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Employment Relations Act 2000

Flexible working short-term for people affected by family violence - Resolving disputes

69ABJ: Penalty

You could also call this:

“If an employer doesn't follow the rules about helping workers affected by family violence, they might have to pay money to the worker as a punishment.”

If you’re an employer, you need to follow the rules in section 69ABE. If you don’t, you can get in trouble and have to pay a penalty. This penalty isn’t paid to the government; it goes directly to the employee involved.

There’s a time limit for when the employee can ask for this penalty. Usually, they have 6 months to do this. But in this case, the 6 months starts from a later date. This later date depends on which part of the law applies to your situation. It could be the date mentioned in section 69ABG(3), or one of the dates in section 69ABI(3)(a) or (b).

The Authority, which is a group that helps solve workplace problems, decides on the penalty. They use the rules in this Act to figure out what the penalty should be.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=LMS186665.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Family and relationships > Children and parenting
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69ABI: Application to Authority after initial or later reference to mediation, or

“You can ask a special group to decide if your boss followed the rules about helping workers affected by family violence”

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69ABK: Limitation on challenging employer, or

“You can only argue with your boss about saying no to your request in certain situations.”

Part 6AB Flexible working short-term for people affected by family violence
Resolving disputes

69ABJPenalty

  1. An employer who does not comply with section 69ABE is liable to a penalty under this Act imposed by the Authority.

  2. The penalty is payable to the employee concerned.

  3. For the purposes of the 6-month time limit in section 135(5), the date on which the cause of action for the recovery of the penalty first became known to the employee, or should reasonably have become known to the employee, must be taken to be a date after, as the case requires,—

  4. the relevant date under section 69ABG(3); or
    1. the applicable date under section 69ABI(3)(a) or (b).

      Notes
      • Section 69ABJ: inserted, on , by section 6 of the Domestic Violence—Victims' Protection Act 2018 (2018 No 21).