Te Papa probes pay oddities amid Holidays Act confusion

Te Papa is investigating its compliance with the Holidays Act, and the pay of all 608 staff is potentially affected.

The review comes months after Te Papa confirmed a senior payroll officer stole $122,067 from the national museum. Vera Karataua admitted in the High Court at Wellington to the theft from Te Papa between December 2018 andMarch 2020.

A Te Papa spokeswoman said the Holidays Act investigation did not relate to the theft.

Large numbers of workers have been underpaid for years, including staff at Flight Centre, McDonald’s, Bunnings, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE), and police, as a result of the complex Holidays Act, which was being overhauled.

Te Papa employees had noticed discrepancies in their pay slips before the review was announced, a source said, suggesting their leave entitlements did not match legal entitlements or length of service.

For example, one casual employee had 30 days’ leave balance and had been in the role for only a year, the source said.

Last week, Te Papa told staff it had begun a project to investigate its compliance with the act.

‘‘We have engaged an external company that specialises in this work and they will be working alongside us,’’ the museum told staff in an email.

Staff were told it was unlikely they would be updated for the first three to six months.

Potentially all of Te Papa’s 608 staff could be affected, the spokeswoman said.

The first phase of the review was an examination of Te Papa’s records from 2012 until the present, and did not involve staff.

Te Papa had a variable workforce due to the seasonal nature of parts of its work, such as functions, and took on more staff for the high tourist season.

A lot of casuals would have been on working holiday visas, and long since left the country, the source said.

The coronavirus pandemic had affected Te Papa’s revenues, the spokeswoman said, ‘‘but after additional support from [the] Government the museum is in a stable financial position’’.

Te Papa will receive $18 million as part of a $65m Government package to support the country’s museums and cultural trusts.

A dedicated team within the Labour Inspectorate, part of MBIE, has been focused on Holidays Act non-compliance. In February 2016, the inspectorate wrote to what it believed were the country’s largest employers and asked them about their employees and payroll system.

As at June 2020, arrears had been calculated relating to 113 of the 201 Labour Inspectorate investigations which had been completed.

Payments owed had ranged from an average $29 per affected worker in one organisation, to around $16,000 per affected worker in another organisation, national Labour Inspectorate manager Stu Lumsden said.

In total, around $237.7m has been paid to 227,297 employees across different organisations.

A taskforce created to identify improvements to the act submitted its final report in October last year, and the Government is considering the proposals.