Whopping pay rises for NZDF staff

[Dave Homewood]

Whopping pay rises see more than 2000 NZDF staff earn six-figure salaries
Kirsty Lawrence
11:32, Jan 27 2019

One in five New Zealand Defence Force staff are on more than $100,000 a year after hundreds received hefty pay increases last year, prompting the Defence Minister Ron Mark to ask for a 'please explain'.

And 14 per cent of those senior staff now also earn more than $200,000 annually, according to the Defence Force's annual report.

Minister of Defence Ron Mark has asked Chief of Defence Force Air Vice-Marshal Kevin Short to investigate after the overall number of personnel on six-figures increased from 1,906 in 2017 to 2,256 in 2018.

"My expectation is that the organisation is not, and does not, become top heavy, and maximum resources are directed to personnel on the front line," Mark said.

Mark said making sure defence force personnel, particularly those at the front line, were paid fairly for what they did was important.

"There are very long stints away from home, tough training conditions and hardships that differ greatly from those of the civilian world."

During his time in the opposition, Mark was vocal about fixing pay imbalances as there was an apparent increase in the number of senior positions, which he felt might have been at the expense of frontline units.

Mark said Short was expected to report back to him later in the year after undertaking the requested wage assessment.

Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant General Tim Keating finished up his role in 2018 as the highest paid member of the defence force, earning a salary of between $670,000 to $679,999.

In a statement, the NZDF said they operated a remuneration framework, which had a primary objective to enable the recruitment and retention of the right people with the right skills.

New roles with salaries above $200,000 were specialist leadership roles within areas such as defence estate and infrastructure, legal services and information security, and some dental and medical roles.

There has also been a 10 per cent decrease in the number of NZDF staff who earn less than $60,000 per year.

A Defence Force spokesperson said this was largely due to the move to raise all civilian employees to the living wage.

The pay increases had resulted in a rise in the overall wage bill from $945 million in 2017 to $1 billion in 2018.

New recruits earned between $30,000 and $40,000 per annum while completing their 16-week basic training course while regular force members were paid above living wage on completion of basic training and part-way through Officer Cadet Training.

On January 13, Stuff revealed how the Defence Force's multi-billion dollar property estate was crumbling and in dire need of updating.

REGULAR FORCE SOLDIERS
Recruit $37,284
Private $47,224 - $87,118
Lance Corporal $51,180 - $93,641
Corporal $57,122 - $100,952
Sergeant $64,056 - $108,788
Staff Sergeant $72,897 - $117,104
Warrant Officer $82,820 - $137,536

REGULAR FORCE OFFICERS
Officer Cadet Training $39,764-$58,625
Second Lieutenant $57,122 - $93,641
Lieutenant $68,143 - $117,104
Captain $82,820 - $137,536
Major $95,146 - $160,489
Lieutenant Colonel $115,585-$189,691
Colonel $171,135 - $232,097
Brigadier $220,429 - $292,961

Sunday Star Times

www.stuff.co.nz/national/110077069/whopping-pay-rises-see-more-than-two-thousand-nzdf-staff-earn-sixfigure-salaries

[Dave Homewood]

The NZDF certainly earn their pay. I have no problem with them getting paid a decent wage these days, unlike when I was in.

[pjw4118]

I agree Dave , are you ready to rejoin ?
Perhaps like teachers , nurses and doctors , theres too much expected because of their love for the job. I wonder what the population of the Beehive would be if they suffered a 30% pay drop , no perks , and on call 24/7.?? !!

[Dave Homewood]

The staff in the Beehive would not be able to cope if they were given the responsibilities and workloads of the NZDF.

[flyinkiwi]

As I've said before, I am a civvie, but I firmly believe that if you are in a job that may require you to die in service to your country, you ought to be properly compensated for it!

[phil]

Those figures are pretty misleading without any context.

Each pay sector and tier has 13 steps for each rank, but very few people are earning above step 7, and a fair few will not have reached step 7 yet, so will actually be on steps 3, 4, 5 or 6. Those figures quoted include a large number of pay levels that no one would actually be receiving, especially at the upper end.

[frankly]

Jan 31, 2019 18:20:49 GMT 12 phil said:

Those figures are pretty misleading without any context.

Each pay sector and tier has 13 steps for each rank, but very few people are earning above step 7, and a fair few will not have reached step 7 yet, so will actually be on steps 3, 4, 5 or 6. Those figures quoted include a large number of pay levels that no one would actually be receiving, especially at the upper end.

Sector and tiers only apply to uniform personnel.

The Civil Staff (2,500 of them) have pay benchmarked at 50% of the average public sector rate for the equivalent role.  Which might be fine for typists, but there are a hell of a lot of roles not really found in the public sector. What it means in practice is that military pers have their roles paid based on their skill set (and where those skills are typically found) and how in demand they are, and then get a mil factor adjustment on top of it, while civil staff within NZDF a) aren't benchmarked according to their skills and b) aren't paid according to demand.  

So the gap between a uniformed pers and a non-uniform person, doing the same job, in the same workplace, is disproportionately large (in same cases more than $40K). That isn't good for morale, and it's well above what the mil-factor should be covering (which is generally regarded as being worth about 20K for officers).