Deadline slashes staff pay-out

Press, 13 September 1988, Page 1

Deadline slashes staff pay-out

By

RODGER KINGSBURY, in Blenheim

Conservation Department staff in Marlborough who have been offered voluntary redundancy packages stand to lose thousands of dollars because of the timing of the deal.

They are asking for a delay of one week so they can benefit from taxation changes introduced from October 1. The department’s staff have been told that they must decide by September 16 whether they wish to accept voluntary redundancy or opt for redeployment. Those who decide to accept redundancy must finish on September 23. One of the officers affected, Mr Bob Ryan, a senior conservator and officer in charge at Havelock, said yesterday that one of the options available to him was “so called” voluntary redundancy. “When somebody holds a gun to your head and says ‘duck’ you don’t just stand there and get shot,” he said. Mr Ryan said that if the department delayed the redundancy by one week, some people in Marlborough would make a tax saving of more than $7OOO. In his case it would be $4500. “This whole thing is being done to save money for the Government but at the expense of people who are being made unemployed,” he said. The devil in the piece seems to be the department. The State Services Commission was unable to tell the department when to make the redundancies effective. The Public Service Association had tried to get the department to change the date but it would not do so. Mr Ryan said that departmental staff affected did not even want pay for the extra week. They would be satisfied if they were on leave without pay. He said the department had chosen the date of September 23 deliberately. What was being done could only be seen as malicious and callous on the part of the department. “The department is sticking to its guns and saying, ‘You have got to go before October I’.”

Mr Ryan said he was very disappointed with the department and had a very low opinion of its decision-making. He was one of many staff who no longer wanted their jobs for this reason. “It gets down to a personal level after a while. After a time you feel you just don’t want to work for a guy again when he does not support you when you need it. “Most of us don’t want our jobs now but we are damned if we can see why we should pay thousands of dollars extra in tax when this could be avoided by a delay of one week.” Mr Ryan said that the ridiculous aspect of the changes being brought about was that they were purely cosmetic. The department would have to give his job to someone else. It would probably be advertised soon after he finished. The department had been criticised for having such a high percentage of its budget in corporate services. Moves to reduce that amount were cosmetic changes only. A typist, for example, would now be called either a wage worker or a conservation officer, so that his or her expenses would no longer be seen as a corporate service. Mr Ryan said staff had been told by the department that they would be worse off if their redundancies became effective after October 1. Inquiries made with the Inland Revenue Department in Blenheim yesterday make it clear that this is not the case. Mr Richard Middlemiss, a taxation officer with the department, said yesterday that it would be far more advantageous for staff to take redundancy after October 1. Both the maximum assessable amount for taxation would drop and also the rate in the dollar on lump-sum payments.