🕵‍♀️ The Briefing: Operation Transparency

🫅 20 August 2025. Parliament moved. A new law - quietly passed, now awaiting Royal Assent. Its mission: to crack open the vault of pay secrecy

🗡️ On the surface, it looks simple: protect employees who dare to discuss their remuneration or inquire into another’s. But beneath the polite parliamentary phrasing lies a weapon designed to expose inequities. Gender. Māori. Pasifika. The gaps employers hoped would stay buried

📚 The New Rules of Engagement:

A new personal grievance ground has been slipped into the Employment Relations Act 2000: adverse conduct for a remuneration disclosure reason Translation: punish an operative for talking pay, and you’re in breach

㊙️ “Remuneration disclosure” is broad. Whether an employee whispers about their own salary, asks a colleague about theirs, or takes part in a wider pay inquiry - it all counts

🤺 Once adverse conduct is on the table - dismissal, demotion, denial of opportunity, or even more subtle sabotage - the burden flips. The employer must prove that the disclosure wasn’t a substantial reason for their action

🔫 Pay secrecy clauses? Still permitted in writing, but rendered toothless

Employers can no longer enforce them, except in the narrow case where an employee is also an owner. No more disciplinary bullets in the chamber

👷‍♀️ What It Doesn’t Do:

This isn’t forced transparency. Employees aren’t compelled to share their salaries - except in the public service. This law is about protection, not obligation

💣 The Fallout:

For most employers, the immediate blast radius is limited. No instant upheaval. But watch the shadows. Expect more pay comparisons. Expect whispers in the corridors. Expect old inequities to surface, sharper than before. Discrimination claims may start creeping in through the cracks

🎟️ The Mission for Employers:

Use this as cover to review pay practices. Tighten consistency. Sharpen fairness. Be ready to explain your decisions not just to a tribunal, but to your own people. Done right, it could defuse claims before they ignite. Done poorly, it could erode trust from within

📋 In the world of employment law, the licence to discipline just got clipped. The name of the game now? Transparency