SUPPLIED Workers advocate Nathan Santesso said the system was broken. He said before Covid-19 there was a rigid process that was followed in the ERA process, but since lockdown, the application for a mediation meeting, which typically took a week, was taking up to two months. “It’s not working. I’ll submit an application and nothing happens. It’s taken up to two months to get a response. They are under-resourced, so they ask people to have a crack at mediation without them,” Santesso said. “We’ve seen some dodgy behaviour from employers during the first lockdown just with the confusion and people challenging redundancies. We knew it would be hard for MBIE. It’s been the perfect storm and that still continues due to more cases and they’re struggling.”