Plain language law

New Zealand law explained for everyone

Health and Safety at Work Act 2015

Miscellaneous provisions - Regulations, exemptions, approved codes of practice, and safe work instruments - Regulations

214: Regulations relating to worker engagement, participation, and representation

You could also call this:

“Rules for working together on safety at work”

The Governor-General can make rules about how workers and bosses work together to keep everyone safe at work. These rules can cover a few different things:

They can explain how to set up work groups. This includes figuring out who should be in each group, even when people work for more than one boss. The rules can also talk about how to make agreements about these groups or change them.

The rules can also be about health and safety representatives. They can say who can be chosen as a representative and how to pick them or remove them. They can also say who gets to vote for representatives and how long they can stay in the job. The rules might say how many days off work representatives can get to do their job, based on how many workers there are. They might also say how many days off representatives in certain jobs should get. There might be a list of all the representatives that gets sent to the people in charge of safety.

There can be rules about health and safety committees too. These might say how to set up a committee and how often they should meet.

The Governor-General can also make any other rules needed to make sure the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 works properly.

These rules are called secondary legislation. This means they have to be published in a special way that’s explained in another law called the Legislation Act 2019.

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 It might be out of date or be missing some parts.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=DLM5977217.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Workplace safety
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Previous

213: Regulations relating to exemptions in respect of Armed Forces, or

“Rules for applying health and safety laws to the Armed Forces”

Next

215: Regulations relating to levies, or

“Rules for setting and managing work safety fees”

Part 5 Miscellaneous provisions
Regulations, exemptions, approved codes of practice, and safe work instruments: Regulations

214Regulations relating to worker engagement, participation, and representation

  1. The Governor-General may, by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister, make regulations for 1 or more of the following purposes:

  2. prescribing matters relating to work groups, including—
    1. the requirements for determining a work group (including work groups for workers carrying out work for 2 or more PCBUs):
      1. agreements or variations of agreements relating to the determination of work groups:
      2. prescribing matters relating to health and safety representatives, including—
        1. the eligibility criteria for election as a health and safety representative:
          1. the procedure for electing or removing a health and safety representative:
            1. the eligibility criteria to vote for a health and safety representative:
              1. the term of office for health and safety representatives:
                  1. specifying or providing for the method of determining the maximum total number of days’ paid leave for health and safety representatives that a PCBU is required to allow for the whole business or undertaking under clause 12(2) of Schedule 2, based on the number of workers who work for the PCBU as at specified dates in the year:
                    1. specifying the number of days’ paid leave that a PCBU must allow a health and safety representative in specific industries to take in a year under clause 12(1)(a)(ii) of Schedule 2:
                      1. maintaining a list of health and safety representatives and providing the list to the regulator:
                      2. prescribing matters relating to health and safety committees, including—
                        1. the constitution of health and safety committees:
                          1. meeting requirements for health and safety committees:
                          2. providing for any matters contemplated by this Act, necessary for its administration, or necessary for giving it full effect.

                            1. Regulations under this section are secondary legislation (see Part 3 of the Legislation Act 2019 for publication requirements).

                            Compare
                            Notes
                            • Section 214(1)(b)(v): repealed, on , by section 6 of the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Act 2023 (2023 No 30).
                            • Section 214(2): inserted, on , by section 3 of the Secondary Legislation Act 2021 (2021 No 7).