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Health and Safety at Work Act 2015

Health and safety at work - Application of Act - Disapplication of Part 3

13: Certain provisions of Part 3 do not apply to members of Armed Forces

You could also call this:

“Armed Forces members can't request safety representatives or refuse unsafe work”

If you are a member of the Armed Forces in New Zealand, some parts of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 do not apply to you. You can’t ask for health and safety representatives to be elected or for a health and safety committee to be set up.

Also, even if you think your work is unsafe, you can’t stop working if you’ve been given a lawful order to do the work. This is different from other workers who can stop working if they think it’s unsafe.

These rules are part of Part 3 of the Act. The specific parts that don’t apply to Armed Forces members are section 62(1) about electing health and safety representatives, and section 66(1)(b) about setting up health and safety committees.

Sections 83 and 84 of the Act talk about workers’ rights to stop unsafe work, but these don’t let you disobey a lawful order in the Armed Forces.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM6544115.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Work and jobs > Workplace safety
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Part 1 Health and safety at work
Application of Act: Disapplication of Part 3

13Certain provisions of Part 3 do not apply to members of Armed Forces

  1. The following provisions of Part 3 do not apply to members of the Armed Forces:

  2. section 62(1) (which relates to requests for the election of health and safety representatives); and
    1. section 66(1)(b) (which relates to requests for the establishment of a health and safety committee).

      1. Sections 83 and 84 (which relate to the right of a worker to cease unsafe work and a health and safety representative to direct unsafe work to cease), do not authorise a member of the Armed Forces to cease work where a lawful order has been issued that requires the work to be undertaken.