New Zealand employers are losing dismissal cases at an uncomfortable rate, and the reason is almost always the same. Not because the employees were blameless, but because the employers could not connect their actions to their own policies.
In the past six months, the Employment Relations Authority has handed down reinstatement and compensation orders against the Ministry for Primary Industries, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, Health New Zealand, and Electrix, one of the country’s largest electrical infrastructure firms. A High Court conviction of a major port CEO has added personal liability to the mix. Together, these cases amount to a masterclass in how not to manage people out of an organisation.
The most recent case is the sharpest. Mujahid Khan, a senior quarantine officer with 18 years of service at MPI, was terminated in October 2025 following two complaints. One involved alleged inappropriate comments and pressure on a colleague. The other involved raising his voice at a male co-worker.
MPI concluded Khan had committed serious misconduct, breaching its collective agreement and core values of being “trustworthy, respectful and responsive.” But when the ERA examined the case, Authority member Simon Greening found the “evidential basis and category of serious misconduct, as described in MPI’s policies and relied upon by MPI in concluding Mr Khan’s behaviour amounted to serious misconduct,...
The relator managed to connect alleged upcode overcharging to the submission of bills to the government that would have necessarily contained inflated charges. A qui tam relator who did not plead ...