Unions Don’t Trust Flip-Flop Brash

The annual leave entitlement would be back to three weeks for most workers under the National Party’s plan to give them the “choice” of cashing in the fourth week of leave, Council of Trade Unions vice-president Helen Kelly said today.

After vehemently opposing the extra week’s annual leave that was announced by the Government earlier this year National has now changed its mind – but says workers can choose to take the extra week, or cash it in.

“This means that the fourth week of leave will be gone by lunchtime for many workers,” Helen Kelly said.

New employees would be particularly vulnerable to pressure to accept employment agreements with just three weeks’ annual leave and to sign away their rights to four weeks, she said.

“The party is trying to resurrect its policy of cashing in holidays that was discredited in the 1990s as being unfair to workers,” she said. “Workers didn’t support it then, and we don’t support it now.”

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