May 30, 2023
Probation performance pay block axed
The Public Service Association says a new pay deal for Community Corrections staff will put to an end a pay system that was unfair and disadvantaged women, Māori and Pasifika workers.
Lead organiser Josephine O’Connor says after ten months of bargaining and two strikes, more than 80 percent of the 2,000 PSA members voted to accept the latest pay offer.
She says the workers have been the lowest paid public servants across the frontline of government services despite the inherent risk of their mahi managing orders that apply to people released from prison, monitoring electronic sentences and assisting thousands who have been returned from Australia under section 501 of its Migration Act.
Workers will receive pay increases of between 4.7 percent to 30 percent depending on time in the role.
A performance pay system which required members to prove their supposed competence to managers to receive pay increases has been scrapped, and hundreds of workers are receiving remediation payments from Corrections, as a token acknowledgement of underpayment.
Ms O’Connor says while it should only take at most four years for a probation officer to earn their maximum salary, it has been taking Māori male probation officers an average of 16 years.