Recruitment agencies demand to see ACC figures

Recruitment agencies are demanding a look at the Accident Compensation Corporation's books, saying their calculations show it is being overpaid millions by their sector.

The agencies are up in arms over a rise in their premium from 89 cents for every $100 of payroll, to $1.54. The rise takes effect in April.

ACC says the hike reflects the "true cost" of accident cover for recruiting agencies employing a mix of office and non-office workers.

But Recruitment and Consulting Services Association spokesman Andrew McCormish said ACC had given them no evidence of that.

"We've done the numbers over the last year. Our figures show [this sector] has paid $5 million to $7 million above the cost of its workplace injuries."

At one company - which contributed 28 per cent of total premiums to ACC for the contract labour hire sector - the cost of workplace accidents had been $7000 so far this year.

"But ACC wants to take $500,000 in premiums off them," Mr McCormish said.

At another company, workplace accidents had cost about $70,000 but ACC was charging about $700,000 in premiums.

"So we can't make sense of the figures that ACC is giving people."

The association had asked a number of times to meet ACC officials and go over their figures, but there had been no response.

"We've written a number of letters to people in ACC, but we can't get any comment from them at all. It seems to be a stalemate at the moment," Mr McCormish said.

The group wanted ACC to explain where the extra money was going, as it had no evidence any was going on injury prevention and education.

"We put to them a major injury prevention strategy for which we asked ACC to contribute $30,000. They would not support it."

Recruiting agencies fear employers will balk at taking on temporary staff if charges go up as a result of the rise in premiums. They are predicting a rise of between 5 per cent and 20 per cent in their charge-out rates.

The increase affects 55 recruitment agencies. ACC said agencies which employed a mix of office and non-office workers had previously been grouped with the retail services sector.

But its statistics showed that their cost of accidents was consistently higher than all the other groups in that sector.

The increase reflected the true cost of workplace injury for that cover, a spokeswoman said.

"Essentially, [the others] were subsidising the accident costs of contract labour hire [employers]," she said.

- NZPA