Work-life balance

OPINION: It is no surprise that unions are expressing suspicion of the Government's motives in signalling changes to the Holidays Act.

National strongly opposed the previous Labour government's decision to legislate for a minimum four weeks of annual leave which came into effect last year. Now, Prime Minister John Key is calling for greater flexibility over leave entitlement, suggesting workers should have the right to trade in the newly won fourth week from April next year providing their bosses are willing, too.

Mr Key is rubbishing claims by Labour and the unions that some bosses will pressure their workers into cashing in a holiday week, or making it an unwritten condition of new employment. Given that this amounts to an extra week's pay during the year, it would not necessarily be an attractive option for some employers. Mr Key's argument that the planned changes would offer greater flexibility to workers does have some validity and it is also costly for businesses if too much holiday entitlement is allowed to accrue on their books. Labour's revamp expressly ruled out people being allowed to cash in the extra week, which it saw as too important to trade away. However, National intends to restore some flexibility and legitimise what remains a relatively common practice and says it will build in safeguards to ensure it is not abused.

It is the prospect of covert compulsion that is most worrying, although Labour leader Phil Goff also points out working parents need to be able to have quality time with their children. New Zealand has not always paid sufficient attention to the need to have an appropriate work-life balance, and our holidays are vital for our health and well-being not to mention our productivity. Mr Key denies that this marks the start-point for a return to a standard three-week entitlement, and promises that employers who do try to force their staff to cash in their holidays will be prosecuted. Whether this happens will be instructive.

Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson, meanwhile, is promising that time-and-a-half penal pay for working on statutory holidays will not be scrapped under a review of the act, mainly aimed at simplifying it. Not yet clear is whether streamlining of the "relevant daily pay" formula will simply reduce employers' compliance costs and frustration levels, or also hit workers' pockets by removing an individual's "normal" overtime, productivity or other incentive payments from the calculations. As usual, the devil will be in the detail.

It is difficult to see the Government ever being in a stronger position than it is right now to press for change. It is so far ahead in the polls, and far enough out from the one that matters most in 2011, that it must be feeling just about invulnerable. However, while showing it is far from the "Labour-lite" administration that many commentators were depicting last year, it is also clearly relishing its centrist positioning, which is leaving little ground for its main rival to manoeuvre on.

One small test of the Key Government's inclusive intentions will be in how it treats workers during the current term, when it is best able to apply its philosophical slant to the political landscape. The surest way to restore some relevance to Labour would be to lean too far to the right on just these sort of hip-pocket, worker entitlement issues. As strongly as the pendulum swung Mr Key's way during 2008, it could return just as easily to the left if he oversteps the mark, especially if the current period of economic uncertainty, staff layoffs and business closures is sustained.

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