Restructuring and significant job losses are looming for the country’s workplace health and safety regulator, WorkSafe.
1News understands consultation has begun over whether to merge or disestablish roles, with staff expected to find out the full extent of the cuts tomorrow.
Sources have confirmed more than 100 jobs could be on the line, as the organisation grapples with a multimillion-dollar financial shortfall. WorkSafe has around 800 staff.
“New Zealand already has a poor health and safety record, so it’s hard to understand how this plan will do anything but worsen that,” the national secretary of the Public Service Association, Kerry Davies, said.
“The PSA will be advocating strongly for WorkSafe to rethink what we see is a step in the wrong direction,” she said.
“This is the time to keep investing in workplace safety, not cutting back.”
A report released last month found work-related harm in New Zealand cost the country $4.4 billion annually.
According to the State of a Thriving Nation report, New Zealand’s fatality rates in the workplace are where the United Kingdom was in the 1980s, and twice that of Australia.
It also found the number of WorkSafe inspectors had fallen from 8.4 per 100,000 workers in 2013, to 6.3 in 2023.
“We haven’t had enough inspectors for quite a long time, since WorkSafe started,” the report’s author, economist Shamubeel Eaqub said.
“When we don't have a healthy and safe workplace, we have too many fatalities and injuries. We are killing people in the workplace.”
Eaqub said any changes at WorkSafe must not impact its core task; enforcing the health and safety of the country.
“When we do reductions in head counts at places like WorkSafe, we can absolutely not reduce the number of inspectors,” he said.
“In fact, we have to ramp them up because the fear and threat of those inspections will always be present for those businesses not doing the right thing.”
The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Carmel Sepuloni said any operational decisions on staffing were a matter for WorkSafe and the WorkSafe Board.
“Since 2017, the Government has provided WorkSafe with additional funding on a number of occasions to support it with short-term cost pressures associated with things like COVID-19 and the Whakaari litigation,” she said.
“WorkSafe’s baseline funding has not decreased.”
Sepuloni said a recent review into WorkSafe was clear it's performing its regulatory role, but has work to do to achieve a sustainable funding model.
“WorkSafe has committed to implementing the review’s recommendations and I receive regular updates on this work as Minister.” She said.
1News asked WorkSafe for comment but received no response.
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