Covid-19 – Leave support for Essential Services
Friday 3 April 2020
Some very important answers and some still outstanding
Leave Payment Support for Essential Businesses
Stat Holidays still not clarified
Essential HR here to help – and working from home. For ongoing help, you can contact Mike on 027 2808546 or mike@essentialhr.co.nz or Beccy on beccy@essentialhr.co.nz or 027 2909070 – and if you phone our landline 03 6590377 you can leave a message that gets delivered to us automatically. Please bear with us if you can’t get straight through – we are getting many calls! I’m happy for you to pass this on to others.
If you need to conference call, we are all set up with Zoom.
Leave Payment Support for Essential Businesses
I am delighted to say that the government have clarified how an essential service can get help if any employee has to stay away from work because of the virus.
MSD will run the scheme, which will be available from noon on Monday April 6. It will apply specifically only to:
- Workers who self-isolate in accordance with Public Health guidelines, because they have the virus or have close contact with someone with the virus or have a dependent who has to self-isolate in this way.
- Workers who are deemed as “higher risk” in accordance with public health guidelines and should be in self-isolation.
- Workers who have someone in their household who are “higher risk”.
The subsidy will be the same - $585.80 for a worker working 20 hours a week or more and $350 for a worker working less than 20 a week.
The subsidy will be paid for 4 weeks at a time and is able to be reapplied for.
The scheme will last at least as long as the lockdown.
“Higher risk” is not yet defined, but will be before Monday.
This means that Essential Services will have help with employees who have to stay away. Employees who just don’t want to work or feel too scared to work, will have the standard access to sick or annual leave, but no subsidy available.
Full details of the announcement are at https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/essential-workers-leave-scheme-established
Stat Holidays – treatment not yet confirmed
- The legal obligations around pay for stat days has not changed
- The legal questions are around just what Relevant Daily Pay is for a stat day while locked down
- I have a strong view it should be whatever workers are being paid for their normal working days either side in this situation – so potentially just the subsidy. I have requested a legal opinion and asked Grant Robertson directly. Three days on and still no answers!
Wee Nuggets
- The government have come up with a plan to enable foreign nationals to get out of NZ. If you have any employee where this is a need – check out https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/managed-departure-plan-stranded-foreign-nationals-enables-safe-orderly-exit
- For those using Whatsapp – the government have got an info site going on Whatsaapp – covid19.govt.nz/whatsapp
- Daylight saving – just to complicate matters – the clocks go back an hour Saturday night!
What Happens after Lockdown
I’m doing some thinking and brainstorming with a few folk, with the intention of putting out some guidelines to help us all prepare for getting back to “normal” after the lockdown. You can help me help you. If you have any questions you are already worrying about relating to post lockdown working, please fire the questions to me. You can type your questions here. I plan to put something out after Easter.