Wellington  - A Norwegian-born taxi driver in New Zealand was suspended for refusing to wear a black shirt as part of his company's uniform in because it reminded him of his country's occupation by Nazis during World War II, a news report said Friday.

Harald Kleiven asked the Employment Relations Authority for compensation, saying he had been unjustifiably dismissed.

Kleiven told ERA authority member James Crichton that the shirt was an offensive reminder of the "wickedness perpetrated by agents of the Nazi Reich throughout continental Europe."

Crichton said Kleiven described "a particularly unpleasant exchange in which his whole family (himself as a small boy included) were put up against a wall outside their home and threatened with summary execution by black-shirted Norwegian collaborators, for some minor transgression against the occupying Nazi forces," the New Zealand Press Association reported.

He said Kleiven saw the black shirt "as a reminder of those tragic days in the Second World War, and he does not wish to traumatize himself by wearing a uniform comprising of a black shirt."

Crichton said the Nelson City Taxi Society had a legal right to insist its staff wore a uniform, and Kleiven was not entitled to compensation because he had been "blacklisted," not dismissed.

He urged the parties to try to reach an agreement on the issue, saying "perhaps the society might re-think its refusal to give Mr Kleiven an exemption, given his passionate belief that the present uniform shirt is a symbol of past evil."

The Employment Relations Authority is an investigative body within the Department of Labour that holds informal hearings into workplace disputes, making judgments based on the merits of a case, not on legal technicalities. (dpa)