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In May 2009 the PSA held annual members’ meetings across Housing New Zealand. A common theme was the issue of workloads, with members reporting ever-increasing workloads throughout the business, extra hours required by members to complete their work, no time within the day to make and return phone calls and complete processing work. Members in some areas also raised the issue of no access to time in lieu for the extra time worked and no paid overtime.
With bargaining due to commence in August 2009 we want to find out how widespread the problem is and which areas are most affected. Help us by filling out the survey now.
Action you can take now
| 1. | Never do more than your agreed hours without advising your Team Leader or Manager that you need to do this to achieve the work assigned to you. |
| 2. | When you do need to extend your time and when you raise it with your Team Leader or Manager tell them you want to have the work recognised by way of Time off in Lieu or Overtime. (Time in Lieu is covered in the HNZC policy on Leave H-108). |
| 3. | Keep a record of workload pressures |
| 4. | Where workloads are causing you problems of excessive stress raise this with your local health and safety committee. Let’s get it on the site agenda in these forums.
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This enables excessive workloads to be identified as a present workplace hazard and causes it to be addressed as such.
HNZC have a legal obligation to ensure that your workload is safely manageable in your agreed hours but they need to know of problems in order to address them.
Failure to take all practicable steps to keep you safe can result in prosecution of HNZC by the Department of Labour.
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| 5. | If the issue of workloads is not addressed, a trained health and safety representative has the legal authority to escalate this and ultimately to protect you by issuing a "Hazard Notice” under Health and Safety in Employment legislation. That notice must be responded to by HNZC and failure to do so also means you can refuse to perform the work that is causing you to be at risk of harm. (We hope this is never required and would want to be involved before this step was used.) |
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