The purpose of 34 Voices: New Zealand Business and Worker Interviews on Sick Leave and Parental Leave is to gain insights into work-leave from those who are giving and those who are taking it. The interviews with employers and employees reveal stories about the pluses and minuses of actual ‘on the ground’ experience and should help inform on-going discussions of how these two work-leave policies can best operate in New Zealand. In total, 17 workers and 17 employers were interviewed.
The 34 interviews are part of a larger study related to New Zealand’s Paid Parental Leave and Sick Days Leave laws. Specifically, the findings from these interviews are integrated into a broader policy review by this author entitled The High Wire Act: Balancing Families and Jobs at Precarious Points. The Role of Work-Leave in New Zealand and the United States. The goal of The High Wire Act is to understand the New Zealand experience so that operational and policy issues that deserve attention are flagged; further, it is designed to identify issues for consideration in the United States where neither paid parental leave nor paid sick leave are federal law. In short, a goal is to provide lessons from New Zealand for the United States.