The government's decision to set aside $15 million in the Budget to investigate whether some school staff have been underpaid their holiday pay, when other workers are left waiting, is puzzling the Council of Trade Unions.
It was a significant amount of money for just one affected part of the workforce, said Jeff Sissons of the CTU. Photo: 123RF
With the exception of the police, who got $37m in backpay, only $4.5m in arrears to 9500 workers had been paid out in the four years to April.
But teachers were not complaining, arguing it would benefit the lowest paid and most vulnerable staff, including teacher aides, office workers and librarians.
The problem stems from payroll systems that were not up to the task of assessing holiday entitlements for people whose work is variable.
In last week's budget, the government set aside $15m over two years to investigate whether teachers and other school staff had been short-changed.
The Council of Trade Unions has been campaigning to fix the problem, and its legal counsel, Jeff Sissons, said it was a significant amount of money for just one affected part of the workforce.
"It's a strange budgeting measure by the whole government, really. That they would spend this much investigating the Ministry of Education, but not spend a similar amount on bolstering the Labour Inspectorate for the whole of the rest of the country. Because there are many, many workers missing out," he said.
Mr Sissons said the $15.3m over two years was much more than the Labour Inspectorate - who are responsible for dealing with Holiday Act claims and pay equity disputes - have been given.
"Two million in the first year and then $2.9 million ongoing.
"One of the reasons that these problems have come about is because the Labour Inspectorate has been incredibly under-resourced.
"At the moment we have 58 labour inspectors for about 2.2 million workers. So the budget could really be bolstering the number of labour inspectors significantly, that's something we've been calling for, for a long time," he said.
The Ministry of Education said it didn't know how many staff were affected but it will be keeping in touch with schools and unions as work progressed.
