Jennifer Mills: Employment specialist on the OECD study raising concerns about the number of jobs covered by restraints of trade
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Kyllä, se on lempeä kesä nyt, kun elämänmaku on kaikista makein. Mieli kuin nuorena tyttönä kaurapellolla, kun saa liihottaa. Nauti vaan ja ota väli pala välissä. Ai, ai, ai, ai, niin se on. Eloveena.
Täyttä eloa.
A new report this morning this is the OECD they've been looking at restraint of trade clauses it's a 15 country study includes us conclusion productivity is being held back by their overuse non-solicitation of client causes big deal here apparently covers 43 percent of workers the average in the OECD is 22. Jennifer Mills employment specialist at Jennifer Mills and Associates and is with us Jennifer very good morning to you. Good morning Mike. Does every professional basically have some sort of restraint of trade generally?
Oh, they absolutely would, Mike. Certainly in law, you would see non-solicitation and non-competition restrictive covenants. And in your industry, obviously we've got the Tova O'Brien determination where the authority put Ms. O'Brien out of work for seven weeks of her three-month non-competition restrictive covenant. She's not the hosk who perhaps might be restrained for a longer temporal period, but it was a high profile decision, an employee employed in a key role. So we are seeing the non-competition restrictive covenants being enforced in New Zealand. But the report's concern, having had a look at it overnight, was that these restraints are being applied indiscriminately across the workforce and that means lower level employees have these restraints included in their employment agreements and that has a chilling effect tending to prevent them from moving on and that's consistent with Ms White's private members bill seeking to ban restraints for lower paid workers.
We don't see that, we see employees across New Zealand are pretty savvy with respect to their knowledge of employment law and their rights. And if they're not happy with a restraint, they'll approach their employer directly and seek to negotiate a satisfactory outcome. Most of these cases are negotiated. Mike, we don't end up in litigation often. And the resolution usually is by the departing employee proffering undertakings um in respect of confidentiality intellectual property and non-solicitation and often that will protect certainly uh an employer's legitimate proprietary interests that they have is there a little bit of cut and paste from the corporate side of the equation in other words if i do one i can do them all and just make it easy on myself administratively speaking and that is part of the problem
You're absolutely right, they're all the same and it comes down to the pointy end of the relationship where an employee is seeking to leave, an employer is seeking to enforce the restraint and may need to ask the authority to vary the restraint to ensure that it is reasonable to uphold.
All right. Nice to talk to you, Jennifer. Appreciate the expertise. As always, Jennifer Mills, the Employment Specialist at Jennifer Mills & Associates.
What are the key findings of the OECD study on restraints of trade?
I don't know that anyone's necessarily going to change the law as we understand it.
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