Job Hunting

Unlike Australia, New Zealand does not maintain an occupations list, i.e. a list of preferred professionals and likely job vacancies.

The New Zealand Immigration Department does not feel it would be helpful to issue such a list, as it would be continually out of date. The preferred system is for a person to qualify with the points system. If for instance they issued a list saying that the country was in need of electronic engineers, by the time the list was circulated, it would probably be out of date and New Zealand would then be overrun with electronic engineers insisting that they were needed!

The Labour Force

The very best way to get a good idea of salaries and conditions in New Zealand is to access The Kiwi Careers’ website. It has comprehensive lists of job outlines grouped either in industry, alphabetical order, or by interests areas. Details of salary ranges, current market demand, training requirements and typical work conditions are provided for each job category.

Visit: www.careers.co.nz Select: Job outlines

Job by alphabetical listing

Specific job category

Sidebar: employment conditions

Labour Relations

On 15 May 1991 the new Government repealed the Labour Relations Act 1987 and enacted the Employment Contracts Act.

This Act provided a fundamentally different framework for the conduct of industrial relations. Rather than being based on a conflict model of industrial relations, it is based on two quite different assumptions:

• Employers and their employees have a mutual interest in maintaining the wealth and profitability of their enterprises.
• Employers and their employees are in the best position to make decisions on what arrangements should govern their employment relationship.

 

To achieve these ends, the Act removes union monopolies over coverage and bargaining; it gives employees the right to decide whether or not they wish to belong to an employee organisation such as a union and the right to choose who, if anybody, they want to represent them. It aims to encourage bargaining outcomes that are relevant to the workplace and enables employers and employees to negotiate either individual or collective employment contracts directly.

Employees are now required to sign an employment contract. Bargaining can be done by the person involved, or they may elect to have someone bargain for them. A bargaining agent must not have been convicted of an offence punishable by five years or more in prison, within the last ten years.

No Smoking

It is not unusual to see groups of people standing outside office blocks smoking. This is because many offices now have a ban on smoking, so the people who smoke have to go outside when they want a quick ‘drag’. When applying for a job you will quite possibly be asked if you smoke, and you will probably find that a condition of the job is that you do not smoke.