The ACT Party would freeze the adult minimum wage for three years and reduce the training minimum wage for workers under 20 years old to 60 percent, if re-elected.

Those are part of ACT's wider small business policy package, which includes allowing "protected" employment exit negotiations and shortening the time limit for personal grievances to be taken to the Employment Relations Authority and making unions collect their own membership fees.

Currently, the adult minimum wage is $23.95 while the training and starting out minimum wage are $19.16 - set at 80 percent of the adult wage.

Sixty percent of the minimum wage equals out to $14.37.

The training wage would replace the starting out wage and existing employment protections would still apply.

ACT Small Business spokesperson Laura McClure said laws designed to improve pay and conditions had not worked and "truly higher wages" required businesses being allowed to grow.

"For too long, New Zealand politics has been trapped in zero-sum thinking. When a business succeeds, someone else must have lost. When a company makes a profit, politicians look for a way to tax it, regulate it, break it up, or cut it down," she said.

The ACT full policy package includes:

  • Freeze the adult minimum wage for three years.
  • Set the training wage at 60 per cent of the adult minimum wage for workers under 20, available for their first 12 months with any employer.
  • Allow "protected" employment exit negotiations that don't trigger a personal grievance.
  • Shorten the time limit for personal grievances and require personal grievance proceedings to be lodged with the Employment Relations Authority within three months of the grievance being raised
  • Stop compulsory employer collection of union membership fees and make payroll deductions voluntary.
  • Allow businesses to deduct tax from technology investments like cloud systems, databases or another tech that help productivity.

According to a policy document released by the party, a protecting employment exit negotiations would let employers and employees talk about exiting a contract without fear of those conversations later being used against an employer as a personal grievance.

Currently, employers can be required to deduct union fees from employee wages, then give transfer the money to a union.

ACT's policy document said union membership is an agreement between a union and a worker, not the employers, and unions should arrange direct payment from their members.