Mike Treen

The government has decided to miss an important opportunity to increase workers rights as part of the proposed changes to the employment relations act.

The government “couldn’t” borrow directly because they had imposed an arbitrary limit on themselves that belongs in the realm of voodoo economics rather than science. 

Unionists the world over have been victims of the lack of free speech in societies run by and for the wealthy 1%.

It was with some personal disappointment that despite several letters from my friends and colleagues, there appeared to be no action by the New Zealand government to protest the hijacking of the boat I was travelling on, Al Awda, and from which I was kidnapped and detained by the Israeli military from international waters on Sunday, July 29.

This is welcome news but it should be just the start of a new culture being imposed at WINZ.

Unite represents workers employed by Salmat who is a third party call centre operator currently contracted to provide services to the IRD. This contract was review early this year and Salmat’s services were discontinued to be replaced by temping agency Madison in September.

The truth is there is nothing very complicated about the calculation of annual leave. Leave was to be calculated weekly and when it was taken it should be valued at the greater of the worker’s current wage or their yearly average. This had been true since 1948.

What was clarified in the 2003 Act was that if it was difficult to determine what an ordinary week was, for example, because they worked variable hours each week, then the worker should get the higher of their yearly average or the average of the last four weeks. This was explained in the Act in minute detail. No mistaken understanding could be taken from the plain language.

It has become clear that almost no major employer or payroll provider did this simple calculation. Many also did not include regular allowances that should have been.