Cost of dairy products closing in on non-dairy alternatives
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RNZ News
14 hours ago
- RNZ News
Calendar Girls strip clubs forced to take down posts about women involved in employment dispute
By Ric Stevens, Open Justice reporter of The owners of the Calendar Girls strip clubs have been forced to take down posts identifying dancers suing the firm. Seven women are currently pursuing an application in the Employment Court for a declaration of their employment status. A non-publication order was issued in May, suppressing their identities, after they raised concerns about their safety and damage to their reputations, due to the stigma attached to the work they had been doing. One of the women has now returned to court, alleging breaches of the order by Calendar Girls NZ Ltd, the company named as the defendant in their case. Chief Employment Court Judge Christina Inglis hastily scheduled a hearing this week to hear the woman. "I accorded urgency to the application, given the nature of the alleged breaches and the concerns that had underpinned the making of the orders of non-publication in the first place," the judge said in a recent judgement. The urgent hearing was set down for Thursday, but was cancelled, after lawyers for both sides agreed non-publication orders should be respected. "The defendants confirm that they have removed all offending posts," Judge Inglis said. However, her judgement did not detail what was in the posts. The seven women are seeking a declaration that they were employees of Calendar Girls NZ Ltd under the Employment Relations Act 2000. Being an employee, rather than a contractor, gives entitlement to a wider range of legal protections, including minimum conditions, protection from discrimination, health and safety, and the ability to bargain collectively. In 2023, dancers from the Wellington Calendar Girls club attempted to bargain collectively, after being offered a contract that they said was "manipulative". Nineteen were told to clear out their lockers and not come back to work through a Facebook post, after asking for changes to the way they were paid. In seeking non-publication orders in the current case, filed in the Wellington Employment Court, the seven women raised several concerns about having their identities made public. Women in the clubs use a professional name while working there and are instructed not to give their real names to customers. Chief Employment Court Judge Christina Inglis. Photo: NZ Herald / George Heard However, their case in the Employment Court has been taken using their real names. The women involved in the case feared publication of their identities would "severely impact" their employment and housing prospects, and their ability to travel. They said the stigma attached to their work at Calendar Girls had already led to judgements about their morality and respectability. The women are all young, and fear damage to their reputations and the impact on their families. They also said they had safety concerns about former clients and members of the public. One of the women is a member of a church and worries about others in the congregation finding out. Others have had tenancy applications declined and another woman said she was dismissed from a government agency, when it became known she had worked in the sex industry. Judge Inglis has now ordered Calendar Girls not to disclose the names, identifying particulars or photographs of the seven women who have taken the case. She said this applied to "all forms of communication, including oral, written, electronic and any other medium". The substantive case has been scheduled for a five-day fixture in February 2026. Calendar Girls NZ Ltd is a Christchurch-based company that operates clubs in Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown. This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald .
RNZ News
16 hours ago
- RNZ News
NZTA has not developed national tolling plan
State Highway 16 full of slow moving morning traffic as the sun rises. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly The New Zealand Transport Agency / Waka Kotahi says it has not developed a national tolling plan but is working on a strategic network assessment. On government orders, the agency will be using tolls more to pay for roads. Internal documents in April said managers were going to develop a National Tolling Plan for the agency's board. But Waka Kotahi, in a response to a request under the Official Information Act, said no plan existed, and instead it briefed the board last month about being more strategic. "We are changing our tolling assessments to cater for a broader system network perspective... to provide decisionmakers with a more strategic, system-wide consideration of tolling the network," said the update in June. It was doing tolling assessments of all dozen or so roads of national significance in the works, including the Northland corridor to Whangārei, Mill Road in west Auckland and Tauriko West near Tauranga. "Due to data and modelling complexities associated with modelling tolling proposals for each section of the Northland Corridor, a proposal will be made to the board on the whole corridor" by the end of this year. An expensive overhaul of tolling technology had been going on for several years, however, the national manager of system design told RNZ an update on tolling tech has not been presented to the board.
RNZ News
16 hours ago
- RNZ News
Government looks to allow more overseas materials in bid to bring down building costs
Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The government hopes opening up the ability for building companies to buy more overseas material will cut down the price of construction. On Monday it will release its building product specifications document, which will list international standards for products like plasterboard, cladding, windows and external doors. The aim of the change is to allow more overseas building materials into New Zealand's construction sector. Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk said the products had been given "the green light" to end "costly monopolies". He said there were are thousands of high performing products that had been tested against international standards, but faced uptake barriers in New Zealand because they had not been specifically tested against "our own standards". "This is just the beginning of our work to open the door to more building products, lower the cost of homes and turbo charge the construction sector and there will be more to come," he said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
