The Government’s temporary mileage rate increase for home and community support workers remains well below the cost of running a vehicle and does nothing to fix the underlying problem of years of underfunding.
Health Minister Simeon Brown today announced a 30% increase to the mileage reimbursement rate for home support workers, taking it from 63.5 cents to 82.5 cents per kilometre. The rate had not been increased since 2022.
At 82.5 cents per kilometre, the new rate is still well below the IRD’s Tier 1 rate of $1.17 per kilometre for petrol vehicles. The increase is also temporary, with no indication of when it will be reviewed again.
E tū and the PSA this week filed an Employment Relations Authority claim against Health New Zealand, arguing the mileage rate breaches the Wages Protection Act by forcing workers to spend their own wages on fuel and vehicle costs to do their jobs.
Home support worker and E tū member Tamara Baddeley says the announcement is an insult to the workers keeping the home care system running.
“Nineteen cents a kilometre. That’s what they’ve come up with while petrol is through the roof and we’re paying for our own tyres and maintenance, our own WOF, our own insurance, all to do a job that keeps people in their homes. It’s a joke.
“We were already out of pocket before this crisis started. The rate hasn’t moved in four years. You don’t fix four years of nothing with a little bump that still doesn’t cover the actual cost of driving.
“Every day I’m doing the maths in my head. Can I afford the petrol to get to my next client? No worker should have to make those choices, especially not when we’re caring for people who have no one else.
“The Government has already gutted our pay equity claim. They clearly don’t think our work is worth anything.”
E tū National Secretary Rachel Mackintosh says the Government is failing home support workers and the vulnerable people who depend on them.
“This Government is completely blundering its way through this fuel crisis. Home support workers have been screaming for help for weeks, and the best Simeon Brown can offer is a rate that is still 35 cents below what the IRD says it actually costs to run a car,” Rachel says.
“These workers are some of the lowest paid in the country. They had their pay equity claim ripped away. They are required to provide their own vehicle to do publicly funded work. And now, in the middle of a fuel crisis, the Government hands them an extra 19 cents and calls it a solution.
“It is not a solution. It is a band-aid on a broken system. If the Government wants to stop this workforce from collapsing, it needs to fund mileage at a rate that actually covers costs, and it needs to commit to a permanent fix. A temporary top-up that still leaves workers out of pocket is not good enough.”