Still no justice for annualised support staff in Ministry decision

15 September

NZEI Te Riu Roa rejects the Ministry of Education’s decision to not pay annualised support staff for a fortnight at the end of the annual payment cycle.

NZEI and the ministry have been in dispute over the ministry’s decision to cut the fortnightly pay of around 6,000 school support staff this year.

The Employment Court upheld the earlier ruling of the Employment Relations Authority that the ministry could not unilaterally reduce the pay of 6,000 annualised* school support staff by 3.7% for all of 2016 because of a payroll anomaly that sees an extra fortnight in the payroll every 11 years.

The two parties were directed to have further discussion to resolve the issue, but have not been able to reach agreement.

NZEI General Manager for operations, Andrew Casidy, said today’s announcement was incredibly disappointing.

“As a result of the court's decision, the ministry have agreed to pay back the wages that have been withheld this year, but have now said that staff will miss out on a fortnight’s pay at the end of the 12-month pay cycle. That really undermines the whole idea of annualising income for these already low paid employees,” he said.

NZEI will be meeting with their lawyer tomorrow to consider the next move.

*Annualisation: Many school support staff work for only 40 weeks of the year. Annualisation allows them to spread their expected income into 26 even fortnightly payments throughout the year. However, there are 365 or 366 days in a year, rather than the 364 days of 26 fortnightly payments. Every 11 years, this adds up to one extra payment that annualised staff receive. The ministry decided to claw back that extra payment during 2016 by reducing wage payments by 3.7%

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