The days of so-called zero hour contracts look numbered.

New Zealand Workplace Relations Minister Michael Woodhouse

ONE News can exclusively reveal the Workplace Relations Minister is leaning towards outlawing the contracts and other employment provisions that he sees as unfair.

Michael Woodhouse asked officials to review the law late last year after he became concerned about some clauses in zero hour contracts.

Those include employees being required to be available to work but an employer not actually providing the hours; short notice of cancellation of rosters or hours and unfair restraints of trade.

Mr Woodhouse told ONE News he expected to hear back from officials in the next few weeks and will make a final decision about whether to ban them then.

"We can expect to get some good advice about that to make some changes in that bill to effectively rule out those kind of punitive provisions," he says.

"Even if it is a relatively low incidence in our employment it's probably worth ruling them out, for the sake of certainty for those vulnerable workers."

He plans to introduce another employment relations bill in June and would expect to put the provisions into law then.

He says it's about getting the balance right between fairness and flexibility.