Are sick leave rules changing? What you need to know

Monday, 16 June 2025

The Government is considering changes to sick leave entitlements.

The workplace relations minister said those changes were focused on reducing part-time workers’ entitlements - rather than full-time workers.

Speaking to Stuff, the minister said she’d had calls from the business community who said it wasn’t appropriate that part-time workers and full-time workers had the same sick leave entitlements.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon seemed open to reducing sick leave entitlements during a Monday morning interview, with comments that appeared to go further than Government policy and his own earlier commitments.

Asked if the Government was moving to reduce sick leave entitlements from 10 to five days per year, Luxon didn’t rule out such a change.

His response attracted an immediate response because, in 2023, he ruled out reducing sick leave entitlements.

“Look, that’s something that I know Brooke van Velden is looking into as she looks as a whole raft of workplace relations so it’s a bit premature for now,” he told RNZ on Monday.

But he was clearer in his thinking during a Newstalk ZB interview that same morning, when he specified that the changes under way would be focused on reducing part-time workers’ sick leave entitlements - rather than full-time workers.

Asked if he would support reducing sick leave entitlements, Luxon told RNZ: “I think there’s probably a need for us to look at it, for sure, and just make sure that we’ve got that setting right particularly around proportionate sick leave for part-time workers versus full-time workers, and those sorts of things.”

The second part of that answer, looking into the sick leave entitlements of part-time workers, is previously stated Government policy.

What is the Government looking to change?

Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden said, following that interview, that she was considering changes to how workers accumulate sick leave. But she wasn’t looking to enact an across-the-board reduction in sick days.

Van Velden has been working on this for more than a year now.

Briefing papers from last year showed that Cabinet met in June to discuss whether, with changes to the Holidays Act, the Government should consider changes to how sick leave was acquired.

“Cabinet decided that the provision of sick leave entitlement in the [draft bill] should include a pro-rata approach,” said a Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment briefing from June, referring to a proportional system of allocating sick leave.

The Government was public about this policy.

At the time, van Velden said a pro-rata system would “better reflect how much an employee works”. She said someone working fewer hours should only receive a proportion of that 10 day entitlement.

On Monday, van Velden confirmed that remained the change she was looking to make.

“I hope to make an announcement in the coming months,” she said. “My officials and I have focused on developing pro-rated sick leave, which was previously agreed to by Cabinet.”

Cabinet was advised that it should retain a minimum entitlement of five days paid sick leave, no matter how many hours somebody worked.

Speaking to Stuff’s ThreeNews on Monday afternoon, van Velden said, “We have had calls from the business community that they don’t think it’s right that part-time workers do receive the same entitlements to full-time workers.”

She dismissed concerns that changing the sick leave entitlements would disproportionately affect women, saying “if we truly care about gender equality, we shouldn’t have this assumption that women are the ones in a relationship taking time off to look after their children when they’re sick”.

So how many sick days do I get now?

The number of sick days increased from five to 10 by the previous Labour government in 2021, as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

No matter if you’re full-time, part-time or casual, you are entitled to those 10 days of sick leave - with few caveats.

To get those 10 days of sick leave, you need to have: Worked for the same employer continuously for six months, for an average of 10 hours per week, with at least one hour every week or 40 hours a month.

You can currently accumulate up to 20 days of sick leave, which means you can carry over 10 days of unused sick leave from one year into the next.

National wasn’t supportive of the sick leave increases in 2021, but promised during the last election campaign it would not reduce the number of sick days employees received.

Opposition parties call on Luxon to keep promise

Ahead of the 2023 election, Luxon ruled reducing sick leave to five days.

“Again, it is what is is now. It’s passed … and we won’t be changing it,' Luxon said, in August 2023.

Labour’s workplace relations spokesperson, Jan Tinetti, said Luxon would be breaking an election promise if sick leave entitlements were changed.

“They’ve already said they’ll look at taking away sick leave entitlements for part-time workers, which will disproportionately hit women and mothers.

“This is not what the prime minister campaigned on, and not what New Zealanders voted for. Christopher Luxon must urgently clarify why he’s open to halving people’s sick leave,” she said.

Green Party workplace relations spokesperson Teanau Tuiono questioned why the prime minister didn’t rule out cuts to sick days.

“The fact that the prime minister hasn’t ruled out halving the number of sick days for part-time workers speaks to a pattern of decision-making of a Government that doesn’t listen to, nor care about, workers,” he said.

He said any reduction in sick leave, even for part-time workers, was “an attack on morale and productivity”.