Cutting part time workers’ sick leave entitlements from the 10 days everyone currently gets to being pro-rated based on how much they work.
*** Also covid vaccines will apparently no longer be free for most people after this month.*** EDIT: this was circulating yesterday, but isn’t true so that’s good.
And this during the biggest covid wave in 18 months, where hospitals and schools are having to close or reduce capacity because so many staff are sick. What a bunch of ghouls.
Let’s be fair, this is about the best case outcome we could have hoped for. I was fully expecting a drop back to 5 days.
However, I find it a bit funny their selling argument is that it’s too hard for people making payroll software 😆.
I don’t think they deserve any credit for not being even crueler.
But lol yes won’t someone think of the payroll developers?! That’s been a common complaint across the numerous attempts to sort out the holidays act.
I can’t see how this would even help on that in this case, but I am not a software guy. Like isn’t this just introducing another category with different rules that you have to account for?
Yeah, also not a developer, but it seems the rules for sick days are not complex, it just requires a separate set of logic. i.e. it takes longer but it’s not hard.
In my experience as a user of payroll software; I suspect its a combination of things.
Developers could customise the logic for New Zealand’s legislation better, but corporations think magically about software and try to buy “out of the box” solutions, even if they don’t quite fit right.
Then they rely on HR staff to try to configure their way around logic limitations so it ends up just as kludgy but in a way more reliant on people knowing why something was done some given way than just in the tool.
I’ve run into stuff you would think is really really simple - like marking the NZ public holidays as not a work day; but if those holidays change - like the addition of Matariki, or you move so you have a new provincial holiday its usually months, years or never that it gets updated.
For annual leave, having an accural system is so much simpler. The current system seems simple, but it is far from it, the main complications come around working extra to cover for others, every instance that this occurs requires a recalculation of your entitlement, in an accural system this kind instance is a non-issue.
I’m not sure about the sick pay changes, I’d have to look into it more.
How does working extra affect sick leave entitlement? My understanding is you just get paid what you otherwise would have been paid on that day, but don’t have to work it. I don’t understand how sick leave entitlement changes from extra shifts?
(Annual leave is a whole nother ballpark, and is definitely affected by extra shifts).
Not sure, at the moment it is “10 days”, but what constitutes a “day”. For salaried employees, it is really simple. For wage workers it is the normal rostered shift, but I’m not sure that it is fair.
Should you accrue sick days at 1/2 (10 days Vs 20 days) the rate of annual leave? Would that be better? This way any extra work you do would accrue extra sick leave.
Yes, I think that makes sense. However, from a National/Act point of view, you get into dangerous territory. What if someone works 6 days a week? Under the old system you’d get 10 days regardless. But under this new accruing system, you are still working 8 hours a day but you’re accruing at whatever the hourly accrual is times 48 hours per week. You’ll end up with 12 sick days a year!
Another potential issue is all the contracts out there that X days of sick leave. The government is saying how much easier it will be for payroll software providers, while the payroll software providers are probably fainting at the thought of now having to handle employees grand-parented in on an old system with new employees starting on a completely different calculation system 😆
It will be interesting to see how the actual bill shapes up once it’s released.