Do you work irregular shifts (even only occasionally)? Overtime? Sometimes on Public Holidays? An estimated 1 in 3 employees have some level of inconsistent hours, and if you’re one of them, then odds are you haven’t been paid enough holiday pay by your company.
1 in 3 would mean more than 700,000 workers are owed more than $2 billion – on average somewhere between $250 and $500 per year, as employers haven’t calculated holiday pay correctly.
It’s a problem stemming back to a 2009 law change by National, but you can only claim 6 years back before it’s lost – so workers are losing $1 million per day (bonus link: petition to stop the clock on those losses). Just think what you could do with that $3000 – and how much you’d like that cash to be eroded by time and government inaction.
Most pay systems – all the large ones – didn’t bother correctly implementing National’s 2009 law, and the government didn’t bother following up on them, so holiday pay is under-calculated. The problem’s so widespread that 1 small pay system’s point of difference is that it is legally compliant!
So most companies aren’t calculating it correctly, and if your hours aren’t constant, they’re probably underpaying you.
26,000 workers across 25 companies have got more than $35 million back so far & government ministries have also been scrabbling to fix up their workers – including Steven Joyce’s Ministry MoBIE, who are meant to be enforcing the law, but weren’t even applying it correctly to their own employees. Will they now apply the law correctly for the rest of the country? Or does having the Department of Labour looking after workers in the middle of a Business Ministry looking after their bosses not facilitate that? It appears MoBIE have given up enforcing the holiday pay law in all but the most egregious cases.
Amongst those to have settled include NZ Post and the Police Force ($33 million), Bunnings, Silver Fern Farms and Datacom. Those being investigated include Fonterra, Fairfax, Auckland Council, ANZ, BNZ, Restaurant Brands, Progressive Enterprises, Ryman Healthcare, and Warehouse (who’ve put $15 million aside to cover it). Each time Steven Joyce says it’s an isolated incident – but it isn’t, it’s another pay fiasco on his watch. Some of those affected by his Novopay fiasco are being hit again too.
Steven Joyce needs to stop the clock on eroding workers’ past entitlements, and needs to front up and explain why he’s let so many New Zealanders down – how he’s let $2 billion be lost by honest Kiwis.
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