Unfair termination for regulated road transport contractors

You are protected from unfair termination if:

• you are a regulated road transport contractor
• a road transport business receives services from you because of your services contract under which you perform work in the road transport industry, and
• you have been working in the road transport industry under a services contract or a series of services contracts for at least 6 months (from 26 August 2024).

Note: work performed before the laws start on 26 August 2024 does not count towards the 6 months.

Regulated road transport contractors:  

• perform work in the road transport industry, and
• are not employee-like workers in the digital platform gig economy. 

They are not employees.

You have been terminated if:

• you worked as a regulated road transport contractor under a services contract
• the road transport business received services under the services contract, and
• the services contract was terminated by, or because of something the road transport business did.

To decide if your termination is unfair we will think about (consider):

• whether there was a good (valid) reason for the termination because you could not do the job (capacity) or you behaved badly (conduct)
• whether any processes in the Road Transport Industry Termination Code were followed, and
• anything else that we think is relevant.

The Road Transport Industry Termination Code was made by the Minister on 3 December 2024.

If we decide that:

• you are protected by law from unfair termination, and
• you have been unfairly terminated

we may order that a new services contract be made. 

The new contract may be in the same terms as when the termination happened, or it may be changed (varied) in a way that we think is appropriate. If we order a new contract to be made, we may also order the road transport business to pay you any money you lost because of the termination.

If we think that entering into a new services contract would not be appropriate, we can order that you be paid compensation instead.

When deciding how much compensation you should be paid, we must think about a number of different things. The amount to be paid must not be more than whichever of these is the lower amount:

• the amount of pay you got, or that you should have got (whichever is higher), for working under the services contract during the 26 weeks (6 months) immediately before the termination, or
• half the amount that the contractor high income threshold was immediately before the termination happened.