KEY POINTS:
Workers' wages went up faster than their bosses' last year, the latest National Employers Wage and Salary survey shows.
Benchmark positions such as senior management and second-tier managers' salaries increased by 4.5 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively, says David Lowe of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, which conducted the survey.
But wages for skilled and semi-skilled people rose 6 per cent with unskilled people getting wage increases on average 6.2 per cent more than last year.
Clerical accounting staff got an extra 7 per cent in their pay packets.
The average pay rise at the annual review remained unchanged from last year at 4.5 per cent.
The range of pay changes was much smaller _ fewer rates decreased and the list of positions with large increases was also shorter.
The average number of unused holidays has almost tripled in the past three years to 19 days. "Both employers and employees would benefit from being able to cash up the fourth week's holiday," says Lowe.
Helen Kelly, of the Council of Trade Unions, says the higher number of unused holidays is to be expected given that employees now get four weeks' leave. She says the reason we have minimum conditions is to prevent employers taking advantage of employees being able to sell their holidays.
"Very soon you'll find three weeks' annual leave becomes the norm."
Employees receiving more than four weeks' holiday remained stable at 12 per cent.
The ongoing slide in the number of employees involved in workplace superannuation is reversing but it is the higher-paid positions that have bounced back the most.
Forty per cent of employers have chosen a preferred KiwiSaver fund manager and 22 per cent of employers are exempt from the KiwiSaver automatic enrolment rules.
