90 day research fatally flawed
Council of Trade Unions media release
14 February 2011
show that the 90 day law has increased hiring in small firms draws
invalid conclusions from a flawed analysis, said the Council of Trade
Unions today. There is no basis for NZIER and the Minister of Labour to
present these findings as evidence that the 90-day trial period policy
has resulted in the creation of jobs. CTU Policy Director and Economist Bill Rosenberg said: “The report’s
claim is unsupportable. NZIER did not know if employers were actually
using the 90-day trial. Instead they simply took as an indicator the two
factors that (1) a firm employed fewer than 20 staff, and that (2) the
time period was after the new law came into effect on 1 March 2009. It
confuses timing with cause. We don’t know if any change in hiring
practice is caused by the new law, by a statistical artefact, or by the
many other changes occurring around that time.” Other changes which may have affected results include government tax
changes and other assistance targeted at small business introduced at
around the same time, other stimulus measures which could have assisted
small business disproportionately, and upheaval in the economy,
international trade and job market in the depths of the recession. It
could even be partly a statistical artefact caused by firms shrinking in
size. “The NZIER paper deviates far from accepted standards for reporting
research findings,” said Rosenberg. “It fails to clearly describe the
data it uses, specify the model it uses or provide its statistical
results in full. While it acknowledges that there may be other factors
causing the apparent change in hiring behaviour, there is no attempt to
specify them clearly, let alone control for them. There is not even a
token review of relevant research literature other than a dismissive
reference to the Department of Labour study, which itself indicated that
only half of the small firms it surveyed had used a 90 day trial, and
that dismissal rates were high (22 percent) among employees hired on
those terms.” “The value of brief reports on items of interest should not be allowed
to outrank good scientific method.” “The 90 day law is a major and contentious issue because it impinges on
important internationally recognised work rights of New Zealand
employees, and the availability of not only jobs, but work under
conditions of dignity. It deserves serious and soundly based scrutiny.” ENDS Notes to editors: Bill Rosenberg’s full analysis of the NZIER report is
attached, or can be accessed at
http://union.org.nz/NZIER90DayCritique.pdf
Posted via email from TEU
