The former Taranaki Health Board, which was merged into the national health service Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) in July 2022, is one of the thousands of companies and agencies that have had to pay out hundreds of millions in back pay for breaches of the complicated Holidays Act. Photo / Tara Shaskey
The former Taranaki Health Board, which was merged into the national health service Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) in July 2022, is one of the thousands of companies and agencies that have had to pay out hundreds of millions in back pay for breaches of the complicated Holidays Act. Photo / Tara Shaskey
Former Taranaki District Health Board staff say they are out of pocket and in some cases struggling to pay bills, as they wait for holiday pay they have been owed for years.
The former board, which was merged into the national health service Te Whatu Ora (Health NZ) in July 2022, is one of the thousands of companies and agencies that have had to pay out hundreds of millions in back pay for breaches of the complicated Holidays Act.
Lynley Johnson worked as a receptionist for the Taranaki District Health Board from 2012 to 2021 and is still waiting for back pay.
She said the organisation told her they hadn’t done the calculations yet, meaning she doesn’t even know how much she is owed.
To aggravate the situation, she is now on ACC and those ACC payments are based on an incorrect income calculation as a result of the holiday pay miscalculations.
One of Johnson’s former colleagues who still worked for the organisation and was also waiting for back pay had said to Johnson they felt unvalued by the health board, and was also unhappy they were losing possible interest on the money as it wasn’t in their bank account.
Another former Taranaki District Health Board employee, Sacha Harewood, is in the same boat - she doesn’t know how much she is owed and doesn’t know when she will get it.
Harewood, who worked for the health board administration team for almost 10 years, said she had followed up on the money twice but wasn’t sure she would ever see it.
“I’m not holding my breath.”
She said she was initially told the health board hoped to pay out the money “in the new year”, which would have been early 2024.
It was a frustrating situation, she said.
“It’s annoying that we’re owed this money and they’re just not paying out yet... they’re throwing money at other stuff all the time and they do owe us.”
Health NZ chief people officer Andrew Slater said the complexities of the Holiday Act, the size of the workforce, the hours their employees work, the variety of employment arrangements, and the state of their payroll systems and processes made paying all employees and ex-employees challenging.
“Nationally we have about 90,000 current employees and 130,000 former employees covered by the Holidays Act remediation project, for the period from May 1, 2010, to the present day. Not everyone is owed a payment – some people have been paid correctly for their leave.
“As agreed in a Memorandum of Undertaking with unions and the Labour Inspectorate in 2020, we are paying current employees in each payroll first, then former employees.”
He said Health NZ had already paid $246.5 million to remediate holiday pay over 13 years for 34,000 current employees in Auckland, Counties Manukau, Waitematā, and four former shared services – Health Alliance, Health Partnerships, Health Source and Northern Region Alliance.
“We plan to complete Holidays Act Remediation payments to our current employees in 2024/25... The first payments to former employees will likely start in 2024 and continue into 2025.”
He said work to calculate and finalise payments was a “complex and painstaking task” requiring “specialist skills”.
“Project teams around the country are working hard to review thousands of individual pay and leave records, re-configuring our payroll systems, and calculate remediation for our current and former employees.
“We appreciate the patience of people who are awaiting payment and we recognise the tireless work of our project teams to finalise payments.”
