Employers in the hospitality sector are predominantly owner-operators who are intimately involved in the day-to-day running of their micro or small business – meaning their access to time and resources is often limited.
While regulatory change is inevitable, the sheer number and scale of legislative changes to New Zealand’s employment, industrial relations and immigration frameworks over the past three years has severely hampered our sector’s ability to quickly recover from public health emergencies and natural disasters over the past four years.
Priority: removing or simplifying red-tape
While we recognise the importance of legislation in our sector, the regulatory framework for hospitality is fractured and confusing.
Collaboration with industry in addressing this challenge is crucial to ensuring compliance through a better understanding of regulations. The Restaurant Association believes that changes should be made to legislation that will ease the regulatory burden on our businesses. These changes include amendments to the:
- Holidays Act 2003 to pro-rata the provision of sick leave for part-time employees.
- Shop Trading Hours Act 1990 to standardise rules regarding Easter Sunday trading.
- Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 to require consideration of overseas registration, certification or relevant experience for manager’s certificate applicants (subpart 7) and to simplify the process for renewing a venue licence (subpart 3)
- Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Fees) Regulations 2013 to better reflect the responsible supply regulations for on licence venues, and the proportion of harm caused by on licence venues compared to off licences.
- Employment Relations Act 2000 to address the extensive case law requirements that have developed regarding abandonment of employment agreements.
Get involved
If you’d like to get involved in our advocacy work, one of the best things you can do is to reach out to your local Member of Parliament or councilor to help bolster our efforts.
We’ve created a template here that you can use to get in touch with your local politicians, which includes space for you to personalise and include your own story. Tailor it as you’d like, then address and email it to your local MP.
You can find out who your local MP is here, or get in touch with our team at info@restaurantnz.co.nz if you’d like some help!