About 2,700 workers at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) are set to stop work on a Wednesday morning. They are unhappy with a pay offer that their union, the Public Service Association (PSA), has called a "zero pay offer" (RNZ).

The stop-work meetings will run from 9am to 10am across the country, according to the PSA's press release (PSA). RNZ reported the action as a strike. The PSA described it as "stop-work meetings" in one release, but used the headline "Zero pay offer triggers strike action by MBIE staff" in another (PSA).

The PSA is the union representing the workers. National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons, quoted in the RNZ report, said all public servants covered by the current pay talks were facing pay offers below inflation (RNZ). Inflation is the rate at which the cost of everyday goods and services goes up. If a pay rise is lower than inflation, the worker's money does not go as far as it used to.

The pay offer also included changes that would make it take longer for staff to reach higher pay bands. The largest group of MBIE staff involved are immigration officers, most of whom earn around $70,000 per year.

MBIE workers "overwhelmingly rejected" the offer, saying they "feel undervalued and disrespected" (Scoop). RNZ approached MBIE for comment on the strike action.

This is not just about MBIE. Pay talks are currently happening for more than 10,000 public servants across four government agencies: MBIE, the Department of Internal Affairs, Corrections, and the Ministry of Social Development. A PSA update published on Scoop on 21 July 2026 set out the scope of the talks (Scoop).

Fitzsimons's point about pay offers being below inflation is the heart of the union's argument. Think of it this way: if your rent, groceries and power bills all go up by 4% but your pay only goes up by 1%, you can buy less with your income than before. The proposed changes to how quickly staff can move up to higher pay levels would slow that progress further. For immigration officers on about $70,000, that means the gap between what they earn and what life costs keeps getting wider.

There is a small but interesting difference in the language used. The PSA called the action "stop-work meetings" in one statement but used the word "strike" in another. RNZ went with "strike." Stop-work meetings are a shorter, more limited form of action than a full strike. But the PSA's own headline showed it considered the situation serious enough to use the word "strike" in at least one place.

A similar thing happened in December 2024. RNZ reported that 3,000 MBIE staff took part in what was called "partial strike action" over a "0 pay offer" — slightly more than the current figure of about 2,700. The fact that a zero or near-zero pay offer has triggered action twice, more than 18 months apart, suggests ongoing tension between the Government's push to keep public sector wages down and what public service unions say workers deserve.

The bigger picture is that this round of pay talks covers four agencies and over 10,000 workers, which gives the MBIE action more weight than the 2,700 people directly involved. What happens at MBIE will be watched closely by negotiators at the other three agencies, where the same below-inflation pay offer is on the table. How the Government handles the MBIE action, and whether it changes its bargaining position, could set the tone for the rest of the public service.