Minister Deserves Only 40% Of His Pay Rise

“Paul Swain should apply the same principle he applies to Work Party Supervisors and only accept 40% of the $32,000 pay rise he received last week,” Janice Gemmell of NUPE said today.

“Work Party Supervisors who supervise offenders doing community work (former Periodic Detention) lose pay because when 60% of offenders do not turn up, the Department just send home the staff employed to supervise them that day and only pay them a three hour allowance, not their nine hour entitlement”

“Mr Swain receives just under $200,000 a year after last week’s increase – plus about $100,000 in allowances. If the community applied the same principle he is applying to Work Party Supervisors he would only receive 40% of that total or $120,000 - still a good income. Mr Swain has hardly carried out the promise to the community about tougher sentences and maybe he should pay,” said Janice Gemmell.

“The difference of $180,000 could be used to get the Work Party Supervisors working on improving the compliance levels by getting detainees out of bed and in to do their punishment. $180,000 would provide four days extra work for each Work Party Supervisor in New Zealand to chase up detainees and get the compliance rate up.”

“We wrote to the Minister in September outlining the problems and asking him to intervene,” said Janice Gemmell. “Work Party Supervisors stop work on Saturday 8th November to discuss their next move. Given that Mr Swain is in Christchurch for the Labour Party Conference we are writing to ask to meet him to discuss how to raise the compliance rate above 40%.”

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