Stopwork hits Parliament

As more than 100 parliamentary staff returned to work after an hour-long stopwork meeting yesterday, Prime Minister John Key said the Government was asking everyone to show restraint.

The workers stopped work at 3pm to protest against a pay freeze and changes to their redundancy provisions.

The meeting yesterday involved all staff who are members of the Public Service Association.

They began negotiations on their collective employment agreement seven months ago and voted to take industrial action because their employer, Parliamentary Service, had frozen their pay and was denying them the right to collectively negotiate their pay, PSA national secretary Richard Wagstaff said.

Mr Key told reporters the industrial action was a matter for Speaker Lockwood Smith but people were "free to show their displeasure".

The Government was asking for restraint across the public sector and many areas were being offered a zero per cent pay increase. The Government was focused on "appropriate pay rounds", he said.

PSA assistant national secretary Jeff Osborne said the staff members had been to mediation and were "frustrated that they're still trying to achieve a fair and reasonable settlement".

- NZPA