Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. I thank the members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and its chair, David Bennett, for dealing with this bill so swiftly and efficiently. The select committee reported back to the House on 2 November and recommended that the bill proceed with some amendments. I agree with the amendments proposed by the select committee.

The intent of this bill is simple. This Government is firmly focused on providing greater choice and creating more opportunities for New Zealanders. We want Kiwi workers to succeed. We want them to back themselves and we trust them to make the decisions that best suit their families. We want our businesses to have confidence to take on new staff and we want our employment framework to provide greater certainty while being flexible enough to accommodate the 24/7 nature of the labour market.

The employment reforms contained in this bill will assist New Zealand and New Zealanders. We know that the 90-day trial works. Kiwi businesses want to take on new employees, and they want to grow and invest in this country. In the past too many have been put off by prescriptive personal grievance laws and the fear that if they make one bad hiring decision their business will suffer. The introduction of the trial period last year has made a huge difference to small businesses and to workers looking for someone to give them a chance in a new job.

This is not a new idea. Countries all over the world have similar legislation in place; more often than not it is mandatory and the trial period is much longer than 90 days. It works well and that is why this bill proposes that it be extended to all employers.

I have heard plenty of ideological opposition to this bill and I am not concerned about that. What I am concerned about is ensuring that people who want to work are given every opportunity to get a job. All they want is a chance and we know that employers want to offer that chance. We are giving them the confidence they need in order to do so.

This bill also addresses concerns with the existing provisions for unions to access workplaces. It will provide clarity to employers and employees on communications while collective bargaining is under way and it will improve the operation of the institutions set up to help resolve employment relationship problems, including the Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court. It makes changes to the personal grievance system to give greater confidence to employers and employees that they will be given a fair go. Finally, the bill will strengthen the ability of labour inspectors to improve compliance with employment legislation and ensure that the majority of employers who comply with this legislation are not disadvantaged by doing so.

The select committee has given thorough consideration to the issues raised by submitters and has recommended some practical amendments to the bill. These amendments have been accepted.

The Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) progresses our election promise to make changes to union access provisions. The bill sets out that union access to workplaces is conditional on the consent of the employer, which may not be unreasonably withheld. It also sets out a minimum process for obtaining this consent. The committee has recommended clarifying the time frame within which an employer must respond to a union representative’s request to enter a workplace. This change makes it clear that an employer must respond to a request as soon as practicable but no later than the working day after the request is received. If employers withhold their consent they must provide the reason for declining this request no later than the working day after they gave the union their decision. This provides a maximum time frame of 2 working days for considering a request and providing written reasons. This change provides clarity to both unions and employers about what their rights and obligations are when dealing with a request for a union representative to enter a workplace.

The committee has recommended changes to the bill around early mediation services. I understand that a number of submitters were concerned that the bill would mean that people would not have access to representatives during mediation. This was certainly not the intent of the original bill. The change is intended to highlight that one of the options available to parties to resolve an employment relationship problem is the use of mediation services without having representatives present. This recognises that in some instances a problem may more easily be resolved by the parties themselves with the assistance of a mediator. It also provides flexibility, as parties will continue to be able to access mediation with a legal representative if they believe that this is the best way to resolve their problem.

The committee has also recommended a small number of changes that will clarify the intent of the bill and ensure that employees and employers are clear about what the changes mean. This includes removing doubt about the status of an unsigned employment agreement and providing that employees are able to get a copy of the employment agreement held by their employer. The changes mean that the Employment Relations Authority cannot issue freezing or search orders and that the authority should consider whether mediation is appropriate when a labour inspector brings an issue to the authority relating to minimum entitlements. The committee also recommended that one of the new tools given to labour inspectors, improvement notices, cannot be issued over the Christmas break.

These are all sensible recommendations, and I thank the committee for the thorough consideration it gave to the bill. I also thank the hundreds of submitters who took the time to make a submission on this bill.

This bill improves the overall efficiency of the employment relations legislation. It provides for greater certainty and flexibility, and it improves the operation of the Employment Relations Authority, ensuring clarity for employers, employees, and unions in their dealings with each other. It will also discourage poor employment practices and increase employment opportunities. These moderate changes will improve confidence, reduce costs, and promote business growth, whilst still ensuring fairness to both employees and employers. I commend this bill to the House.

The Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) is another sock in the eye for Kiwi wage earners and salary earners. It is part of a raft of unfair and unjustified workplace laws that remove some of the most basic of rights that workers have enjoyed for many, many years. This Government has turned its back on Kiwi workers and their families. Let us not forget that they are bearing the brunt of the GST increases; the miserly tax increase for the lowest paid nowhere near compensates for increased costs. There is no investment in jobs or skills. There is no plan. The majority response from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and let us be clear about what that means; it means the National and the ACT Party members—demonstrates that this Government is not prepared to listen to anyone who disagrees with it.

The bill started badly when National used its party conference to announce the extension of the 90-day “no rights” law to all workplaces and the restriction of union access rights, because it had nothing else to say at that conference. The Government has no plan to stop New Zealand drifting further and further behind Australia. Then the Government went further by pushing this and the Holidays Amendment Bill through the fast-track parliamentary process. The public was given only 3 weeks to make submissions on both bills—both substantive bills with major changes. Large numbers of submissions were ignored. Despite this, I want to thank the submitters, all 8,000 of them—the Minister of Labour referred to hundreds of submitters, but there were 8,000 of them—who went to the trouble to tell the committee and this Government what they thought of this lousy bill. I am disappointed but not surprised that the Government has completely ignored many of those submissions, and the protests of those who opposed the changes in this bill and the fact that only minor and technical changes were being suggested.

However, I am used to what National does. I have been here a while now with National in Government, but a press release states that shopworker Margaret Dornan “… is gutted that Parliament has ignored her submission on the employment law changes, being debated in Parliament this afternoon. Margaret said that she and several other members of the National Distribution Union (NDU) wrote personal submissions and came along in person to tell their stories to MPs at the select committee.”

💬 Carol Beaumont: They did. Fantastic job.

They did a fantastic job. It is not an easy thing for an ordinary, low-paid worker to do. I think Margaret speaks for a lot of workers who feel the same way—the thousands who made submissions, and the more than 22,000 workers who went to meetings and rallies up and down the country to oppose this awful bill.

What was clearly laid out in the select committee—and we will hear more about it during the debate on this bill—was the disdain the National Government has for working people. It is quite happy to be the puppet of an American corporation and sell out the labour rights of a major group of workers, and it is quite happy to rush through the House legislation that removes rights such a meals and rest breaks because of the little problem with air traffic controllers. But the Government has ignored thousands of submissions and thousands of workers protesting in our country.

I want to talk about two areas of the bill in particular, as there will be more time to talk about other things during the Committee stage. The first one is union access. There was no clear evidence before this bill was introduced that the issue of access was a problem. There was no problem to be addressed there. The Minister’s own department said there was not a problem and employers said there was not a problem. We at the select committee heard no evidence of problems. The only reason for change is ideology and it is supported by, I think, a very small number of employers who want to make it as difficult as possible for workers to have access to their unions at work.

It is interesting that the Minister appears to have originally proposed a more watered-down access change. In an 11 August 2010 Cabinet paper, the Minister proposed to exclude the consent requirements if a union representative was entering the workplace to deal with matters concerning the health and safety of union members. That never made it into the bill passed through Cabinet. The paper said that it was to ensure that the risks to the health and safety of people in the workplace could be dealt with appropriately. As I said, the bill omits any of this, so I would like to know whether the Government now believes it is OK to prevent matters concerning the health and safety of people in the workplace being responded to appropriately.

I acknowledge that the select committee made a small improvement to the union access provisions by cutting down from 4 days to 2 days the time allowed for employers to provide a response to a request, and—if consent is withheld—the reasons for withholding consent. But the legislation will still enable employers to say no and give a reason. The union representative will then have to challenge that reason. That could take weeks and even months, and it will require legal challenges. This will be an absolute gift for lawyers.

The second area I want to talk about is the extension of the 90-day trial period. Once again, we are left wondering why the Government decide to extend this to all workplaces, when its own research on the existing provisions for workplaces of 20 or fewer employees is far from convincing about the benefits. There was no demand that I am aware of for the extension of this law to all workplaces, apart from the ACT Party. Even as late as June 2010 the Minister was proposing it be extended to medium-sized enterprises with 50 workers or fewer, but the Minister got rolled in Cabinet and rolled by the ACT Party. That is very worrying. Today in the House I asked the Minister of Labour how she could be confident that the 90-day trial period scheme would improve productivity and skills, given we have heard of an example today where a skilled chef in Timaru was fired under the scheme for using too much sauce and aioli. For goodness’ sake! The Minister replied—I thought very flippantly—“Quite easily.”, which shows an ignorance of the issues that we face in this country around productivity and future skill shortages. I thought skilled chefs were in demand; I thought John Key was trying to keep skilled workers in New Zealand.

As we have debated the extension of the 90-day “no rights” legislation, I have asked the Minister quite a lot of questions to try to understand what she really thinks the rights of workers, if any, are in this situation. Firstly, we had the TradeMe jobs, with 90-day trial periods advertised as a pre-requirement. The Minister kept insisting that 90-day trial periods are voluntary, and if workers did not want a trial period, they did not have to have one—in other words, if they do not want it, they do not get the job. That is not so for workers sent by Work and Income to do a job. The Minister for Social Development and Employment confirmed that a job with a 90-day trial period was treated the same as any other job. The worker does not have the right to turn a job down because it has a trial period, and, in fact, if the worker did turn it down, he or she would be punished with a stand-down. I then tried to understand what the Minister believes the obligations of good faith are for a worker employed under a 90-day trial period, but it seems the Minister really does not understand those obligations, and in fact had questions about that, as well. We have heard the answers, and the advice that the employer would have to be responsive, communicative, and blah-blah-blah, but the bottom line is that there is no remedy available to workers in relation to breaches of good faith in a 90-day dismissal situation. They still lose their job, they still have the stain on their record, they still have their confidence whacked, and they still have to explain to the next employer what happened at their last place of employment.

As I said at the beginning, this bill has many other provisions that I will give more attention to in the Committee stage. But there is nothing in this bill that will build more productive New Zealand workplaces, reduce unemployment, or help to bridge the income gap with Australia. The Government has chosen instead the low and cheap route of undermining the ability of Kiwi wage and salary earners to improve their wages and conditions. The only possible message for Kiwi workers from this legislation is that the Government does not care about them, their families, their issues, or their communities.

I am pleased to speak on the second reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). It is an excellent bill; I congratulate the Minister of Labour.

This bill provides flexibility and greater choice, and ensures a balance of fairness for both employers and employees. It amends the Employment Relations Act 2000 to make changes in a number of areas, which include union access to workplaces, communications with employees during collective bargaining, personal grievances, employment institutions, and the labour inspectors’ role and enforcement powers.

I reinforce that the changes made to this bill are both pragmatic and practical for the issues currently facing employers and employees. The bill will result in a reduction in compliance costs, give businesses more confidence to grow and take on new staff, help resolve workplace disputes faster, and provide choices for employees and employers.

I will talk a little about union access to workplaces. The rules for union access will be changing so that any access will require the consent of the employer. Importantly, consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. The Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern), whose members employ over 300,000 people, supported these changes. Its members said that the current law is problematic, that when union access problems arise they are serious and there is no practical recourse for the employer. They said the current recourse for a breach of good faith in the Employment Relations Authority occurred so long after the incident happened that it was of little use. They certainly supported this aspect of the bill.

The bill also clarifies that an employer may communicate directly with employees while bargaining for a collective employment agreement is under way, provided that the communications are consistent with the duty of good faith.

I will also speak about the extension of the 90-day trial period to all businesses in respect of the economic climate that has prevailed. The Government is working hard to lift the long-term performance of the economy, create more jobs, raise living standards, and deliver world-class public services for Kiwi families. New jobs will not be created unless a business has the confidence that it can expand and diversify. The 90-day trial period has encouraged employers to take on new staff, and to give people who do not have a work record—such as students, migrants, and women returning to the workforce—a chance to enter the workforce.

The extension of the 90-day trial period to all businesses is, in fact, very moderate, as the Minister has outlined in her speech. Almost every other country in the OECD has a trial period for new employees. In many countries the trial period is much longer than our 90-day trial period; it can be up to 12 months in some cases. This provision is all about giving businesses the increased confidence to hire new employees, and giving many more people a chance to enter the job market.

The Hospitality Association of New Zealand told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that the hospitality industry is a first employer of many young workers, and that first employment often brings with it the most risk and uncertainty for an employer. The association considered that the bill will introduce a useful measure of certainty, and consolidate that employment relationship to make it work.

In a survey that was done about the 90-day trial period, 40 percent of employers who hired someone on the trial period said it was unlikely that they would have taken on a new employee without that trial period. The vast majority of people employed under the trial period—74 percent, in fact—have remained employed. This is extremely positive. It is hardly the fire-at-will situation that members opposite accuse the 90-day trial period of being.

This bill is positive for employers and employees. It is a win-win, and I commend it to the House.

Along with my colleagues, I rise with a heavy heart as we commence the second reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill is unfair, unjustified, unnecessary, and unbalanced. I will repeat that: unfair, unjustified, unnecessary, and unbalanced. This amendment bill is contrary to the objective of the Employment Relations Act, which is meant to be about productive employment relations. This bill will worsen employment relations. The objective of the Act is good-faith behaviour. Well, we will not see a lot of that behaviour in some cases.

Also, the Act recognises the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships. Listening to that side of the House, one would think employment was a level playing field and that it was just like any other contract, like buying and selling a product. The difference, of course, is that it is about people. It is about people who have relationships in the workplace that need to be fostered and need to be respectful in order for us to achieve good outcomes. This bill flies in the face of that.

It has been the history of this country that, for many decades, employment rights improved. Things got better, not worse. We all expected that our children and our grandchildren would get better wages and have better conditions of work than we had. That has been undermined significantly in recent times, and this legislation is just another nail in the coffin. We are going backwards—back to the future. This legislation has the hallmarks of many aspects of the Employment Contracts Act. It is another attack from a list of many that this Government has put in place in 2 years. It makes our workplaces less fair, less safe, and it will lead to worse wages and conditions. It will certainly see our workplaces become less respectful places. For many workers, as I know from my experience as a union official, being respected at work and being treated with respect is a really important part of what workers want. Being sacked without reason and without redress is not respectful.

This bill covers a number of things: it provides for the extension of the 90-day fire-at-will provision to all employers, it restricts union access to the workplace, and it has a range of changes in relation to the personal grievance system. It has some changes about employment institutions and, actually, some positive changes about labour inspector roles. I will focus on a couple of those changes. I will focus on the access provisions, the 90-day no-rights provisions, and reinstatement as a primary remedy.

My colleague Darien Fenton explained that restrictions on union access will have negative consequences. I reinforce the point that there was no need for this change. The regulatory impact statement states: “There does not appear to be widespread evidence of union representatives exercising their current rights to enter workplaces in an inappropriate way, resulting in disruption for business operations or adversely impacting on the employment relationship …”. Members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, if they are honest about this, will know that just about every employer that presented submissions—they were primarily larger employers or associations—recognised that unions used the access provisions properly and in accord with the current constraints in the Employment Relations Act. The current provisions say that the access provisions have to be used at a reasonable time in a reasonable way, taking account of security and health and safety provisions. They already exist. So what is the need for this change? What it boils down to is that this legislation will provide roadblocks to unions accessing their members at the workplace. Irrespective of whether it is a health and safety matter or a matter of organising for collective bargaining, it will provide the worst employers with a way to drag out the right of access, and that will have negative consequences.

I also reinforce the point about health and safety. As Ms Fenton said, it was originally felt that the health and safety element should be left out of the changes. If access provisions are going to be changed, I agree that the right of entry in relation to health and safety should be left out. I say to members opposite—I asked about this in the select committee—that if workers who are injured or killed at work were trying to get their union access to come and check out the health and safety problem, those members will have that on their conscience, because, frankly, it is unreasonable that people cannot access their union official when they need to, if there is a health and safety problem.

The whole 90-day fire-at-will provision is full of holes. Extending it to all workplaces is a sop to the right, and the use of words such as “choice” is just ridiculous. In a high unemployment situation such as we have now, there is no real choice.

💬 Allan Peachey: The socialists think choice is ridiculous!

Mr Peachey knows that a “take it or leave it” job offer is not a choice in a situation of high unemployment. Would a young worker or migrant worker argue the toss with an employer about this? No, they would not, so they do not have a real choice.

A person being sacked without reason or redress has implications not only for that worker; many people have talked about the fact that it will have implications for other workers in that workplace. If they see somebody unfairly treated like that, it will undermine trust. People will become resentful and angry about that sort of treatment. In the past, before the current personal grievance provisions, there were often wildcat strikes over the fact that people were unfairly treated and unfairly dismissed. If workers do not have the right to take personal grievances, I expect those strikes may well happen in the future as well.

Frankly, just think about how the worker who is dismissed unfairly would feel, how the worker who is dismissed without reason or recourse would feel. Imagine if your daughter, or your nephew, or your grandchild came home to say that the boss just sacked them. When you ask why, they reply that they do not know, as they were not told. Imagine how you would feel; I bet you would feel angry—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): Order!

Sorry. What if that worker went to get another job and the new employer asked why they had left the last job, and, being truthful, the person replied that they had been dismissed. A potential employer may ask why the person was dismissed. That is a perfectly reasonable question. If the person says “I don’t know.”, do members opposite think that person will get that job? This bill will cause a whole lot of absolutely unfair outcomes.

The issue of reinstatement as a primary remedy is an important one. It is quite a small-scale issue. In fact, in 2007 there were only 14 reinstatements; in 2008 there were seven, and in 2009 there were eight. But it is important that that provision is there; it is important to see whether, in the first instance, a worker can be restored to the situation he or she was in prior to an unfair act. It is a particularly important protection for union delegates and other union activists.

The combined effect of these changes will mean that the vulnerable workers will be most disadvantaged. Women workers go in and out of the workplace more often, so they will face 90 days’ employment with no rights more frequently. Young workers and many people entering the workforce for the first time know their rights less well, and are often less confident and less able to negotiate issues like 90 days with no rights.

It will be more difficult for workers to improve their wages and conditions. Potentially there will be increased disputation. But also, sadly, these changes will mean that the attempt to get our workplaces on to a more modern footing, to have the high-trust, highly productive workplaces that this country needs to lift its economic performance, and to close the wage gap with Australia will be under threat as a result. We cannot have high-trust, highly productive workplaces when people have the threat of unfair dismissal hanging over them.

During the Committee stage I will have much more time to deal with specific points, but I thank the nearly 8,000 submitters and the Department of Labour officials. The officials were put under enormous pressure because of, yet again, another rushed process by this Government. They did a very good job, under great pressure, of providing us with the advice we needed. Overwhelmingly, the submitters did not support this legislation.

In conclusion, I just want to say we had a submission from a 14-year-old woman. I do not think anyone in that room, if they were honest, could say they did not feel how strongly she was concerned about what it would be like for young workers in workplaces who face unfair dismissal.

It is very sad that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee did not come back with a strong report rejecting the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2), and that the majority of the select committee did not listen and take in the many representations from individual workers and, as has just been mentioned, unions and community organisations, all of whom were opposed to the bill. Sure, some submissions were in favour of the bill, but they were few and far between. Some of them made good points, but the overwhelming feeling of the submissions was against this bill, because it takes away fundamental union rights. If members want to read the detail of that, they can read the Green and Labour Party minority report, which explains the problems with the bill.

I will go over the fundamental union rights that have been taken away. One of the most fundamental rights was the right of members of the union to talk to union officials in the place where they work. That is the question of union access. The present system operates pretty well. We heard all the submissions and we questioned employer representatives. There was not much evidence at all that there was any significant disruption in the workplace under the present system of union access, which requires that access to be at reasonable times and not to be overly disruptive of the workflow, etc.

There were very few complaints about the present system before this bill. This bill puts unions at a big disadvantage. It has been indicated that there were some improvements in relation to the delays, but unions can still be delayed up to a couple of days in terms of getting into a job site. Various union representatives explained to the select committee their practice in visiting worksites. A lot of them have to cover a lot of worksites in a day and they have to be able to vary the worksites a bit. If, say, they have 10 worksites to cover in a day, and you have to spend a bit more time at one worksite because there is a bit of a health and safety problem, you may have to phone up the next worksite and say—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): The member is including me.

I am very sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker. The union official would phone up the employer at the next worksite and say: “Look, I was going to come at around 8 o’clock. I’ve got to put that out to 10 o’clock. I’ve got a bit of a problem here.” That flexibility is built into the system whereby the employer will cooperate with changing times and all the rest of it. Now, an employer who does not want the union to be on the job, or who wants to weaken the union, will be able to put off that visit for a couple of days, muck around with the time, and make it much more difficult for the union to operate.

As the previous speaker said, there might be very important immediate issues, such as health and safety issues, that require attention, although the employer might say that an issue is not a health and safety issue. I have been in a situation like that myself. At one point I was working in a motor factory and there was a problem with fumes coming into the manufacturing section where we were making seats. The employer did not think that fumes were coming in. We did. We were being affected by the fumes and we took a form of union action against that. One can see that there is not necessarily agreement between the employer and union on whether there is actually a health and safety issue. So there has to be a flexible system for union access.

The next basic right undermined by this bill is the right to stay in one’s job—that is, to stay in employment. That right is threatened by the 90-day trial period provision being extended to all workers. The basic thing about staying in a job is having the right not to be dismissed without good cause and without a reason being given. If people can be sacked at will within the first 90 days of their employment without a reason being given, as this bill provides for, they naturally feel very hurt, particularly if they do not think there is a good reason, but that it is just that they are being picked on, and they have not had a fair go. That grievance carries on in the person’s emotions and feelings and all the rest of it for a long time if they lose their job unjustly under the 90-day provision. They also lose a sense of power. There is a feeling of powerlessness and they feel that for those 90 days their future is at the whim of the employer. This particularly affects people who are coming in under the 90-day trial period provision. Those people will often be the more powerless workers—the marginalised workers, some younger people, and workers who have been unemployed and who find it more difficult to get a job. They already feel powerless, and will feel even more powerless under this provision.

The other thing I want to mention, which has not been recognised sufficiently by this Parliament, is the effort that people sometimes go to to get a job. Migrants may go from one side of the world to the other, and it costs them a lot. They may shift their family, or have to divide their family for a while because the mother or father has to go ahead and get the job, and the rest of the family comes later. Those migrants may have been unemployed, say, in Auckland, and may have to move down to the Waikato, Whanganui, or somewhere else to get a job on a farm. They take their family, set their children up at a school, and then, 75 days later, they can be just sacked without any reason.

Just today I received the case of Cheryl and Bruce, who had shifted to be a herd manager and a relief milker on a farm. They had tried to defend a migrant worker who was working on the same farm, and the employer told them to get lost, that they had lost their jobs. There was no reason for the dismissal in terms of their work, their politeness, or anything else; the employer just did not want anyone to dissent on any matter. Now they have all sorts of problems with their kids being at a local school. They have to drive their kids 40 minutes each way to school each day because the family had to shift out from the farm, and they have all the rest of the problems associated with the 90-day provision. The idea that the provision is voluntary and that people do not have to agree to it is a bit of a joke, particularly in the situation now where we have growing unemployment. If people want a job, then they have to accept the 90-day provision in this bill.

This bill also weakens unions in the sense that there is a dissection of the workforce who are on a particular job. Workers who have been employed for fewer than 90 days will feel reluctant to criticise anything that happens in the workplace for fear of losing their jobs. Those workers will not want to join the union, particularly if the union is the subject of some contention with the employer, because they could be seen as people who might stand up for their rights or who might be a bit more stroppy than others in the workforce. The employer might want to send them down the road in favour of a more compliant person, and there are plenty of examples of that happening.

The idea that more jobs are available through the 90-day provision has not been proved, either. In fact, we get a less efficient workforce if employers can hire people for just 90 days and then get rid of them, because there will be less training as those workers will be treated as temporary labour.

Another issue dealt with in the Labour Party and Green Party minority report is the personal grievance situation. People can be sacked, and reinstatement is not a primary remedy. So if an employer wants to get rid of a union delegate, the employer might just kick that person down the road as he or she will not be able to come back to the job. That might cost the employer a bit at the Employment Court, but the employer can intimidate the rest of the workforce by getting rid of the lead union delegate. That is the sort of thing that will happen if we do not reinstate people.

Good-faith bargaining is also undermined by this provision, which allows employers to swamp the workers with their side of the story when there is some contention over, say, an employment contract. The union does not have the ability to contact all the shareholders to swamp them with the workers’ side of an employment dispute between unions and employers, so it is a very one-sided provision. It will undermine good-faith bargaining between employers and unions, which is the heart of good unionism.

Altogether, this is a very bad bill. There have been huge demonstrations around the country against it. I, along with Carol Beaumont, was at the one in Auckland, which thousands of people attended. The unions are more active now than they have been for many years.

Contrary to what the previous speaker, Keith Locke, has just said, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) is a very good bill and the ACT Party will be supporting it. The bill extends the 90-day trial period currently permitted for employers with 20 or fewer employees to employers of any size, which is exactly as it should be. There should be a level playing field in the market place.

The bill also makes changes to union access to workplaces, communications with employees during collective bargaining, and the test for justifiable dismissal or an action by an employer. It actually rectifies several problems that have emerged since the 90-day trial period was introduced. In fact, ACT would have been very happy to have a significantly longer trial period. We would have been very happy to have it set at 6 months—

💬 Carol Beaumont: Why not permanently?

—or permanently. I like the way Carol Beaumont is thinking. That would be a very good solution to the problem.

Employers have noted that the situation is much better. They have the ability to trial employees, and employees also have the ability—it is not one-sided—to try out a job that they might not be very certain in their minds about taking on in the first instance. ACT supports this bill. We will support the 90-day period and, as I said, we would be happy for it to be a bit longer. But 90 days is certainly better than nothing at all. Thank you.

Here is a quote from the Labour Party: “Choice is ridiculous.” That is what one of those members said—choice is ridiculous.

💬 Hon Member: No, it was “Joyce is ridiculous.”

Oh no, it could not have been that. Choice is ridiculous. Listen to how those words roll off the top of their tongues. Choice is ridiculous. Do members know why Labour members say that? It is because of that old thing they believe in that comes from the early 1920s—in fact, earlier than that. It comes from the manifesto of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Those members really do believe that they are more with-it and more intelligent than the poor old worker out in the field. They will make the choice as to whether the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) is good or bad for workers.

Here is something else to ponder. Why is it that the union representative never goes out on strike with the workers?

💬 Allan Peachey: You mean they still get paid?

They still get paid! A classic example of this occurred during the mining strike on the West Coast not so long ago. The miners’ union was receiving money—

💬 Lynne Pillay: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member is on the wrong bill. The strike bill was debated last night.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): I am listening to the member; I will make a determination.

It is about choice. The 90-day bill is about choice, the access issue is about choice, and that is why I was gobsmacked to hear the comments of the Labour Party members Carol Beaumont and Darien Fenton, who apparently were both good union representatives in their day—in their day. But that day has gone, and we have those members harking back to the good old days when the union ran everything. It was, as my father used to say, a closed shop.

What is wrong with choice? There is nothing wrong with choice. People 2 years ago made a choice, and they voted for change. The amazing thing about this debate is that if we were to close our eyes and listen to the so-called left, it would be as if we were back in 1951. But those battles have been won and lost; they have been fought, they have been won, and they have been lost. Those members cry about workers’ rights, the 90-day bill, and union access to workplaces. We hear the emotion of Carol Beaumont when she says that the change to union access to workers could lead to someone dying.

💬 Carol Beaumont: It could do.

For goodness’ sake! In 100 years of industrial law, no one—no one—has died because of that. No one has died through lack of access to a union representative—not once, not twice, not three times. And this is 2011, not 1951.

This legislation is part of our programme to get the country back working, to get the country back on the road to economic prosperity, which is something that was absolutely lacking during the 9 years of the Labour Government. The outdated policies of the left-wing Government were absolutely lacking in that. Well, it thought it was a left-wing Government, but it was not.

I enjoyed my time on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I give big raps to David Bennett, the chairman of that committee.

I am appalled by the contribution of the member who has just resumed his seat, Tau Henare, on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). I do not think it was even a contribution. It was shocking stuff. That member is absolutely languishing in the past.

💬 Hone Harawira: Languishing, languishing.

Exactly, and I know that that Māori Party member will be taking his call soon—probably not tonight, but at the very next time that this bill is debated. Tau Henare’s speech was absolutely shocking stuff.

How many submitters were at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee?

💬 Sue Moroney: 8,000.

Eight thousand submitters said that this bill is ridiculous. I want to go back to what Carol Beaumont said earlier, and I will use young people as an example. What will it do for young people’s self-esteem when they are sacked from their first job and they have to go home and say they have been sacked? What will it do to those young people? It will absolutely knock their confidence. Nicky Wagner is scowling over there. What is wrong with someone being told the reason? It is absolutely appalling.

We heard the previous speaker talking about choice. Labour believes in choice. Where is the choice with the 90-day “sack-at-will” legislation? Workers have to take it or leave it. That is the workers’ choice. Workers do not have the choice of saying they do not want to be sacked for no reason. They cannot say they want the protection of being told that they are not performing so they that can fix it.

💬 Allan Peachey: Could you sit down so I can speak before 6 o’clock?

I do not think so. Where is the choice in the legislation? The choice for a new person in a job is to take it or leave it, and that is utterly appalling.

I think that members, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy, and everyone in this House will reflect on my final words this evening. As they leave this House they will think: “Where is the choice in this bill?” Would that be right? When this bill is next debated, I will finish my speech. I think this bill is an absolutely shocking indictment in relation to the dignity of workers in this country.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.