Advisory: law surrounding strikes and lockouts in essential services

Fol­low­ing enquir­ies, this advis­ory points report­ers to employ­ment law cov­er­ing strikes and lock­outs in essen­tial ser­vices.

Sched­ule 1 of the Employ­ment Rela­tions Act lists cer­tain occu­pa­tion­al groups of ‘essen­tial ser­vices’, which are bound by extra notice pro­vi­sions for strikes and lock­outs.

Ports are included in Part A of the sched­ule, spe­cific­ally: The pro­vi­sion of all neces­sary ser­vices in con­nec­tion with the arrival, berth­ing, load­ing, unload­ing, and depar­ture of ships at a port.

In a Port, for either a work­ers’ ini­ti­ated strike, or an employ­er ini­ti­ated lock­out, 14 days notice needs to be giv­en of the action.

This morn­ing, Ports of Auck­land served an indef­in­ite lock­out notice of work­ers, to take effect in 14 days time at 12.01am on Fri­day 6 April 2012.

Until then, Ports work­ers are leg­ally able to enter the Port to carry out their jobs as nor­mal, fol­low­ing the lift­ing of the union’s exist­ing strike notice.

Any lock­out of work­ers between now and April 6, there­fore amounts to an illeg­al lock­out.

The Mari­time Uni­on will also chal­lenge the leg­al­ity of the lock­out noti­fied for 6th April.