $100,000; or
        1. 3 times the amount of the financial gain made by the body corporate from the breach.

        Notes
        • Section 142G: inserted, on , by section 19 of the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2016 (2016 No 9).