{"id":432289,"date":"2026-05-17T17:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T17:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/432289\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T17:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T17:50:08","slug":"sticking-points-sour-otherwise-sensible-holidays-act-reforms-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/432289\/","title":{"rendered":"Sticking points sour otherwise sensible Holidays Act reforms \u2013 Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government\u2019s pitch for the new legislation centres around clarity<\/a> for employees and employers.<\/p>\n

Workers will earn leave in proportion to the hours they work. This leave will be accrued from day one.<\/p>\n

At the moment, workers are entitled to four weeks\u2019 annual leave after 12 months of continuous employment.<\/p>\n

Bereavement or family violence leave entitlements and sick leave can be accessed from day one under the new system, rather than the entitlement only applying after six months.<\/p>\n

A change to \u201cpro-rating sick leave\u201d will be similar to annual leave under the new system, but drew criticism from the Opposition and union groups last year<\/a> because of the impact on part-time workers who are currently entitled to the same lump sum sick leave as fulltime workers.<\/p>\n

It seems fair for workers to get leave entitlements in proportion to how much work they do.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the new system will change from using different calculations to reflect variable parts of pay, like overtime, commission and allowances. <\/p>\n

Instead, it will use the same hourly leave pay rate for all types of leave. That would not include bonuses, commissions or variable allowances.<\/p>\n

This is relevant for shift workers who may often work overtime or receive penal rates, such as nurses, for example.<\/p>\n

RNZ reported last month that youth inpatient facility charge nurse Mary Becker said she would take a $2700 annual pay cut because her shift and overtime allowances would not be factored into leave payments.<\/p>\n

The Government has tried to make it so that part-time and fulltime workers are on a comparatively fairer and clearer system. It appears those working more than typical hours are likely to lose out.<\/p>\n

Indeed, this does not appear fair. It appears van Velden has accepted that this is the smallest price for a better system that can reduce the chance of another $1.8b set of mistakes, or worse.<\/p>\n

The minister has alluded to this dilemma \u2013 RNZ reported van Velden saying she had tried to create a law benefiting everyone but was advised it would make things worse, so she landed on this bill. <\/p>\n

In the absence of clear alternative measures, can she be blamed?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government\u2019s pitch for the new legislation centres around clarity for employees and employers. Workers will earn leave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4619,1558,4500,13997,305,2956,23500,1452,14575,3025,3051,111,43,139,69,49532,126535,44625,8263,132758,544,88974,221319,1361,1533,10119,4478],"class_list":["post-432289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-act","tag-been","tag-changes","tag-editorial","tag-have","tag-holidays","tag-impact","tag-issues","tag-majority","tag-most","tag-necessary","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-otherwise","tag-overshadowed","tag-points","tag-reforms","tag-sensible","tag-some","tag-sour","tag-sticking","tag-that","tag-will","tag-within","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432289","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=432289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}