Have a Break

In a fine example of badly thought-out interfering law, Labour legislated work breaks last year, causing enormous difficulty for small businesses with low-levels of staff. The most obvious example were the solo air-traffic controllers at places like Invercargill who were suddenly obliged to leave their screens unattended (or find another fully-qualified air traffic controller to take over for 10 minutes – yeah, right). Similar problems were felt in small cafes, where the solo service worker had to abandon the cafe for ten minutes – usually forcing the owner to employ another for a short mid shift to cover breaks and lunch. It did not matter if there was insufficient customer flow to warrant an extra staff member, Labour had decreed a protected “smoko”.

And don’t get me started about the silliness of rostered lunch breaks in an emergency department.

National has now done away with this daft law, allowing businesses to structure breaks to fit in with the workflow rather than fit in with some politician’s idea of appropriate breaks. Trevor Mallard is rabbiting on about “vulnerable workers” as if it is every employer’s dream to abuse their workers.

In reality, the vast majority of businesses will not change their work practices at all. Some smaller business will breath a sigh of relief and stop the intrusive 10 minute breaks (good for nothing but a smoke, anyway) and extend the lunch break – making their current nightmare rostering much easier. Of course, there will be the odd moron who will abuse this and bully his workers into taking no breaks at all, but that is no reason to place a legal straight jacket on everyone else. It is the multitude of these constraints that make it difficult to run a business in New Zealand.

In the current recession, some workers may have to tough it out until the job market opens up, before they can leave an abusive boss. But eventually, said moron will find himself with all the worst workers or, possibly, no workers at all. Said moron probably already has half a dozen personal grievances against him/her. Some people never learn.

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