Culture Safe call on Govt to start new agency to hear workplace bullying cases

Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Culture Safe New Zealand director Allan Halse says: 'The issue of bullying is not an employment matter and the victims of bullying are not getting a fair hearing'.

Culture Safe New Zealand is calling on the Government to change the law for bullying victims.

Director Allan Halse said the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) was not doing enough for victims who often must lodge any incident of bullying within 90 days or risk having their cases thrown out by the authority.

Halse said workplace bullying was being treated as an employment issue and not a health and safety issue and wants Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway to provide a new jurisdiction for victims.

'Basically, victims who are petrified of the bullying must raise a formal personal grievance with the employer within 90 days of every bullying incident, or in the eyes of the ERA, the bullying never happened. The evidence prior to that 90 days is deemed inadmissible,' Halse said.

**READ MORE:

Currently, the Employment Relations Authority handles workplace bullying prosecutions.

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* Workplace bullying claims on the rise as awareness increases**

Lees-Galloway said he was preparing a response to Halse's letter and was advised the ERA could deal with health and safety matters including workplace bullying if they are raised as part of a personal grievance.

'Workplace bullying is a matter that the Government takes very seriously. I am confident that the current law allows people to challenge workplace bullying and for perpetrators to be penalised appropriately,' he said.

An Ministry for Business, Innovation and Environment spokesperson said: 'Under the Employment Relations Act an applicant has 90 days in which to raise a personal grievance with their employer'.

'If exceptional circumstances exist, and on application by an applicant, the Authority may grant leave for a personal grievance to be raised outside the 90 day period.'

CultureSafe will abandon 10 cases before the ERA.

'Our clients will automatically lose because the ERA is unable to use the health and safety at work act 2015 and that's not fair to them from a justice perspective,' Halse said.

In Australia the state of Victoria had a better system where the bully is prosecuted, not the employer. Bullies can be jailed for up to 10 years.

An October report by Diversity Works New Zealand found wellbeing was the top issue businesses were concerned about.

More than 700 businesses were surveyed and the majority had formal policies for bullying and harassment, but the figures were lower than the last survey in April. Health and safety was a challenge for 41 per cent of businesses to address.

A recent Association of Salaried Medical Specialists report found half of doctors experience workplace bullying 'to some degree', while 67 per cent reported having witnessed a colleague be bullied.