2020-03-27
The Greens are calling on the Government to honour its promise and pay up to 20 days special leave to any of the 325,000 NSW public servants who are following the Premier’s directive and keeping their children home from school during the pandemic.
The Premier announced last week that if public servants had to keep their children home from school because of school closures that they would have access to special leave.
Now public servants, who have followed the directive from the Premier and kept their children home from school and can’t work from home, are being refused special leave because the schools are not technically closed.
The Premier must reverse this policy and live up to her promise to the state’s public servants and pay them their leave entitlements while they cannot work.
Greens MP David Shoebridge said:
“The Premier has told all public servants to keep their children at home if they can, now she needs to live up to her side of the bargain and pay them too.
“These were the very circumstances that everyone thought the special leave entitlements would cover.
“We can’t have the Premier using word games to avoid doing the right thing.
“My office has been contacted by a series of public servants who’ve kept their children home from school and then tried to access the twenty days special leave entitlement announced by the Premier, just last week.<https://arp.nsw.gov.au/c2020-01-employment-arrangements-during-covid-19/>
“They are being told that because schools are not technically “closed” they are not entitled to special leave.
“Public servants need clarity on this today.
“If parents are meant to keep their kids home from school then for them school is effectively shut, and if they can’t go to work because of that they should be paid,” Mr Shoebridge said.
Click here to see extract from the circular.
Media contact David Shoebridge 0408 113 952