Dear Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment,
This is a request for information to the Employment Relations Authority which comes under MBIE.

To the chair of the Employment Relations Authority:
1. Please share any reviews, memos, comments and correspondence on the following three cases at the Authority
District Court: Department of Labour v Idea Services Ltd (A copy is here https://number8.org.nz/wp-content/upload...)
and
Employment Court: IDEA Services Ltd v Wills, [2025] NZEmpC 28 (2025)
(https://number8.org.nz/wp-content/upload...)
and
Employment Court: CSN v Royal District Nursing Service NZ Ltd 2022 NZEmpC 123
https://employmentcourt.govt.nz/assets/2...

In particular the following excerpts from these cases:
Department of Labour v Idea Services Ltd CRN08020500068 2008,
[73] It can hardly be a practicable step demanded of an employer to protect the safety of an employee to require a blood test that the employer has no authority to enforce by either insisting that the test be carried out or by restricting or removing employment if there is a refusal by the employee to do so. All that can be done is to strongly recommend such screening and as I have found the Defendant did so on many occasions.

[74] My findings on this issue are sufficient to determine the result of this prosecution. However, the Informant also postulated that when the Defendant discovered that Ms ... was not immune the Defendant should have provided Ms... with a course of Hepatitis B vaccinations and tested her post vaccination immune status. The same criticism that I have already made of the Defendant’s lack of authority to insist on blood screening applies with even greater force to the issue of vaccination and post vaccination testing.

IDEA Services Ltd v Wills [2025] NZEmpC 28
[33]... the Order did not mandate termination of her employment and did not prevent her from performing work outside of the office.

CSN v Royal District Nursing Service NZ Ltd 2022 NZEmpC 123
[44] At the same time, sch 3 relevantly provided that both doses of Pfizer/BioNTech needed to be received before the person involved would become “an affected person”, and thus be covered by the Vaccinations Order.

2. Please share the "conflict of interest" statement for ERA member Natasha Szeto given she was counsel for the case of Department of Labour v Idea Services Ltd and given she has made determinations in the ERA on testing and vaccination in workplaces.

Yours faithfully,

Erika Whittome