By Bill Hickman of RNZ
Police officers are accusing the police commissioner of “robbing our future”, after a leaked email suggested staff reduce their superannuation contribution to save cash after a disappointing pay offer.
The email to police staff from Police Commissioner Andrew Coster suggested officers forgo their contribution to the police superannuation scheme to compensate for the Government’s final pay offer not keeping up with the cost of living.
An officer with nearly 20 years’ experience says cops were feeling “unappreciated and despondent”.
The Police Association and the Government have been arguing over pay rates for more than a year.
Independent arbitrator Vicki Campbell was appointed in April to decide which of each party’s final offers would be adopted after no agreement was reached in negotiations.
On Monday, she found in favour of the Government’s latest offer, which included a $1500 lump sum payment, a flat $5000 pay increase for officers, plus another 4% increase in July and the same in 2025.
There would also be a 5.25% increase in allowances backdated to last November.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the officer said backdating the allowances to November instead of July – when the previous pay agreement had expired – was one of the biggest bones of contention among officers.
“It’s always months down the track after the contract expires before we get a resolution. We’ve been sold short and have we just set a dangerous precedent that we won’t get our back pay from when our contract actually ends?” they said.
Another officer, who RNZ agreed not to name, said members of the Police Association had welcomed the arrival of the new Government’s Police Minister, former officer Mark Mitchell, but he was not “walking the walk”.
“I was optimistic given what Mark Mitchell was saying that it would be a better environment for police. He’s good at talking it up but he’s not supporting the staff who are supposed to deliver on his big promises. He’s just talked s***,” the officer said.
Mitchell has defended the deal saying it was the best the Government could do. He told Checkpoint on Tuesday officers would be paid overtime for the first time.
The officer RNZ spoke to said his family was struggling and he had hoped negotiations would bring some significant relief.
“We live from payday to payday. What they’ve done doesn’t give us anything like inflation or most interest rates costs.
“I don’t understand how that’s okay when you have a review for this date, the police stall negotiations, and then somehow move the date back,” he said.
In a leaked email sent to police staff following the decision, Coster said the delays to negotiations were compounded by the timing of the election and the change of government.
“I understand that this process has been long and drawn out and left staff feeling frustrated and disappointed. The delays have been felt across the board by all parties involved, with negotiations unavoidably stalled by the election and government formation process. The timing of this was particularly unfortunate,” Coster said.
The email said Coster would look at implementing changes to the police superannuation scheme to allow “greater flexibility” around employee contributions.
“Currently, constabulary staff must make a 7.5% compulsory employee contribution to the Police Superannuation Scheme (PSS). This adds up to a significant portion of the salary package for some staff. Providing staff with the option to make changes to their rate of the PSS employee contributions, including allowing for a 0% option, without losing the 10.184% employer contribution, would benefit our people,” Coster wrote.
But one of the officers who spoke to RNZ said, given the risky and taxing nature of police work, the suggestion was “foolish”.
“We shouldn’t have to be robbing our future to make ends meet. That would be a very short-sighted thing to do,” he said.
Policy lead for the Retirement Commission Michelle Reyers said even when times were tough, there was a real benefit to maintaining contributions to retirement funds.
“Because of the ability of your money to earn money over time it really is a case of if you are starting to reduce what you’re putting into retirement savings at the moment the impact of that will be quite substantial by the time you get to age 65. So even though it might seem like a sensible thing to do in the short term, the longer term consequences are quite profound when you look at it,” Reyers said.
The typical contribution of people through KiwiSaver ranged from 3-4% of their income matched by most employers at a rate of about 3%.
Mitchell said he wanted to avoid going to final offer arbitration and he understood how frontline police officers were feeling about the deal.
“All that I can say is that hand on heart is that we put forward the best offer that we could in the circumstances that we were delivered as an incoming government.”
Mitchell said it was quarter of a billion dollars more and he was proud that paid overtime would be available to frontline officers for the first time.
Bringing in paid overtime for frontline police would make a financial difference, he said.
“Accruing Toil [time off in lieu] is not a good way to manage that so having a paid overtime framework now, I think, is important for our frontline police and they’ve never had it before.”
Police Association head Chris Cahill declined to comment for this story, however, earlier on Tuesday he told RNZ that members were disappointed with the pay deal which failed to recognise how far police officers fell behind inflation in the past three years.