She is claiming compensation under the Protected Disclosures Act 2000, which protects whistleblowers. BNZ argues that the redundancy process was fair and genuine, and that there was no unjustifiable dismissal and no grounds for removing the case to another court.
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Melissa Bowen said a current member of the authority was at the bank when she was there. Bowen s request for special leave relied on two things: that it raised an important issue of law that was connected to her case and that there were other related proceedings before the courts. While Bowen was connected to another case before the courts, O Brien said there were other reasons to have Bowen s case heard outside the authority.
Leave to appeal was granted based on the question of whether the minimum wage is payable for all of a worker’s agreed contracted hours of work, in the absence of sickness, default or accident; or whether it was lawful to make deductions from wages for lost time not worked at the employer’s direction. On March 23, the day the Covid-19 level 4 lockdown was announced, the workers were employed by Gate on the minimum wage for a minimum 40-hour week. After the company partly shut down its operations during the lockdown, Gate did not need some employees to work. Gate agreed to pay those employees 80 per cent of their normal wages, provided it got the wage subsidy, which it did receive.
The case was heard by Chief Judge Christina Inglis, Judge Joanna Holden and Judge Kathryn Beck. At the hearing on October 13, the company’s lawyer, Emma Butcher, said it was a simple matter of whether the Minimum Wage Act applied to the payment of employees who were not working. “This is not a case about exploitation of workers,” Butcher said. “The Minimum Wage Act has no application to these facts and as such the determination is incorrect and should be overturned.” Following the alert level 4 lockdown in March, Gate Gourmet was deemed an essential service but it told its employees it would need to partially shut down operations.