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Health and Safety at Work Act 2015

Worker engagement, participation, and representation - Right to cease or direct cessation of unsafe work

83: Right of worker to cease or refuse to carry out unsafe work

You could also call this:

“You can stop working if you believe it's seriously dangerous”

You have the right to stop working or refuse to do work if you believe it would put you or someone else in serious danger. This danger must be immediate or about to happen soon.

If you refuse to do the work, you can keep refusing if you try to fix the problem with the person in charge of the business as soon as you can. You can continue to refuse if the problem isn’t fixed and you still think there’s a serious risk to your or someone else’s health or safety.

You have good reasons to refuse work if a health and safety representative tells you that doing the work would put you or others in serious danger.

If you stop working because of danger, you need to tell the person in charge of the business as soon as you can.

However, you can’t refuse to do work that’s normally risky unless the risk has become much worse than usual.

This law doesn’t change any other rights you have to refuse work under other laws.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM5977016.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Work and jobs > Workplace safety
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82: Meaning of cease work, or

“What 'cease work' means in this law”

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“Safety rep can stop dangerous work to prevent serious harm”

Part 3 Worker engagement, participation, and representation
Right to cease or direct cessation of unsafe work

83Right of worker to cease or refuse to carry out unsafe work

  1. A worker may cease, or refuse to carry out, work if the worker believes that carrying out the work would expose the worker, or any other person, to a serious risk to the worker's or other person's health or safety arising from an immediate or imminent exposure to a hazard.

  2. A worker may continue to refuse to carry out the work if—

  3. the worker attempts to resolve the matter with the PCBU as soon as practicable after first refusing to do the work; and
    1. the matter is not resolved; and
      1. the worker believes on reasonable grounds that carrying out the work would expose the worker or any other person to a serious risk to the worker's or other person's health or safety arising from an immediate or imminent exposure to a hazard.

        1. Without limiting subsection (2)(c), reasonable grounds exist if a health and safety representative has advised the worker that carrying out the work would expose the worker or any other person to a serious risk to the worker's or other person's health or safety arising from an immediate or imminent exposure to a hazard.

        2. A worker who ceases work under subsection (1) must, as soon as practicable, notify the PCBU that the worker has ceased work.

        3. Subsection (1) does not authorise a worker to refuse to do work that, because of its nature, inherently or usually carries an understood risk to the worker’s health and safety, unless that risk has materially increased beyond the understood risk.

        4. To avoid doubt, nothing in this section limits or affects an employee’s right to refuse to do work under any other enactment or the general law.

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