More than 90% of those losing their livelihoods are women workers

Two weeks after their pay equity claim was cancelled, dozens of underpaid, mostly women frontline workers at the Department of Conservation (DOC) are now facing redundancy.

In a change proposal released today, DOC is looking at another round of job cuts, as the organisation consults on a proposal to lose 84 support roles by July 2026.

In total, 149 roles will be disestablished, with 65 with new roles being created (49 of which would be part-time). Only 18 of the 149 roles set to be disestablished are vacant.

PSA National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons says more than 90 per cent of the staff facing redundancy are women, based on the PSA membership data, which includes 90 affected workers.

"This is a graphic example of how the burden of the Government’s squeeze on public service funding is falling disproportionally on women. At the same time as the Government is stopping pay equity claims for more than 150,000 underpaid, mainly female workers including claims that cover DOC workers. The attacks on women just keep coming from this Government," Fitzsimons says.

The proposal has taken a sweeping look at support staff across the organisation. Staff at 38 locations from Invercargill to the far North will be affected.

Many of these staff hold critical health and safety responsibilities, which Fitzsimons says should be a concern for an organisation where so many team members work in remote locations.

"The current support staff have sizeable health and safety responsibilities, such as monitoring staff radio systems and helping to manage emergencies like fires. The loss of these team members will mean that these important duties will fall on others - and pose a significant health and safety risk.

"It doesn’t make sense - why would you put these kinds of tasks onto a specialist team member with a lot on their plate already? You can’t just absorb 84 disestablished roles into an organisation - it doesn’t work."

The proposal will also see many of the affected workers, who are on DOC’s lowest pay bands, competing with their colleagues for part-time roles, Fitzsimons says.

"The support workers at DOC would have benefitted from a pay equity claim that was well underway before it was cruelly cancelled by the Government.

"Now, many of these women would have arrived at work to find their job was on the line - and that they might have to compete against their team members for the new positions being established."

The continued squeeze on DOC funding ultimately puts its projects - and New Zealand’s natural environment - at risk, Fitzsimons says.

"Systematically under-funding DOC will unfortunately mean they’ll be unable to deliver as well as they could for New Zealand conservation. This Government’s spending priorities are clear: landlords and big corporates are in, but women and the environment are out."

Other PSA releases on DOC:

- Govt squeeze on funding will see another 68 roles go at DOC

- Govt forces DOC to shed 130 jobs despite fragile state of natural environment

- Cuts to DOC will impact its valuable work

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