Employers' Use of Lockouts under the Employment Contracts Act 1991: A New Balance of Power?

Abstract

Since May 1991 lockouts have become a more familiar feature of New Zealand's industrial relations environment, and have been used to powerful effect by employers on a number of well-publicised occasions. It has been argued that the Employment Contracts Act is not responsible for this development. This argument rests primarily on the fact that the ECA's lockout provisions were inherited from the Labour Relations Act. This paper examines the case law on lockouts under the ECA, and argues that the bargaining environment created by the ECA has made the lockout a more powerful, and the~efore more attractive, weapon than was the case under the LRA.