If you currently earn $732 per week, you will only receive $458.82 per week from the Inland Revenue Department when on paid parental leave.
P (a nurse) applied to the Department of Labour to get paid parental leave; her application was later declined.
Here is a breakdown of what happened. On 24 February 2011 P approached a recruitment agency. On 8 March 2011 she was rung and notified that a clinic had offered her a position. P verbally accepted this offer at that time. On 16 March the clinic sent an employment agreement to P, she did not sign this until 22 March 2011. She did not start physically working until 28 March 2011.
P then applied for paid parental leave in May 2011 and specified the date of commencement of the parental leave as 19 September 2011 (the expected due date of her child). Her application was referred by the Inland Revenue Department to the Department of Labour to clarify her eligibility for paid parental leave.
On 13 July 2011 she received a letter from the Department of Labour saying she was not entitled to paid parental leave because she was not an “eligible employee” under the PLEPA.
An “eligible employee” (in P’s situation) is defined in the Act as: “a female employee who becomes pregnant and who, at the expected date of delivery, will have been in the employment of the same employer for at least an average of 10 hours a week over the immediately preceding 6 months”.
The issue was when P’s period of employment began. To get the paid leave P had to have been employed by the clinic for at least 6 continuous months prior to 19 September 2011 (so from at least before 19 March 2011).
Remember she accepted the job verbally on 8 March 2011, signed the employment agreement on 22 March 2011 and started work on 28 March.
The Employment Relations Act 2000 defines an “employee” as “including a person intending to work” and a person intending to work means “a person who has been offered, and accepted, work as an employee”.
Because P verbally accepted the job offer made by the clinic on 8 March 2011, the Authority held that she became an “employee” on that date. It was irrelevant that she did not start physically fulfilling her duties as a nurse until 28 March 2011.
The decision of the Department of Labour in denying the paid parental leave was reversed.
So, when you are applying for paid parental leave under the PLEPA, your period of employment is calculated from when you first accept the offer for work. If your acceptance was one month before you started physically working – that month prior to commencing work still counts towards your period of employment, for the purposes of paid parental leave.
