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Women fired because they were pregnant
By KATHERINE NEWTON Thursday, 04 December 2008
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DAMAGES: Former Auckland bar manager Sophie Melrose, with son Lukus, was awarded nearly $36,000 in compensation and lost wages after being wrongfully dismissed.
Twoemployers have been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in compensation for wrongfully dismissing two employees after they became pregnant.
Ms Melrose was demoted from her job as general manager at The Vulcan bar in December 2007, a week after she told her employers she was pregnant.
Former Auckland bar manager Sophie Melrose was awarded nearly $36,000 in compensation and lost wages, and former waitress Doris Chiu was awarded more than $22,000, in two separate cases decided by the Employment Relations Authority.
She has since given birth to a healthy baby boy, but said the loss of her job marred her pregnancy. . It was very, very stressful for me and my partner. "I lost all my maternity leave."
She said she was relieved to have won her case.
"I found myself always having anxiety attacks – my midwife was constantly checking my blood pressure.
"I just felt like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders. "I always knew that what had happened was wrong, but to have that verified by a court was so good.
Her employers, Lina Megawaty and John White, claimed she had failed to provide proof of her entitlement to work in New Zealand, despite being a New Zealand resident."
Ms Chiu was fired from her job at the New Deli Cafe, Albany, in August 2007, a few weeks after she told her employers she was pregnant.
That information would have been discovered when Ms Chiu applied to Inland Revenue for maternity and parental leave.
However, Ms Chiu provided evidence that suggested her employers had dismissed her in an attempt to cover up the fact they had paid only one month of her PAYE tax to Inland Revenue.
"Her memory of the birth of her child will long be marred by what happened when she told her employers she was pregnant.
Authority member Alastair Dumbleton said Ms Chiu had been humiliated by being called "a liar and a fraud, and a fabricator of evidence". "We're being shown as people who discriminate against pregnant women, when we're not."
Mr White said yesterday that he was considering challenging the decision. "I can just imagine what it took for those women to have to go through all this while they were pregnant."
Maternity Services Consumer Council coordinator Lynda Williams said the cases made her despair.
Wellington employment lawyer Peter Cullen said firing a woman because she was pregnant was sexual discrimination and a breach of the Human Rights Act."
She hoped the cases would be a deterrent to employers who thought such behaviour was tolerable. "It's not often that people get discriminated against like that. "It's not often that people get discriminated against like that."
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Nelson man carried 100m in raging torrent
By HELEN MURDOCH – Wednesday, 26 November 2008
HELEN MURDOCH/
SWAMPED: A car belonging to retired school principal Rod McKenzie lies stuck on the edge of a weir in the Collins River, north of Nelson, yesterday.
Rod McKenzie has covered a 100m section of Nelson's flooded Collins River in record time in his car.
"One minute I was on the road; the next I was in the river," he said.
McKenzie, a retired primary school principal, was driving to Nelson from his Okiwi Bay home in torrential rain on Monday when he aquaplaned over an 8m bank into the normally slow-flowing river.
He estimated he was carried another 100m by the swollen waters.
McKenzie was tossed down the "raging, roaring torrent" for about 100m before he fled his car. The worst part was trying to grab the blackberry bushes and clamber out, the river was moving so fast," he said.
"It was only when I got out that I thought I may be in trouble. .
Picked up by a farmer who took him home for a hot shower and a change of clothes, McKenzie then continued his journey to Nelson to collect his wife and take her to the airport.
"I suspect if I had stayed with it something bad would have happened.
"I've been told it continued down the river and got jammed under a bridge for a while before it popped out," he said.
The heavy rain also trapped three Tasman District Council hydrologists in the Upper Lee Valley on Monday night and caused flooding in Golden Bay and Nelson City."
McKenzie escaped with only scratches but faces an unpleasant aftermath police yesterday told him they were considering charging him with dangerous driving and he has to figure a way to get his car out of the river.
The trio bunked down for the night in a council ute, dined on a few biscuits and watched the Upper Lee River flood over a bridge, said Doyle.
Hydrologist Martin Doyle and two of his colleagues were measuring flood and sediment flows at the proposed Upper Lee Valley dam site when the heavy rain made the ford crossings impassable.
The ranges between Takaka and Collingwood were lashed by 328mm of rain in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday.
The persistent rain was pushed into the hills above Nelson and Golden Bay by strong northerly winds, dumping 136mm above the city and 257mm above Upper Takaka. Some schools closed early, while shops and homes were sandbagged to prevent flooding as water flowed down Takaka's main street.
In Golden Bay, roads were closed, stock were rescued from low-lying areas and the army ferried stranded motorists. "We were lucky to get away without major flooding.
"People haven't seen that sort of water across the road for some time," said Golden Bay Senior Constable Crispin Lee, of the East Takaka area.30pm high tide."
Nelson came within 30 minutes of a major flood when the rain stopped just before Monday's 8.
"We were concerned about the high tide, but the rain stopped about an hour before it came in," he said.
"We were concerned about the high tide, but the rain stopped about an hour before it came in," he said.
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Fire closes down Far North power station
Northern News Friday, 21 November 2008
Northern News
FIRE HAZARD: A new fire rages at Ngawha, less than a day since fire destroyed more than 60 hectares of DOC land there. Inset: The corner of Ngawha village is closed off by police and fire crews.
Forestry workers were evacuated and fibre optic control cables linking parts of the power station were burnt through when the fire, which had been burning since Wednesday, flared up this afternoon.
A scrub fire which caused the Ngawha geothermal fire station in the Far North to be closed down was brought under control tonight.
"Once we knew we were going to lose those (fibre optic) controls, the station was closed down in an orderly fashion," he told tonight.
Top Energy chief executive Roger de Bray said the station was closed down about 4pm.
"If the fire flares up again they will call 111 but intrinsically it should be out," he said.
But by 9pm everybody at the station had been stood down, except two nightwatchmen and Mr de Bray said the Department of Conservation also had someone there.
Total damage would not be known until the morning and he did not know how long it would take for the power station to be fired up again. .
Department of Conservation fire crews regained control of the blaze using helicopters, backed up by the Fire Service.
The Ngawha Valley fire appeared to have been brought under control yesterday, but jumped Bannister Road into a Carter Holt Harvey forest about 3pm after flaring up again, said Fire Service spokesperson Jaron Phillips. At that stage forestry workers were being evacuated from the area because of the danger.
Earlier this evening he said the fire was "moving quite rapidly with the wind — it's out of control at the moment".
The fire had already burnt through private land and Maori land, as well as the Ngawha Conservation Area, Ngawha Scenic Reserve and the Lake Waiparaheka Scientific Reserve, regarded as a unique place because of the geothermal flora and fauna.
Police had also closed roads to the public in the area.
The first-floor fire was near the southern motorway, prompting a lot of calls from motorists, Mr Phillips said.
In Auckland, two people suffered burns to their hands and smoke inhalation after they were caught in a fire at a commercial unit on Great South Road in Manukau about 5pm.
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The fire was extinguished within about half an hour and the two people were being treated by ambulance staff