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Increases to the Minimum Wage
26 Mar 2008
From 1 April 2008 the minimum wage will rise from $11.25 to $12.00 per hour for adults. However, this is not the only change. The Youth Rate has now been renamed to "New Entrant Workers". A New Entrant Worker is a person aged between 16 and 17 years old and will start on a minimum wage of $9.60 per hour. Once the New Entrant Worker has turned 16 years of age and completed 3 months or 200 hours of employment or is supervising or training other staff, which ever comes first, they are entitled to be paid the adult minimum wage.

New Flexi-Hours for Employees
19 Mar 2008
The new "Flexi-Hours" ammendment to the Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) come into effect in July 2008. This new provision in the ERA will allow the employee to ask the employer to consider allowing the employee to change their working hours and/or days. If an employee makes a request to the employer under the new flexi-hours provisions the employer must give reasonable consideration to the request. However, there are several exclusions in the ERA that allow the employer to refuse such a request.