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New Zealand law explained for everyone

Employment Relations Act 2000

General provisions - Infringement offences

235E: Infringement fees

You could also call this:

“Fines for breaking rules: how much money people have to pay when they do something wrong”

If you break certain employment rules, you might have to pay a fine called an infringement fee. The amount you have to pay depends on what rule you broke. For some rules, the fee is $1,000. For other rules, the fee amount is set by regulations.

There’s a limit to how much you can be fined in a short time. If you’re an employer, you won’t have to pay more than $20,000 in total for these fines over three months. This limit applies even if you break different rules or break the same rule multiple times.

You can find more details about which rules this applies to in section 235A of the law.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6803827.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Business > Industry rules
Crime and justice > Criminal law
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235DC: Reminder notices, or

“A reminder notice tells you again about a fine you got and must look just like the first notice.”

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235EA: Infringement fine, or

“The highest fine for breaking a rule is twice the normal fee.”

Part 11 General provisions
Infringement offences

235EInfringement fees

  1. The infringement fee,—

  2. for an infringement offence specified in paragraph (a) or (c) of the definition of that term in section 235A, is $1,000:
    1. for an infringement offence prescribed by regulations under paragraph (b) of the definition of that term in section 235A, is the infringement fee specified in regulations.

      1. However, the maximum aggregate infringement fees that an employer is liable to pay in a 3-month period for infringement offences specified in paragraph (a) or (b) of the definition of infringement offence in section 235A is $20,000 (whether for breaches of the same provision or breaches of different provisions).

      Notes
      • Section 235E: replaced, on , by section 21 of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Act 2023 (2023 No 36).