Meagre help for workaholic Kiwis

In June last year, Ron Smale weighed 120kg. He was 49, and he hadn't swum since childhood.

Eight months later, 20kg lighter, he swam from Rangitoto Island to St Heliers in an hour and 43 minutes.

He has turned his life around with help from the energy company Vector, where he works, which pays up to $300 to every worker each year for gym membership or for any other item involving "huff and puff".

The "VectorLife" programme helps workers balance their work and personal lives not just with incentives to keep fit, but also with flexible working hours, frequent working from home, four weeks' annual holidays and "essentially unlimited" special leave to look after sick family members and the like.

Last night Prime Minister Helen Clark presented Vector with the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust's top "work and life" award for its initiatives.

The company is a model of almost everything her Labour Party stands for in balancing work and family life.

But by international standards New Zealand is still near the "work" extreme of the "work-life" scale; we work more than in any other developed country except Iceland.

Those in paid work (full-time or part-time) in New Zealand work an average of 35 hours a week, including holidays, compared with the developed country average of 31 hours.

Most European countries have four to six weeks of annual leave, compared to New Zealand's three - due to become four from April 2007 if Labour is re-elected.
An online EEO Trust survey of 1200 fathers in 2003 found that 80 per cent would like to spend more time with their children. Both major parties have been groping for answers ever since the National Government set up the EEO Trust in 1992.

Helen Clark's Labour ministry introduced paid parental leave, which pays mothers $357.30 a week before tax for 13 weeks (14 weeks from this December), so they can take time off before returning to work (Sweden pays mothers 80 per cent of their previous earnings for a year). Only 18,794 parents received the paid leave in 2004-05, slightly over a quarter of the 58,073 births registered last year.

If re-elected, Labour plans to extend the scheme to self-employed parents from July 2006, adding 2173 more eligible parents.

Parents Centre chief executive Viv Gurrey would like to see something like the Greens' proposed universal basic income to recognise the value of caring for children.

"Let's make this apply to all parents in New Zealand - validate our role as parents and pay us to stay home and look after our kids."

Council of Trade Unions secretary Carol Beaumont backs another Green initiative - a bill that would force employers to accept a worker's request for flexible hours unless they can prove in court that doing so would have detrimental effects on their business.

Business NZ chief executive Phil O'Reilly says smart companies already follow such practices.

"But employers can only be so flexible. You still need people in a certain place at a certain time."