Government decides to turn blind eye to Easter trading

Tuesday, June 11th, 2013

The Government has announced it will ease back on the enforcing of the Easter trading laws.

Active monitoring of Easter trading law breaches may be scrapped in favour of giving labour inspectors more time to investigate migrant worker exploitation.

Labour Minister Simon Bridges has signalled that in the future officials may rely solely on complaints because inspection staff were needed elsewhere.

“There are some very serious issues in relation to migrant workers and exploitation in this country,” he said.

“It is a question of using our resources and the labour inspectorate better.”

There is support from the Employers and Manufacturers Association. EMA employment services manager David Lowe says they are getting cases of migrant workers being paid $4 or $5 an hour, which is unacceptable.

“We need to make sure that that law is upheld. And I certainly would say that that is far more important than worrying about whether a garden shop is open on Easter Sunday or not.”

A garden shop chain that for years has ignored the law and opened at Easter has welcomed the Government’s move to go easy on them next year.

Darren Odering’s 10 garden centres are always open at Easter. Doing that has cost him nearly $200,000 in fines over the years, so he’s welcoming news that the policing of Easter trading laws could be relaxed.

“Generally [it’s] our Easter sale and we’re very busy – a great time for planting – and we have a lot of demand from people to be open.”

Family First NZ believes that the National government wants to liberalise Easter trading laws as a pay-back for the ‘Mondayisation’ bill which was passed in April.

“Families throughout NZ take time out for family holidays, camps, reunions, Easter church events, cultural and recreational events over Easter weekends. Even politicians take a Parliamentary Recess during this period. Kiwis employed in the retail industry should also be able to enjoy the public holidays and extended weekend,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

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