But now employees have been told they will have to wait until October 26 for interim payments up to December 31, 2025, and mid-2027 for the balance.<\/p>\n
Nationwide, about 90,000 current and 130,000 former employees had been paid incorrectly for their leave since May 1, 2010, it said.<\/p>\n
Health NZ people and culture and health and safety executive national director Robyn Shearer said making the payments has been \u201ccomplex and technical\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has required a reconfiguration of payroll systems and digitising all timesheets from May 1, 2009 ahead of making remediation payments,\u201d Shearer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must be certain that it is done accurately and all systems operate as expected. We acknowledge the patience of our staff while we have enacted payment.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Zealand Nurses Organisation Whanganui delegate Eugene Kennelly told the Whanganui Chronicle it was \u201cunfair\u201d on staff to have to wait longer for money that they were owed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been waiting for money that\u2019s been owed to us for too long, and it seems like we have no control over when we are going to get it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is our money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennelly said not receiving the payments has \u201chidden disadvantages\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are younger people with families and significant financial burdens that they are having to cope with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it was paid out quite some time ago, that money could have been used for stuff like paying off debt, paying off a mortgage rate when the interest rates were far lower.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are hidden consequences here and they are borne by the people who have done nothing to incur them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lack of accountability on Health NZ\u2019s part has employees getting tired of voicing their concerns, Kennelly said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be idealistic when you have the energy to be idealistic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a while, when you haven\u2019t been listened to for quite some time, you get tired of talking about it, no matter how much you might feel you are in the right, you get disillusioned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennelly said members understood Whanganui is difficult to remediate because of the requirement to digitise timesheets.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it beggars belief it has taken more than a decade to do this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is also baffling that we will get an interim payment up until the end of last year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is Te Whatu Ora still remediating Holiday Act payments for 2026? <\/p>\n
\u201dShouldn\u2019t the payrolls for Whanganui and Lakes be compliant with the Holiday Act by now?\u201d <\/p>\n
Shearer said Health NZ was working \u201cat pace\u201d to complete remediation payments to all current and former staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cPayments to current employees are almost complete, with about $911 million paid to around 86,000 current employees and more than 35,000 former employees,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to make payments to our registered former employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennelly said the situation is \u201conly part of the problem that the entire health service is currently dealing with\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that we go to work to get paid, we have a reasonable entitlement to expect that the competence of the system that is taking care of our financial reward is doing the job,\u201d Kennelly said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we talk about staff not getting the money that they are entitled to, you are missing out on a lot more than just payment, you are missing out on the goodwill of the staff that are the most important part of the healthcare system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has to be a feeling of goodwill, and it is very difficult to have a feeling of goodwill when you are not getting the money that you are owed for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But now employees have been told they will have to wait until October 26 for interim payments up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[4619,74,44092,218578,134,527,189,2956,111,139,69,2744,1653,335,1516,8229,5273,1883,4478],"class_list":["post-426240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-act","tag-after","tag-decadelong","tag-disillusioned","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-holiday","tag-holidays","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pay","tag-payments","tag-remediation","tag-staff","tag-they","tag-wait","tag-whanganui","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}