New Zealand Post delivers late holiday pay

NZ Post has admitted it has underpaid more than 20,000 employees for almost a decade. Around $38 million has been built up from holiday pay.

“It’s too early to say who exactly may be impacted, but some scenarios that typically result in underpayments are those employees who earn regular overtime or have variable patterns of work,” said NZ Post chief financial officer Michael Boersen.

Those employees who have been underpaid will need to register first, and back payments will be made from July 2020.

NZ Post was previously identified by the ministry of business, innovation and employment as an employer that needed to update how it calculates holiday pay.

The logistics provider has written to 17,000 former employees asking them to register their details, while it calculates how much it needs to return to workers.

The Unite Union said NZ Post had been through several changes over the last decade and its possible many members could qualify for back payments.

The timing isn’t great for NZ Post as it struggles with the rise of e-commerce shoppers buying directly from local sites bypassing the national postal service.