Govt introduces legislation to double employees' sick leave entitlements to 10 days/year

Govt pushes ahead with pre-election promise to double employees' sick leave to 10 days/year; Maximum unused sick leave that can be carried over to remain at 20 days/year

30th Nov 20, 4:09pm by Jenée Tibshraeny

Image sourced from pxhere.

The government is introducing a bill to parliament that seeks to increase employees’ sick leave entitlements from five to 10 days a year.

The Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill will give workers more scope to stay at home when they’re sick. It will also support working parents.

Under the Bill employees will receive their increased entitlement depending on when they started their job.

Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Wood said this will give employers time to prepare for the change.

Under the Bill the most amount of unused sick leave an employee can carry over will remain 20 days a year.

Wood expected the gross cost of the change to be equivalent to 0.9% of annual wage/salary costs.

“As promised, we’ve introduced the Bill before Christmas and it will go through a full Select Committee process,” Wood said.

The Bill is expected to pass in mid-2021 with any changes coming into force two months after royal assent.

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31 Comments

by Kate | 30th Nov 20, 4:35pm 1606707322

So should we expect even lower productivity statistics?

by GV 27 | 30th Nov 20, 4:43pm 1606707834

According to the timing of this, some people wouldn't get the additional leave until some point in 2022.

by Kate | 30th Nov 20, 6:52pm 1606715536

If my maths are right, this addition would make it 40 days of paid leave per annum (20 annual, 10 sick, 10 stats) = that's 8 (5 day) weeks = or 15% of the (5 day/week) work year.

I wonder if productivity would improve if instead they allowed people to convert all that to a 4-day work week with no leave entitlements?

by Nifty1 | 30th Nov 20, 5:19pm 1606709964

Unfortunately most employers think you work harder the longer you're in the office. 4 days work and you'd be lazy.

by dollar_bill | 1st Dec 20, 3:14pm 1606788894

Unilever would say otherwise

by hootenany | 2nd Dec 20, 7:59am 1606849181

Sick days are not leave, they are taken when people are sick just because you have them doesn't mean you take them. If you have a problem with people taking sick leave as a day off, require and pay for a doctors certificate. I am currently sitting on 200 hours of sick leave and I take about 1 or 2 days a year even though I already get 10 days sick leave a year. I used to have unlimited sick leave, I didn't take any more sick leave than I do now. 5 days can be 1 bout of flu.

As for you calculation why not include nights, and weekends in that as well that way you can say that about 79% of the time not spent working. The fact is most of that is actually spent doing activities needed for work: sleep, travel, eating, maintaining a place to live, why aren't people paid for that? 2 weeks is not an excessive amount of time off especially if you want them to stay home at the slightest sign of an illness.

by b21 | 30th Nov 20, 5:48pm 1606711681

Some countries with the highest productivity figures like Germany have 20 days per year. I would think it would be hard to find any numbers that show conclusively that productivity is related to shorter sick leave entitlements.

by Zachary Smith | 30th Nov 20, 6:24pm 1606713844

Maybe Germans only take sick days when they are sick?

by Uninformed Hillbilly | 30th Nov 20, 8:14pm 1606720454

They are high trust

by Kate | 30th Nov 20, 8:49pm 1606722597

Here is Germany's policy;

German law requires that employees be paid 100 percent of their salary or wages by their employer during the first six weeks of sickness... After that time a (State paid) sickness allowance amounts to 70% of an employee's normal pay. The maximum period for payment of this allowance is 78 weeks.

https://www.howtogermany.com/pages/employee-rights.html#remunerations

A doctor's note is required for any periods of consecutive sick leave beyond 3 days.

Also note the normal work week is 6 days (48 hours).

by CourtJester | 30th Nov 20, 10:13pm 1606727600

I have no idea where the 48 hour work week figure comes from. Most German full-time jobs are 40 hours per week.

by Kate | 1st Dec 20, 11:35am 1606775724

It's outlined in the above link. Not to say that is the common implementation of the labour market, but it seems to be the regulatory maximum.

by Uh Oh | 1st Dec 20, 1:43pm 1606783399

Faulty logic - you're comparing apples with bicycles... they're not even close

From a productivity standpoint NZ and Germany operate very very differently,
Germany invests heavily in automation and technology so their production is naturally going to be higher than similar manual labour-based activities (which is what most of NZ still operates in)

We are a small country with a small population and do not have the same market scale in every industry to warrant such investments across the board to increase productivity

by CourtJester | 30th Nov 20, 5:33pm 1606710785

Many developed European countries with higher productivity stats have much longer sick leave available.

by AKLCrusader | 1st Dec 20, 9:47am 1606769240

Perhaps, but its likely to be enabled by higher productivity allowing more generous conditions, the sick leave is not generating higher productivity. In a low productivity environment, where are the improvements to be made?

by Spiceeh | 1st Dec 20, 1:26pm 1606782414

Where are you stats to prove NZ is a low productivity environment?

by Spiceeh | 1st Dec 20, 1:24pm 1606782293

Productivity has been increasing for decades, and not in line with wages. It has also been proven to increase particularly in relation to office work the less people work eg 4 day work week etc. This would only bring NZ into alinement with Australian statutory leave as far as I can see though it would be slightly better since the sick leave allowance does carry over.

by Jolly Penguin | 1st Dec 20, 7:00pm 1606802415

Interesting perspective on productivity in NZ being kept artificially low due to historic reliance on migrants: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/431740/report-highlights-concern-ov…

by Nifty1 | 30th Nov 20, 4:48pm 1606708115

In some industries it's hard enough for people take 5 days, can't imagine them being able to claim 10 days even if they're entitled.

by Jolly Penguin | 1st Dec 20, 7:02pm 1606802557

As an educationalist I can only agree.

by Fritz | 30th Nov 20, 5:10pm 1606709428

A good move. 5 days is ridiculous.

by Hamish | 30th Nov 20, 6:47pm 1606715258

Yes, maybe people who are sick will actually stay at home and give the rest of us a chance to avoid falling like dominoes. If so, then there's your productivity saving.

by morepork | 1st Dec 20, 7:38am 1606761515

I would like to see it accrue like annual leave based on hours worked, rather than getting a pile of sick leave once a year.

Also would be nice to be able to carry some over if you change jobs. Moves like that to encourage labour mobility should increase productivity as labour can move to where it is most effective.

by refactornz | 1st Dec 20, 7:48am 1606762099

The new employer shouldn't have to suffer from you saving all your sick days at a prior job.

by morepork | 1st Dec 20, 1:29pm 1606782568

Pardon me for not being able to time my sickness around when I change jobs.

by AKLCrusader | 1st Dec 20, 9:51am 1606769504

So what about workers who do 4 days a week? Do they still get 10 days sick leave?, or what about 2 day workers? or shift workers doing less but longer shifts?

This government has got a 40 hour monday to friday mindset, and that isn't how the country operates any more. Payroll legislation is forcing businesses to calculate leave in days not hours, so this will end up being a minefield.

All in all, its pretty easy for the government to give away others money yet again, in this case its not even taxed away from you for redistribution.

by Uh Oh | 1st Dec 20, 1:34pm 1606782891

I don't agree with this policy. there is no real justification for it

Businesses have already had revenue smashed with COVID and some have outright failed, wiping away years of work to build it in the first place - employees got the wage relief while businesses had very limited or no relief while they had no revenue and expenses still came in
This is just another idealistic law that imposes social benefits to the masses that others have to pay for

It used to be 3 weeks per year leave and 5 days sick leave ~ 4 weeks total, now it's increased to 4 weeks leave and 10 days leave so potentially 6 weeks, basically adding a potential 50% more time off?!

by Jolly Penguin | 1st Dec 20, 7:15pm 1606803303

There has to be more of a balance between the needs of businesses and the needs of employees. Businesses have had it tough, but so have many employees. It's not idealistic, its pragmatic - people get sick and when they do they need to take time off work and be paid for it. The engines of our economy still require money to circulate, and you can't spend what you don't have.

Just to put things into perspective - 10 days of sick leave is less than 3% of the year, or just under 4% if you're only counting 261 weekdays. The reality is that most of us don't take sick leave days if we don't need to - it's a bit of an old reference, but the average is 3.1 days: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/84690766/what-mak…

by Kate | 1st Dec 20, 9:25pm 1606811103

But if you add 10 sick leave entitlement (and yes, many people do not need/take that full entitlement) + 20 annual leave days + 10 statutory holidays - it adds up to 15% (40/260). And not forgetting that many workers do not get the actual stat days off, and hence are paid at a higher than normal hourly rate.

Given we are a much more ethnically diverse community, I do wonder about statutory holidays - particularly the Christian religious based ones. I just don't think the Government has ever looked at this progressively - nor from a productivity perspective. Every year my organisation sends out a message about wanting to get annual leave balances down for accounting purposes. Why can't those that want to take their year-end balance in payment, rather than in rollover, or 'forced' leave when they don't want it? Same goes for stat holidays.

Or perhaps, move to a regular four-day week and sick leave at their own 'risk'. For usually healthy people that is likely a better policy/option.

by rastus1 | 1st Dec 20, 2:28pm 1606786090

Make no mistake...the employees who don't get sick are the ones who pay for this. No one else..the employer factors it into wages (non existent rise).

If you don't take sick leave, you are subsiding the Monday hang-over brigade.

by Jolly Penguin | 1st Dec 20, 7:18pm 1606803503

Which in 2016 at least, is 3% of us. This is the same link to the one I've posted above: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/84690766/what-mak….