KEY POINTS:
The Anniversary Weekend usually means a sunny day off work for most Aucklanders, but whether it means they are better workers when they go back to work is debatable.
And a move last year to more generous holidays is causing new concern among employers, who believe the flow-on effects may make New Zealand workers less productive.
The latest conflict is pitting decades-old workplace agreements against legal contracts, specifically about whether people previously entitled to four weeks' leave, when the legal minimum was three, can now rightfully claim five.
With statutory holidays now on the agenda, purported links between time off and work productivity are also being questioned.
Phil O'Reilly, chief executive of Business New Zealand, says he's not aware of any serious academic work showing that more holidays make people more productive.
"There was a lot of woolly talk put about at the time of the change [to a minimum four weeks' leave] to justify that workers who had more holidays were somehow happier and worked harder when they got back to work, or something. I discount that.
"The reality is that you'll tend to work more productively if you've got the right tools, if you're well motivated, if you've got the right management structures, and so on."
Helen Kelly, Council of Trade Unions president, says many unionised workers were already enjoying four weeks' annual leave before the law changed in 2003 - it came into effect last year - but those in sectors such as retail had only three weeks.
"The four weeks meant a hell of a lot to a lot of people," says Kelly.
"In terms of productivity, New Zealand has long working hours and low productivity.
"Countries with shorter working hours and higher productivity have more holidays, so I don't think there's a direct link necessarily."
Equally there is no suggestion that bringing in more holidays leads to any great loss of productivity.
New Zealand has high average weekly working hours compared with other countries, but the value of each hour's work is very low.
"I'm not saying the reason we are unproductive is because we don't have enough holi- days, but it does go against the story that more holidays mean less productivity," says Kelly.
O'Reilly says the shift to four weeks' minimum leave has had a "knock-on effect", with many who already received that now pushing for five weeks.
While Australian workers have had four weeks' annual leave for some time, few get five weeks, he says.
"One of the big arguments was we had to match Australia - well we've just moved past them now... so we've just decreased our competitive position vis-a-vis Australia."
The legislation does not deal with how those workers should be treated. A lot of the old industrial awards include provisions for an extra week's long-service leave. "The crazy thing about this debate is the legality of whether a worker is entitled to an extra week's holiday turns on the form of words that were often negotiated in the old awards - many were imported hollus bollus into employment contracts," says O'Reilly.
"Some of these have been found to mean it doesn't automatically follow, in others it does. This is just a crazy outcome.
"The Government, in writing the law, should have included words to the effect that the change to a minimum of four weeks' annual leave did not then entitle others to a fifth week. They didn't do that."
This has led to disputes over a fifth week's leave going as far as the High Court. The law change has stranded a few employment contracts - in which the wording now provides for change that was not intended when the contracts were written.
Asked if having better holiday provisions might not be a good way to encourage workers to stay here rather than moving to Australia, O'Reilly says time off work is not one of the big issues in competitiveness.
"The big silver bullet for attracting and retaining the best workers to New Zealand is really about building productivity in the economy. If you do that, then the employer and the employee will be better off.
"A lot of employers have been unfairly branded as the grinch who stole Christmas - what's wrong with a holiday anyway?
"I'm all for holidays, we shouldn't be working ourselves to death, but my point is to have a debate about holi-days as part of a wider debate about what we have to do to make New Zealand successful."
Green Party MP Sue Bradford, who this month called for a new public holiday during winter, says the change to four weeks' minimum leave puts our country "somewhere in the middle" of leave entitlement worldwide.
Bradford is trying to "reverse what happened in the 80s and 90s - getting the extra week last year was really important - I think getting an extra public holiday in the middle of winter would be brilliant".
She adds: "Our argument is that workers are a lot more productive when they have enough time off - when they have work-life balance."
John Rooney, partner at law firm Simpson Grierson and an employment law specialist, says there have been more claims lately from unions pushing for a fifth week's leave to be included in collective contracts that already gave an extra week to employees after they had been with the company for a certain time.
"The contract said they get an extra week on top of the standard. Well now the standard has gone up to four so we should get an extra week on top," says Rooney. "I would have to say that those claims have not largely been successful."
Rooney does not think many private sector employers have moved to five weeks' annual leave. "I think that it's more usual in the public sector."
Some employment contracts were written some time ago, with language that was "less legalistic than now".
"Certainly, there are some contracts in which the employer has been left having to give a fifth week because of the way the contract was worded.
"Employers would say 'it was never our intention to give a fifth week', but their hands were tied because the contract said, 'you get the present entitlement, whatever that is, and you will get an extra week in three or five years' time'."
Rooney has advised some clients that this applies to their contracts while others are "borderline".
"We have had quite a lot of clients who have had to come and pay for legal advice to determine whether they have to give a fifth week.
"To that extent I think, and the Government did say this, it was never their intention people got a fifth week. Perhaps the act could have been clearer."
Rooney would not name which of his clients has been pushed into giving five weeks' holiday.
While the Government was initially applauded for "tackling the old Holi-days Act", it has solved some problems while creating more.
"It's amazing - we all get holidays, it's one of our basic entitlements yet none of them know what they are.
"We should be able to work it out without all having to get a lawyer to do it. It should be easier for all of us - we all get holidays, we should be able to understand them more easily than we do."
