On the health subject again I have just received an email from my medical provider to say that charges are about to rise
It's starting to come out now about the unexpected consequence of this and the current governments policies to get rid of the DHB's and then reinstate them. And it's the same for staff who were moved from local water companies to 3/4/∞ Waters and the establishment of Auckland Council out of ARC, ACC, FDC, PCC, MCC, WCC, NSCC and RDC.
A number of staff members were transferred to a new employer and lost their length of time service. The new entity then made them redundant but are only giving them redundancy from when they've worked for their new employer.... even though they may have been performing the exact same task when employed by a DHB, water company or Council for a large number of years.
When a private business is sold, the length of service which is used to calculate redundancy, begins again. But these are civil servants still employed by either local or central government. Great for the new entities as it reduces their expenses for laying off staff... but lousy for the staff.
Speaking of redundancy.... here's something to watchout for if you're offered a new job within a company instead off taking redundancy as a son of a close friend of ours has found out. Jim worked for a FGC company in their marketing department. The NZ operation is a division of an Australian company.
The company decided to make most of their eight marketing staff redundant and move the NZ marketing across the Ditch. They decided to still keep two marketing staff positions open in their NZ operation but in newly established roles and invited those who had been made redundant the opportunity to apply for those roles.... at lower salaries than previously paid. Jim and another person applied and were given the new permanent roles on new contracts.... restarting the time they were with the company. The others got large redundancy payouts... some in six figures.
Within a year, it was decided to transfer parts of the remaining parts to Australia and Jim and his co-worker roles were made redundant but this time there was no redundancy payouts for them as they hadn't been "with the company" in the new roles for over a year. Both took the company to the Employment Tribunal and lost.
