Source: Radio New Zealand
Nick and Kathy Barnes are frustrated that payment deadlines for holiday pay owed to former Health NZ employees keep getting pushed out.
- Former Health NZ staff frustrated at pushed-back deadlines to receive holiday pay owed to them.
- Most current staff owed money have received it.
- Health NZ says process is complex and involves many payroll systems.
A retired Waikato couple who worked at Hamilton’s hospital for more than six decades between them are facing a lengthy wait for tens of thousands of dollars of holiday pay.
Errors in calculating holiday pay date back more than 15 years and will cost Health NZ about $1.8 billion in payouts.
Most current employees have been repaid, but Health NZ has only recently started paying former staff, and many won’t see a cent for another year.
It said the process is a complex piece of work, requiring constant checks and accessing different payroll systems.
Frustration at constant delays
Nick Barnes was an intensive care specialist at Waikato Hospital for 30 years and his wife Kathy Barnes, a nurse there for almost 40 years.
They’ve both recently retired and Nick said the deadline for when former Waikato employees were paid kept getting pushed back, with no reasons given.
“It was meant to start about April 2024, but it was pushed back to November 2025 and most recently we noted through other sources that for Waikato it had been pushed back to November 2026.”
Kathy said they had not received direct communication about the delays, and found out about them through external parties such as nurses’ union Facebook posts.
Nick and Kathy Barnes. Supplied
“I can’t imagine that if anybody else in my life owed me money and it was repeatedly deferring the payment that I wouldn’t receive direct communication about the reason why, an apology for that, and a direct commitment to pay the money on a definite date,” she said.
Kathy, 62, and Nick, 62, each expect they could get about $20,000.
“The thing that really irks us is that during our service occasionally payroll would have overpaid us accidentally and we’d get very stern communicating saying, ‘You owe us back this money and it must be paid within the next two pay periods’,” Kathy said.
“There’s been a lot of pay periods come and gone since they owed us this money back to 2010.”
Worked the most, owed the most – former nurse
A former nurse, who asked not to be named, was also unhappy at the wait and delayed deadlines for payment.
“These people that are owed the most amount of money are actually the people who worked the most amount of anti-social hours – 12-hour shifts or longer,” she said.
“I’m talking about on-call work, working on Saturdays or Sundays, working overnight and working double shifts.”
She said she only received updates when she wrote to politicians, who would then refer her questions to Health NZ, which would answer.
She thinks she’ll receive about $20,000, money she said her family needed.
“Originally we were told 2025. It was going to be mid-2025, then it was going to be September.
“More recently when I questioned it they are now saying March, April 2026.”
Repayment process complex – Health NZ
Health NZ executive national director, people and culture and health and safety, Robyn Shearer said as at 12 December, more than 83,000 current employees had received more than $657 million.
Staff from most regions had been fully paid what was owed to them.
Former employee payments began in October, but some won’t be made until later next year or even 2027.
“Payments to former employees started this year in Taranaki and then Auckland,” Shearer said.
Robyn Shearer. RNZ Insight/Karen Brown
“This month Southern District paid over $6m to over 1300 former employees and Tairāwhiti District paid $3.6m to over 450 former employees.
“To date this means over $54m has been paid to over 13,000 former employees. Payments will continue in the New Year with a second tranche set to be paid in February 2026.”
Shearer said the repayment process was complex, involving historical data and numerous payroll platforms.
“It is important to note, that not everyone is due to receive a payment – some people have been paid correctly for their leave.
“Each payroll project is remediating current employees first, then former employees.”
The total budget was $1.8b.
Call for easier process
New Zealand Nurses Organisation president Kerri Nuku said the repayment process had been appalling for current staff, too.
Kerri Nuku.
“These monies have been owed to nurses since 2016. Payments have been budgeted for by the government.
“There have been payments schedules put in place, which have changed. The goal posts keep changing. It’s not fair that these [union] members have had to wait for what is legitimately their money.”
Given the pressure the health system was under, the slow repayments were another blow, Nuku said.
“When you see some big areas that have managed to go through and settle these payments and receive backpay, and some of the less bigger areas still waiting, that’s where I think the frustration is – that there isn’t a single process that has guaranteed settlement at the same sorts of times.”
The repayments are run by a contracted company and Checkpoint earlier this year revealed that process had already cost well over $100m.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand