Health Workers Deserve the Holidays Act

Health Workers Deserve the Holidays Act

“Health workers deserve the extra pay and leave that the new Holidays Act gives them,” Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson said today

National Health spokesperson Judith Collins has expressed concern about the cost of the Holidays Act for district health boards.

“Ms Collins should explain why she thinks that health workers shouldn’t get time and a half for working on statutory holidays,” Ross Wilson said. “And she clearly doesn’t think they deserve four weeks annual leave in 2007 either.

“On the one hand we have Don Brash saying New Zealand workers aren’t getting paid enough and on the other Judith Collins complaining about the cost of health workers.”

National was exaggerating the predicted cost to health boards, Ross Wilson said.

Nurses, doctors and other health workers were indispensable parts of the health service and must be paid fairly, he said.

“It was the disastrous health reforms and low wage strategies of the 1990s which resulted in health professionals leaving in droves.

“It now seems likely that National would repeat that if elected to Government next year,” Ross Wilson said. “At the very least it is clear that health workers will lose their Holidays Act entitlements, including the four weeks annual leave.”