offering employment

Legal requirements

Several laws cover how a job can be offered.

The Human Rights Act applies to job advertisements, application forms, interviews and job offers.

In most cases, jobs must be open to anyone, whatever their colour, race, ethnic or national origins, disability, sex (including pregnancy or childbirth status), marital or family status, age, religious or ethical belief, political opinion, employment status, or sexual orientation.

Generally, none of these reasons should be the basis for offering different terms and conditions or fringe benefits to different applicants.

The Human Rights Commission deals with complaints under the Human Rights Act.

The Employment Relations Act says that jobs cannot be withheld from anyone because they do, or do not, belong to a union. Employers may not offer different terms and conditions of work to different applicants because they are, or are not, members of a union. Breaches of these sections of the Act can be resolved through mediation assistance or taken to the Employment Relations Authority.

It is an offence under the Fair Trading Act to act in a misleading or deceptive way in advertising or offering employment. For instance, an employer must not make misleading statements about the type of work, work conditions, rates of pay and promotion prospects.

Complaints can be taken to the Commerce Commission. 

Minimum rights in legislation

Employers and employees need to be aware that various pieces of legislation set minimum pay, holidays, leave and other rights [http://ers.govt.nz/relationships/minimum.html].

Employers and employees may agree to terms that are more than the legislative minimum. They may not agree to terms that are less.