Govt adds essential worker leave scheme for employers

2nd April 2020 By Staff Reporter | news@tourismticker.com | @tourismticker

Essential workers will now be entitled to leave if considered vulnerable to Covid-19, have compromised immunity, or have susceptible people at home.

The change would help operators providing essential accommodation services manage staff potentially at risk from the pandemic.

Jacinda Ardern

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced the additional support this afternoon and said it would be open for application by employers on Monday, 6 April.

“This is for essential businesses that are experiencing significant loss of business or similar hardship,” said Ardern.

“There are people working in our essential services who are more vulnerable to COVID-19, such as those over 70 or with compromised immunity and workers who have vulnerable people at home.”

The scheme allows employers to pay those workers at the same rate as the wage subsidy scheme, $585.80 per week for fulltime workers or $350 per week for part-time workers.

Employers can pay the usual wage if it is less than the relevant subsidy but otherwise should use it to reach 80% of a worker’s standard income.

“We need to ensure that [essential workers] have the ability to take leave and are not feeling pressured to come to work if they are vulnerable, sick or otherwise unable to work,” said Ardern.

“This also applies to someone on essential service frontlines [who] contracts the virus and needs to take leave as a result.”

Guidance was being prepared and would be available online before the scheme went live on Monday, administered by the Ministry of Social Development.

Ministers would review the scheme after eight weeks.

Ardern updated the uptake of the Government’s wage subsidy scheme and said it had paid out $4.5bn for just over 750,000 New Zealanders.

Around 115,000 of those workers were self-employed and there were 13,300 new applications since yesterday.