PSA Members At Department Of Internal Affairs Vote To Strike As Pay Lags Behind Cost Of Living
More than 1,300 PSA members working at the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) will strike from 11am to 1pm on Monday 13 July in support of their claim for a pay offer that keeps pace with the cost of living.
“The workers voted overwhelmingly to take strike action – after months of bargaining, DIA has failed to table an offer that gives its workers enough to live on” said Duane Leo, National Secretary for the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.
DIA workers include those who process passports and documents recording our births, deaths, marriages and citizenship, National Library and Archives staff, gambling and anti-money laundering regulators, staff working on digital safety, child exploitation prevention, and violent extremism prevention, as well as community operations and emergency management roles.
The largest group are Life and Identity Services Officers (processing passports, births, deaths, marriages, citizenship, and more), most of whom earn around $65,000 a year.
DIA’s offer to PSA members is an increase of just $700 to the midpoint of each band. Excluding increased pay from annual step progression, this is a rise of around 0.8 percent on average for all members, well below the increase in the cost of living.
“The Government talks about helping New Zealanders during the cost-of-living crisis, but when it comes to the workers on its payroll, it doesn’t care about them doing it tough,” said Leo.
Many workers are facing huge pressures on the family budget. The PSA has collected testimonials from workers. One wrote; “Not keeping up with the ever-rising cost of living with two small children under 3 means we are having to compromise on basics. My partner and I are both public servants and are acutely feeling the impact of this government’s vilification of the public service. We have already downsized our home, cut back daycare hours, and are now mainly eating vegetarian purely because of financial stress and the cost-of-living crisis.”
Duane Leo said: “These are workers providing essential services that New Zealanders depend on every day – they deserve to be paid fairly, especially in a cost-of-living crisis. They are already behind market rates. This offer would lock them even further behind. A $700 increase is a pay cut in real terms.”
DIA points to a one-off lump sum payment as part of the offer (totalling $1,500), but that money quickly disappears and does nothing to lift the base pay that workers depend on. Once it’s gone, their regular pay will have fallen even further behind.
The PSA has offered to compromise, including proposals around hours of work and a shorter-term agreement, but DIA has not accepted these approaches. The PSA is seeking an increase of $2,000 to the midpoint of each band – an average increase of approximately 2.3 per cent.
“These workers are going on strike as a last resort. They are patient people who have tried to reach a fair deal, but there is a limit to patience when your pay keeps going backwards and your concerns fall on deaf ears,” said Leo.
About Public Service Association:
The Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi is Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest trade union, representing and supporting more than 95,000 workers across central government, state-owned enterprises, local councils, health boards and community groups.
I’m a little worried my pending passport application will get delayed next week, but these workers are totally in the right. A 0.8% pay raise when cost of living is skyrocketing is just a real-terms pay cut, they deserve far better than this insult of an offer.
It’s not just the PSA members who are suffering from poor pay that fails to keep pace with the ever increasing cost of living! As said, so many times, the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is now enormous and smacks of corruption at the highest level. How anyone can go along with this insidious trend is staggering. We owe a decent and fair pay, for a 40+ hour week, for all our workers irrespective of what industry they work in. That sales-people earn so much is abscene. Bring back a level playing field while we still have workers who haven’t thrown in the towel by now, or fled the country! How are there so many greedy people out there? There’s enough to go around they just don’t want to share, plus they excel in their sense of control and economic abuse! It truly disgusts me. We could do with some ‘actual support’ from our ‘so RW’ media! If national et al go back in come November, it will totally destroy NZ.
A two-hour strike feels more symbolic than disruptive—hard to see how that pressures DIA when passport delays are already chronic. Still, a $700 raise is insulting given inflation.