‘Best offer’ for police has 4% pay rise with overtime benefits, association says
Thursday, 28 March 2024
The police union says a new pay offer from the Government is likely the best they’ll get.
The Government has offered to eventually pay extra for overtime, and will give officers $1500 in a one off payment if they agree to the deal.
The latest offer includes 4% pay rises, and if this is turned down the negotiation will go to arbitration.
The Government and police force are at a make-or-break junction, with officers being asked to vote on a deal its union believes is the best offer it can glean from the state.
If police don’t accept the latest pay offer, then it looks like the Government and police will be pulled into forced “final offer arbitration” - where an independent adjudicator will be called to step in and put an end to negotiations.
Police union negotiators and Government officials were negotiating late into the evenings this week, and finally presented the latest offer on Thursday afternoon.
It included new additions from the earlier offer which police labelled “an insult” and “affront”. The Government said it would give officers a one-off $1500 payment and start overtime payments from July next year, at a rate of one and a half.
The association told officers it was unlikely to be able to get a better deal out of the Government, and so if members rejected this they would likely need to go to arbitration.
The offer did not substantially increase the base pay increase since the previous rejected offers. It would remain at 4% - but that would come into effect in July instead of September. In July 2025, wages would again increase by 4%.
“Today Police presented the association with a revised pay offer, having obtained further funding from government. Police said this is the best offer it would provide due to the government’s serious financial pressures,” the association told its members, in an email seen by Stuff.
It continued: “We do not believe there is any possibility of negotiating for further enhancements.
“If members reject the offer, we will go to final offer arbitration.”
The vote would not happen until the second week of April, according to the email, as some further details needed to be worked out between the union and NZ Police.
Crucially, the latest offer did not push backdated payments back to July or April 2023. The $5000 wage increase would be backdated to November 2023, as was the case in the previously rejected offer.
This has been a sticking point for officers who felt the Government had presented a “worse offer” in March than what they received in September last year.
Negotiations between the police union and Government have been ongoing for about a year.
Initial reactions from officers on Thursday were not great.
It was called “a weak offer” and “another lowball”.
On the same day, a photo of a food donations bin for police officers was doing the rounds amongst the force.
Police in Christchurch have set up a donations' box, to help other officers with food and support. The Christchurch committee of the NZ Police Association set it up, but association president Chris Cahill said it wasn't part of a national campaign, or a protest in response to the ongoing police pay negotiations.
'This is a genuine local initiative but it has not been instigated by our national office,' he said
“It demonstrates that the concerns we have raised about police staff struggling with the cost of living crisis is real. Police staff should not be in this position and I know the public will be concerned to hear this is the case.”
Although the initial reactions appeared dull and subdued, they were not did not carry the same venom and anger that the earlier March offer caused.
After that offer, police officers were telling Stuff they wanted to protest on the lawn of Parliament and many wrote to say they’d applied for jobs in Australia.