WELLINGTON - Public service chief executives will get an average salary boost of between 6 and 7 per cent for the financial year ending June 30 - excluding performance bonuses, superannuation and other perks.
At four times the prevailing annual increases for wage and salary earners, it will bring the base pay rises for department and ministry heads since 1997 to about 20 per cent.
The latest increase completes a three-year programme aimed at narrowing the gap between the remuneration of core public service chief executives, whose packages had barely moved in the previous decade, and those in the wider state sector, State Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham said yesterday.
"I think we have moved to a point where public service chief executives are pretty well paid, certainly by the standards of ordinary New Zealanders.
"I am not getting anything from chief executives that they are hard done by."
While gaps remained between public service heads in the highest salary bands (above $200,000 a year) and their counterparts in state sector agencies and companies, Mr Wintringham was satisfied with progress in more closely aligning the two groups.
In the year to June 1999, departmental chief executive packages ranged from between $150,000 and $159,999 at the Cultural Affairs Ministry to between $330,000 and $339,999 at the Treasury.
A link between remuneration of public service heads and private sector chief executives was formally severed in 1997. The Government then agreed to a new link between the core public service of 35 departments and the wider state sector - about 240 organisations including crown entities, public hospitals and state-owned enterprises.
In the preceding decade, public service chief executives' pay had fallen significantly behind steadily rising private sector packages.
- NZPA
Public service chiefs to get 6pc pay rise
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