New Zealand Working Time: Records, Breaks, Employment Leave Act

New Zealand has no statutory maximum working week. There is no equivalent of the EU's 48-hour cap, no daily ceiling, and no general overtime premium written into law. What there is instead is a strict duty to record what people actually worked, and a leave system so hard to compute that Parliament has just passed a law to replace it.

On 6 August 2026 the Employment Leave Act 2026 received royal assent. It will repeal the Holidays Act 2003 after years of payroll remediation projects, but it is not in force yet: it comes into force on 6 August 2028, and the Holidays Act applies until then. That gives employers a two-year runway and a very specific homework assignment: start capturing hours in a form the new accrual model can consume.

#Quick Reference

#No Hours Cap, But Real Constraints

The absence of a statutory maximum surprises employers arriving from Europe. Hours are a matter for the employment agreement, subject to four real limits.

The agreement must state them. Since the 2016 amendments, an employment agreement must record the agreed hours, including the number of guaranteed hours, the days, the start and finish times, or how they will be set.

Zero-hour contracts are unlawful. An employer cannot require an employee to be available beyond their guaranteed hours unless the agreement contains a genuine availability provision, backed by real business reasons and reasonable compensation for the availability itself. Without that, the employee may refuse the work.

Shift cancellation must be paid for. If the agreement allows shifts to be cancelled, it must specify reasonable notice and reasonable compensation. If it does not, the employee is entitled to what they would have earned.

Fatigue is a health and safety duty. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, a person conducting a business must manage risks to health, and fatigue from long or irregular hours is one of them. This is where an employer running 14-hour days finds their limit, since there is no hours statute to breach.

Section 11B of the Minimum Wage Act 1983 says an employment agreement must fix the maximum weekly hours, excluding overtime, at no more than 40, unless the parties agree to a higher number, and where the figure is 40 or less they must try to spread the hours over no more than five days. Because the parties can agree to more, it is a default, not a cap.

#Rest and Meal Breaks

Fixed break entitlements were replaced in 2015 by a looser duty to allow reasonable breaks, then restored on 6 May 2019. The entitlement scales with the length of the work period:

Rest breaks are paid and count as work time. Meal breaks are unpaid and do not. That distinction is the one that reaches payroll: an eight-hour shift with two rest breaks and a meal break is 7.5 paid hours, not 8, and not 7.

Timing may be agreed. Failing agreement, section 69ZE sets default times, so far as is reasonable and practicable: in a 6 to 8 hour work period, for example, the meal break falls in the middle and each rest break halfway between the meal break and the start or finish. Employers in essential services or national security work may, under strict conditions, agree other arrangements or provide compensatory measures instead of breaks.

#Wages and Time Records: Section 130

This is the operative duty. Section 130 of the Employment Relations Act 2000 requires every employer to keep a wages and time record showing, for each employee:

• the hours worked each day and the pay for those hours
• the wages paid each pay period and the method of calculation
• details of any employment relations education leave taken
• the employee's name, postal address, age if under 20, the kind of work they usually do, and whether they are on an individual or collective agreement (with their classification under a collective agreement)

Records must be accessible to the employee or their representative for the preceding six years. A parallel duty under section 81 of the Holidays Act covers the holiday and leave record, which must be kept for at least six years.

Two points need care.

Salaried staff are not exempt. The duty attaches to every employee. Agreed usual hours may be stated in the employment agreement, but any additional hours needed to show that minimum entitlements, such as the minimum wage, were met must still be recorded (s 130(1C) and (1D)).

"Hours worked each day" means each day. A weekly total does not show it, and a roster or the agreement only counts where the employee actually works those agreed usual hours (s 130(1B)).

#The Employment Leave Act 2026

#Why the Holidays Act Had to Go

The Holidays Act 2003 expressed leave in weeks and pay in a choice of averages, then asked employers to apply that to people whose hours varied. The result was two decades of miscalculation across the public and private sectors, with remediation programmes running into hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem was never employer indifference; the formula was genuinely hard to apply to anyone without a fixed pattern.

#What Replaces It

The Employment Leave Act 2026 moves leave from annual entitlements to hours-based accrual:

• Annual leave and sick leave accrue in hours against standard hours, from day one, rather than vesting on an anniversary.
• Sick leave accrues at a minimum of 0.0385 hours per standard hour worked, which is 2/52, with entitlement capping at 160 hours.
• Additional and casual hours are handled by a 12.5 percent upfront leave compensation payment instead of accrual.
• A single leave pay rate, based on the employee's lowest hourly rate for the shift taken as leave, applies across leave types.

#What That Means for Records

The new model consumes hours. That is the whole point, and it is why the two-year runway exists.

To accrue leave against standard hours, payroll needs to know, per employee per pay period, how many hours were standard, how many were additional, and how many were casual. An employer whose records show a monthly salary and a leave balance in days has none of the inputs the new Act requires. The Act also amends section 130 from 6 August 2028: the wages and time record must itemise pay by category and show the hours on which any leave compensation payment is paid, and a new section 130A requires a pay statement for each pay period.

Practically, between now and August 2028:

• keep following the Holidays Act, which remains the law until then
• start recording hours in a way that distinguishes standard from additional and casual hours
• talk to your payroll provider about their migration timetable
• deal with any historical Holidays Act underpayments, which the transition does not extinguish

#Public Holidays and Leave Today

Until August 2028 the Holidays Act 2003 continues to apply:

• Annual holidays: four weeks after each completed twelve months of continuous employment.
• Public holidays: twelve a year, including Matariki, which became a public holiday under the Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Act 2022. Where an employee works a public holiday they would otherwise have worked, they are paid at time and a half and receive an alternative holiday.
• Sick leave: ten days after six months of continuous employment, or after working an average of ten hours a week over six months (with at least one hour every week or 40 hours every month).
• Bereavement leave and family violence leave sit alongside on their own qualifying rules.

#Inspection and Penalties

The Labour Inspectorate, part of MBIE, enforces minimum entitlements. Inspectors may enter workplaces, require records, and issue notices.

Directors and senior managers can be held personally liable where they were involved in a breach of employment standards (ERA s 142W).

Missing records also weaken the employer's position in a wage claim: where the failure prejudiced the employee's claim, the Authority may accept the employee's figures for wages and hours unless the employer proves them wrong (ERA s 132).

#Practical Compliance Checklist

1. Record hours worked each day for every employee, salaried staff included.
2. Record paid rest breaks and unpaid meal breaks separately, because only one of them is work time.
3. Check your agreements state hours and that any availability provision carries reasonable compensation.
4. Keep records retrievable for six years, per employee, per day.
5. Start splitting standard, additional, and casual hours now, ahead of August 2028.
6. Manage fatigue as a health and safety risk, since no hours statute will do it for you.

#Common Questions

Is there really no maximum working week? There is no statutory cap. Hours come from the employment agreement, constrained by the availability and cancellation rules, and by the employer's health and safety duty to manage fatigue.

Is overtime pay required by law? No. There is no statutory overtime premium. Overtime rates come from the employment agreement or a collective agreement. What the law does require is that all hours worked are paid at no less than the minimum wage.

Do I need to keep records for salaried employees? Yes. Section 130 makes no exception for salary. Agreed usual hours can be stated in the agreement, but additional hours needed to show that minimum entitlements were met must be recorded.

What happens to leave balances in August 2028? The new rules apply from an employee's first pay period starting on or after 6 August 2028. Follow the Holidays Act until then. Schedule 1 of the Act sets out how existing balances convert into hours.

Does the Employment Leave Act fix historical underpayments? Not by itself. Remediation obligations under the Holidays Act survive the repeal. The Act adds an optional remediation process, with the detail to be set by regulations, but if you have a known miscalculation, the new Act is not a clean slate.

#Summary

• New Zealand sets no maximum weekly hours; the constraints are the employment agreement, availability rules, and health and safety
• Rest breaks are paid and count as work time; meal breaks are unpaid and do not
• Section 130 requires a record of hours worked each day for every employee, accessible for six years
• The Employment Leave Act 2026 got royal assent on 6 August 2026 and takes effect 6 August 2028
• It replaces week-based leave with hours-based accrual, sick leave accruing at 0.0385 hours per standard hour, capped at 160 hours
• Record-keeping failures draw $1,000 infringement notices and Authority penalties up to $20,000 for a company

#Sources

• Employment Relations Act 2000, s 130 on legislation.govt.nz
• Employment Relations Act 2000, s 69ZD (rest and meal breaks)
• MBIE: Holidays Act reform and the Employment Leave Act
• Employment Leave Act 2026 on legislation.govt.nz
• Employment New Zealand: Employment Leave Act 2026
• Health and Safety at Work Act 2015; Minimum Wage Act 1983; Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Act 2022

#Where to Go Next

• Working hours in Australia under the Fair Work Act for the nearest neighbor, where the award rather than the statute carries the detail
• UK Working Time Regulations 1998: employer guide for the common-law system that did adopt an hours cap
• South Africa's BCEA: working time, overtime, and records for another jurisdiction where the record duty outlives the entitlements