Hey all, I hope I’m posting to the right place. My gf and I are both trans women considering immigrating to New Zealand from the US. We both have green list careers so we’re not too worried about eligibility but we are wondering if we would be welcome/fit in in NZ.
Everything I’ve seen or heard in media makes NZ look about 1000 times better than the US. Every country has their problems but from my limited viewpoint NZ looks pretty great. We’d appreciate any advice or perspective you’d care to share. Thanks in advance.
Legal minimum is 4 weeks paid leave, which accrues (ie, if you don’t use it, you keep it for next year) and 2 weeks sick leave (which doesn’t accrue)
Don’t forget to add the public holidays as well, i’ve found lots of folks overseas are surprised we get so many on top of our 4 weeks.
I think at last count there’s another 11 public holidays that you will also get, as well as the 4 weeks/20 days annual leave.
The employer can require you to work on the public holidays, but you will get paid 1.5x and a day in lieu (ie you take the public holiday at another date). Employers can also have a mandatory annual close-down, which is very common in bigger companies and organisations, will usually happen over Christmas & New Years and at that point they can require you to use up some of your 4 weeks.
I guess the other thing about leave which might be different in NZ compared to elsewhere is that especially if you have a bigger employer they’ll actively push you to take leave - pretty commonly they aim for you to have no more than 10 days annual leave owing, or at least plans to reduce it to get to that cap. That can be awkward but its also good that you get to take your leave!
This is the part that I think is kinda genius (although I doubt it was totally intentional) - by making leave accrue and requiring businesses to pay out the value when employees leave, you put a clear dollar value on doing the right thing. You align the employer and the employees interests, so even if a company can’t ensure people take leave because it’s the right thing to do, they can usually manage it because it’s good business