The recruitment agency involved in an employment stoush with dozens of former census workers has now been engaged by another crown entity - this time for the Electoral Commission.
A growing number of census workers have joined a group taking Statistics New Zealand and its recruiter, PersolKelly, to mediation next month, seeking more than $240,000 in compensation over allegations they were mislead about the amount of hours and pay on offer.
Now, it's been revealed, that same agency PersolKelly [PSK] is advertising for jobs on behalf of the Electoral Commission.
Former census worker Acacia Smith is one who received an email informing her of the potential employment opportunity.
"I kinda just laughed," she said. "You haven't looked after me while I worked doing this Census work, so why would I want to do a job for elections."
Smith had applied for the job hoping to use the extra money to help pay for childcare, but the Auckland mum says she lost out on a significant chunk after the work was delayed.
It's an experience she is not keen to repeat.
Michelle Hohepa, who has been advocating for the group of aggrieved census workers, says everyone was appalled to see PSK connected with another Crown entity.
"The group's appalled," she says. "They don't want people to have to go through the same experience again."
PSK is listed as one of the Government's chosen recruiters and the value of its contract for Census recruitment alone is worth $43 million dollars, for the Electoral Commission contract it's $209,000.
National's statistics spokesman Simon Watts questions whether it's wise to use them again, until the matter has been cleared.
"Answers need to be forthcoming pretty rapidly before the entity's engaged on more matters."
In a statement PSK says recruitment for election workers is an entirely separate process and is different from that for Census workers.
"However, as there is an ongoing process in relation to the census workers I do not wish to comment on either process at this stage."
In a statement an Electoral Commission spokesperson says it was satisfied that because the matter was different similar issues would not arise.
In this case, unlike with census where PSK was both recruiter and employer, the agency will only act as a recruiter for 169 specialist roles.
"The successful candidates will become fixed term employees of the Commission."
Hesketh Henry partner, Jim Roberts, says while it may be different given the issues the census workers raised, there does remain a cloud over the recruitment process.
"I'm surprised to see that the Electoral Commission are using PSK to recruit workers for it when there is no clarity about PSK's actions in relation to the census workers," he says. "There is little difference who the employer will be given that PSK will be carrying out a recruitment process. It will still be representing the positions that are available that it is recruiting for and that is the unresolved issue for the census workers."
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