Holidays Act remediation

The Holidays Act 2003 covers pay and entitlements surrounding all types of leave and public holidays for employees in New Zealand. While it’s easy to follow for those working standard hours, the act has proved complicated for employees on shift work, variable days and hours, or with flexible work patterns. This has resulted in widespread non-compliance – essentially, employers unintentionally underpaying or overpaying staff what they’re entitled to.

Since this came to light in 2015, it has affected a wide range of private and public organisations, including all district health boards.

In late 2016 DHB chief executives agreed to establish a national process to respond to concerns raised by the Council of Trade Unions around compliance of DHB payroll systems with the Holidays Act 2003.

As well as development of a national process to manage Holidays Act Review and Remediation work, much work has been done to develop and agree a national interpretation of the Act for all DHBs to adhere to.

We will link to national registration website when it is available.

We will review every employee and ex-employee’s payments back to 1 May 2010. Holiday pay was calculated correctly for many so not everyone will be affected. We have about 11,000 former employees and 8,250 current employees who could potentially be affected.

The agreed solution between all DHBs and unions is to proactively make remediation payments to current and former employees to adjust for incorrect calculations going back to May 2010, and for future payments to be calculated and paid correctly.

Waikato DHB is approaching this task using the ‘Framework for Local DHB Holidays Act Review’ document provided by the national programme. Unions are represented in the Waikato DHB Steering Group and Project Team set up to oversee the process. 

There are 3 key phases. 

1. Review – This phase has been completed. It involved testing DHB payroll systems against the Baseline Interpretation agreed by the DHBs and unions to identify the extent of non-compliance.
   
   
2. Rectification – Fixing any identified issues of non-compliance in the DHB holiday pay payments and applying processes to ensure future payments comply with the Holidays Act.
   Waikato DHB is investigating options to actions this.
   
   
3. Remediation – Calculating and paying any amounts owing to current and former employees arising from any identified non-compliance. There will be a national process for former DHB employees (e.g. those who worked for Waikato DHB at any time since 1 May 2010) to register.

Ex-employees will be able to register their contact details at a specifically established national website to ensure up-to-date contact information. This will make it easier for Waikato DHB to contact them should they be owed money. That website will be well publicised and a link placed on this page as soon as it is available. It will include FAQs for ex-employees.

Note: The review of payments goes back to 1 May 2010 only.

Current Waikato DHB employees do not register on the national registration website. You will receive information here and through Waikato DHB to notify you of progress and anything you need to do.

It will be many more months before we are close to the point of knowing what payments will be for individuals. It is absolutely vital that we get it right, and the complexity of achieving this is significant.

If there have been overpayments, it is unlikely action will be taken to reclaim those funds. The emphasis is on Waikato DHB paying out what people are owed.  However, this process will help us to identify where we may be overpaying people, and we will correct this moving forward.

We will keep this page regularly updated on Waikato DHB progress as we move through the three phases of the process.

Union members can also contact their organiser/advocate with questions or concerns.

Current employees don't need to do anything. If you are identified as being owed money, we will already have your account details and you will receive a statement outlining the adjustments once we have calculated them.

As part of the Remediation Phase, we will make employees aware of possible impacts on tax brackets, allowances, student loans, tax payments, superannuation etc.

We will be asking for your help to let former employees know about this, if you are in contact with them.