Update: Kate Wilkinson is considering a report on successful law, not holding on to it.
Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson, photo/NZH
Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson is considering a u-turn on the legislation she and National once bitterly opposed.
A Listener story earlier today said that the Minister had apparently been coyly hiding some good news, a rave Department of Labour evaluation of flexible work arrangements laws passed in 2008. The laws had been the result of a private members bill by Green MP Sue Kedgley, and backing from the then Labour government.
According to the Department of Labour report, released to the Listener by the department, both employers and workers wanted the legislation extended because it was working so well. We wondered why the report had not been released earlier? Perhaps because it was a Greens initiative?
Emphatically no, said a spokesman for the Minister today. The reason the Minister had not released the report was in fact because she was considering extending the legislation to cover all workers. The Department of Labour “shouldn’t have released” the report to the Listener, said the spokesman. “It’s under consideration by the Minister, she is currently talking to her colleagues with a view to extending it. We would certainly have been going public.”
Currently only employees who have care-giving responsibilities have the right to request flexible working arrangements from their bosses.
The Labour Department report, released to the Listener, probed the impact of the 2008 law change under which employees who had care-giving responsibilities gained the legal right to ask their employers for arrangements such as part-time work, flexible start or finish times or working from home. The research surveyed 1800 employers and 1000 workers by telephone in 2010.
The Labour Department found that 42% of workers had asked for flexible work in their current roles, and 94% had been approved. Of staff who had asked for flexible work, one-third were men and two-thirds were women. Only half of the requests related to caring responsibilities.
Overall, 70% of employers report having some or all of their employees working flexibly, with the remaining 30% of employers reported that they did not have any employees working flexibly. Larger employers were much more likely to have none or only a small proportion of staff working flexibly, and small firms were much more likely to have all staff working flexibly.
Three-quarters of employers who had staff working flexibly said they incurred no costs as a result, and 87% of employers said flexible work had a positive impact on their workplace. Employers said they offered flexible work options for reasons such as improving productivity, staff retention and recruitment and morale.
The survey found three-quarters of employers and employees supported all workers being eligible to make flexible work requests, not just those with caring responsibilities.