Employment Relations Amendment Bill

This bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, is the poster child for the failure of this National Government: the failure to deliver on John Key’s promise of more jobs, the failure to lift wages for hard-working Kiwis, and the failure to close the wage gap with Australia. With this bill, National has declared war on wages. It wants to cut the pay of hard-working Kiwis, and it has reverted to its modus operandi of last century, dressed up in the soft-soap language of choice and flexibility that we heard from the Minister of Labour. John Key’s Government is now the low-wage king of New Zealand. It has held down the minimum wage, it has cut young workers’ pay, and now it is gutting the primary wage-fixing mechanism under New Zealand law.

It is already hard going, and it is costing New Zealand workers and their families, but this bill is going to have a knock-on effect throughout the labour market, and further entrench Kiwis in a low-wage economy. By taking away Kiwis’ right to fair wage negotiations and standard setting, this bill will result in workers across the board seeing their wages fall.

Every change from this Government, from allowing employers to walk away from collective bargaining and negotiations to stopping people from finding out why they have been sacked, to taking away the right to a tea break, is about National looking after its mates at the expense of everyone else. This is payback for the Government’s wealthy mates, who have become restless—and did we not see that last week in the media? They think the Government has been too soft on workers and unions. They hate unions. The Government’s mates do not like the fact that we still have the remnants of a bargaining system in New Zealand, where workers can actually have a say. They donated big time to the National Party, expecting a whole lot more. What did we see last year? The former Minister, Kate Wilkinson, with all due respect to her, had pressure put on her, and now it is on Simon Bridges, that very ambitious Minister, to deliver to the party’s donors. They want to see workers put in their place, and that is what this bill is about.

This bill undermines the foundation of the Employment Relations Act, which is meant to promote collective bargaining, not destroy it. It is meant to promote compliance with important international conventions. The bill destroys the foundation of good faith and fair dealing in our law, which Governments, business, and unions have worked on so carefully for the last 10 years. It puts industrial relations firmly back on the agenda as a political issue. We say: “Bring it on.”—bring it on. Kiwi workers are sick and tired of being told by this Government that they should be grateful to have a job. No matter what the pay is or what the conditions are, they should be grateful. That is what this bill is about, as well.

Once, the backbone of New Zealand jobs was about a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. It was about a chance to build a better life for ourselves and our families. But now, while John Key gives handouts and favours to his mates, Kiwi workers are seeing the dream of decent work slip further away.

This bill is not good for workers, but it is not good for employers either. Good employers, under this bill, will have to compete with bad employers, who will have free rein under these changes to employment law. Actually, I have had many employers express privately to me their puzzlement about these changes. They do not seem that fussed about them, and many tell me they never asked for them. What employers are saying to me is that they need stability, and this bill is going to upset the labour market in a way we have not seen in years and years. The truth is that the only people who are going to do well out of this bill are employment lawyers, and I hope the Minister has provided more resources for the Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court, because that is where this is going to end up.

The Government seems increasingly out of touch with good employers who are trying to do the right thing. It is missing out on the conversation that is taking place all around us about the living wage. We have got employers lining up to sign up to be living wage employers. The Government is deaf to that. It does not seem to understand that things are changing in New Zealand. People do not want this bill. They do not want us to go back under this Government to the system that we had 20 years ago.

But let us be in no doubt: under this bill standards set by collective agreements that extend across the labour market to wage and salary earners will stall. New workers being employed and doing the same work as others can be paid less. The Government’s own advisers said that; it is in the Cabinet papers. Collective agreements are going to be harder to settle, and I think that is the aim of the bill. Then there are the extraordinary proposals to tax workers 10 percent of their pay for partial actions, and allow their pay to fall below the minimum wage. There is no measurement about what that action can be. The Minister said yesterday that it was about a level playing field. Employers already can suspend and lock out workers who take partial action. There is no balance in this in terms of workers being able to do things similar to that. Actually, I cannot find a jurisdiction anywhere in the world that does this.

A consequence of this silly policy—goodness knows where it came from; probably from the floor of a National Party conference, and we know the sorts of things they come up with—is that this bill has pages and pages and pages dedicated to being able to tax workers, fine workers, for taking little, little action. That could be just working to rule, with workers doing their full hours but saying to an employer: “We’re a bit upset with you about the collective bargaining. You’re not giving us a pay increase. So we’re going to do just our jobs and no more.” They can be fined.

If we are talking about meanness, there are in this bill cuts to meal and rest breaks, which I thought we had seen the back of in 2010 when it disappeared, when it went to the bottom of the Order Paper. They have been revised. What that means is the boss will decide whether workers get their break. What is even worse is that workers will be required to work during unpaid meal breaks. I do not know what the name is for that. I think years ago they used to call it slavery, where people were required—

💬 Andrew Little: I think they call it flexibility now.

It is flexibility these days, that is the thing—slavery or flexibility. What it means is that workers are going to be required to work for nothing during their breaks.

I was interested in the Minister’s comments about Part 6A. Clearly, he has had the message that the proposal to cut the protections for vulnerable workers is not supported by many businesses. We all know where this proposal came from, despite a comprehensive review, which took the Minister 3 years and included not only the Department of Labour but the employment of a separate consultant. There were specific recommendations that small and medium sized businesses should not be exempted. Then former Minister Kate Wilkinson got the CrestClean message: “Get rid of Part 6A, or we will campaign against you.” And they did—they did. The National Party connections in CrestClean, a company that has had cases against it around Part 6A, got rid of her. The next minute, despite all the advice and a 3-year review, Cabinet decided to exempt small business.

This bill comes from a Government that simply does not get it. It has never understood the vulnerabilities of a worker standing up to an employer, when the employer holds all the cards, when the worker’s economic livelihood is on the line, and when their only choice is to keep quiet, to shut up and be obedient, or lose their job. This is a Minister running this who has never had to face an employer who has more bargaining power than him. This is a Minister who made it plain yesterday that he does not understand the consequences of this bill. I do look forward to the conversation he is committed to at the International Labour Organization next week, and I look forward to a report back on that. But there is a better way than this. This constant grinding down of Kiwi workers is not acceptable. We need a party with the backbone to make decent work a reality again, and that party is Labour.

I thought that was a serious speech from Darien Fenton until the last moment, when she talked about the face of the future being the Labour Party. What a joke. Come on, Darien, get in the real world. This is the modern 21st century. You are not in the 1900s. You are not in Communist Russia now. This is the real world. People work, and they live and they make the most of their opportunities.

This bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, is good legislation. It is flexible, it looks after workers, and it provides the right environment for employers to be able to provide opportunities. It is good legislation for employers, it is good legislation for employees, and it is good legislation for our country and our economy going forward.

Labour Party members use a whole lot of rhetoric. They try to scare people, they try to take advantage of people’s emotions, they try to say things that are not true, and they do not come up with any basis or reality to what they say. It was a load of rhetoric; that is all we heard. Did we hear what the matter was with the bill? Did that member point out one section in this bill and say there is a problem with it? No. That member just spoke rhetoric in terms of what the Labour Party wants to portray. It wants to portray that we hate unions. That is what that member said. Those were the words that came from Darien Fenton.

Two weeks ago we were here in this House debating a Sue Moroney bill that was an attack on unions, a blatant attack on the power of unions. Sue Moroney brought it to this House thinking she was going to be the communist legaliser of redundancy payments, and then she realised half-way through the debate that it actually hurts unions to do what she was wanting to do. The Labour Party never has, never will, and never can care about people. The Labour Party cares about itself. It always has cared about itself, it always will care about itself, and it does not understand what is good for this country and its people.

This is a good bill. It streamlines some of the provisions around the Employment Relations Authority, it makes some extensions around flexible working arrangements, it returns to the original position in the Employment Relations Act around good faith, it helps employers in multi-employer bargaining, it allows for taking account of partial strike action, and it removes the 30-day rule that enforces non-union members to take union terms and conditions. It does make some changes to Part 6A, and it works on having clarity for information that is required for affected workers in situations.

This is a good bill. It is in the best interests of New Zealand’s economy, and it is in the best interests of New Zealand workers. The Labour Party will just use rhetoric all night long to try to put it down when the Labour Party does not really care about people and cares only about itself. Thank you.

If there is one thing that this bill does, it takes us to the 19th century; it does not take us to the 21st century. I want to give the member David Bennett, who spoke just now, one concession—it is true that National Party members in Government do have a connection with unions. Let me see now. They belong to some of the most powerful unions in the country. Mike Sabin is a former member of the Police Association, a very powerful union. Michael Woodhouse—and I think even Mr Bennett himself—is a former member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand, a very powerful union, collectively organised. The Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, and Kate Wilkinson are members of the Law Society, another powerful union. Simon O’Connor is a member of the Catholic Church, which is probably the most powerful of all of them. So they do understand about organising in their own interests, but the difference between them and us is that we look after working people and their interests, and those who have to stand up to those in authority to look after their own.

This bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, proceeds from the false premise that a level playing field needs to be created, as the Minister of Labour said last night—or that a level playing field needs to be restored. The implication, of course, is that there is not presently a level playing field in employment. Well, I have got news for the Minister and indeed for Mr Bennett, who told us that we were boldly moving into the 21st century, and that is that the employment relationship is not equal. It never has been; it never will be. It is inherently unequal, and the Attorney-General will know this because he is a man of law and a man of letters. He will know what the origins of our employment law are. It starts with the common law; it does not start with statute. It starts with the common law, and the common law of employment, which goes back at least 150 years, is still the law in this land, and it is amended by statute.

Let us go back to the common law, because it still applies. It recognises that the employment agreement is a special agreement because it means one thing—that one party, the worker, submits to the authority and control of the other. There is no other contract that does that. No consumer contract and no commercial contract requires an individual to submit to the authority and control of the other, and to limit their freedom as a result. It is an agreement to submit. It is an agreement to submit to the instruction and control of the employer, but it is not an agreement of servility, and decades and centuries of employment law tell us that the employment relationship is not a relationship of servility. But the reality is that the common law was never good enough to hold back the worst of exploitation and the worst excesses of employers.

Let us remember too how the common law described the employment relationship. It did not use the modern 20th century and 21st century language of “employer” and “employee”. It used the very raw language of “master” and “servant”. It is the common law of master and servant, and if you want a good depiction of how that operated, you only have to look at Upstairs, Downstairs and the more recent rendition of it—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Downton Abbey.

—Downton Abbey. That is where it all stems from. So what did the common law inadequately do? It set up half a dozen duties—four duties on workers and two duties on the employer. The duties on the workers included the duty to obey. That is the inherent thing about the employment relationship. You are obliged to do as you are told. That is the relationship of submission in the employment relationship. As well, it says that you have got a duty of personal service. You have to do it. You cannot contract it out to somebody else. You have to do it yourself.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

There is the duty of fidelity, Mr Speaker—and, of course, it is not you, Mr Speaker; I would not require you to submit to anything other than the authority of this great House, the authority of the will of the people. We know what you are here for. The other duties are the duty of fidelity—you have to act in good faith to your employer—and the duty of confidentiality. You can understand how all of this came about through servants and the master-servant relationship.

The duties on the employer were the duty to pay wages, and that was periodically and as agreed, and the duty of a safe system of work. But, as I said before, that was inadequate so statute law had to intervene to protect workers and what freedoms they were allowed to exercise—the freedom of association, the freedom to organise and join together with their workmates, the freedom of choice. Also, there was the freedom to bargain collectively. These were so fundamental and so important that they have been recognised internationally in international agreements, and are now celebrated each year at the annual conferences of the International Labour Organization, or the ILO.

The history of employment law is either the history of progress towards a more sensible and constructive and collaborative relationship between workers and their employers, or a regression back to the master-servant relationship. The disappointing thing is that every law change this Government has made in employment law has taken us back towards the master-servant relationship. This is the Government of master and servant. That is the only employment relationship it knows—more servility, more submission, more control, more master-servant. That is the National Government 2013. It knows nothing else. It is old-fashioned, it is old hat, it is 19th century, and it takes us backwards.

We know what National’s attitude towards unions is. It was represented by Cameron Slater. He said he was pathological about unions. He said he a pathological hatred of unions. Well, he is right about one thing. He is a sociopath—we know that—but has a pathological hatred of unions, and he is the biggest public relations machine for the National Party. He defines them.

💬 Darien Fenton: He’s Judith Collins’ supporter.

And his biggest hero, of course, is Judith Collins, the Minister of so-called justice. Can you believe it? The challenge of modern management is to harness discretionary effort. Good managers, good employers, know this, which is why they do not buy into the tardy old, grubby old National Party of old, like the present lot. They buy into modern management techniques, which are about harnessing discretion and getting the best out of people through mutuality, through mutual respect, through working together, through collaboration, through respecting the choice of workers to belong to the unions they wish to belong to, and through respecting the choice to bargain collectively. What does this lot do? They introduce a law that allows employers to trot off to the Employment Relations Authority to stop collective bargaining, to deny the freedom of choice of workers.

What is interesting is that we have had the principle of good faith in operation in this country for 13 years now, and when the employer trots off to the Employment Relations Authority under this bill to stop collective bargaining and frustrate the freedom of choice of workers, a number of conditions have to be met. But there is not one condition that relates to good faith, the requirement of good faith, and the Attorney-General will know, because he is a sensible man, that our employment jurisdiction is defined by equity and good conscience—equity and good conscience. [Interruption] Mr Finlayson QC will know that he or she—they who come to equity come with clean hands. We have to talk about it in the plural these days, so we are talking about at least four hands. They who come to equity come with clean hands. But under National’s 2013 bill, when you go to the court of equity and good conscience, you do not have to have clean hands. That is what National represents.

I am going to talk very briefly about the power of the employer to penalise workers who take what is called a partial strike by deducting their pay. In 2008 the Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union led a piece of industrial action with Air New Zealand and with flight attendants employed by a subsidiary called Zeal 320 Ltd. Their strike action—and it was defined as strike action; they had to give notice—was that they decided to breach the dress code for Air New Zealand. They turned up to their shifts, they flew on the planes, and they hosted passengers, but they turned up in feather boas. They turned up in flash pink gear—and that was just the blokes. They turned up in fancy clothing. One or two even had tā mokos on them and they were allowed to fly. Not a single flight was disrupted as a result of those flight attendants and their partial strike. Not a single passenger was turned away. The company continued to make money, but it was a partial strike. It was a difficult dispute. What it led to ultimately was a brilliant relationship, a constructive relationship, and a collaborative relationship.

Under this bill those workers would be penalised for standing up for their rights, a better deal, and greater equality. That is how insidious this piece of legislation is. That is how far behind the eight ball and the times the National Government of 2013 is. This is a terrible bill. It is a dumb bill. It is a silly bill. The members opposite know it. They will shamefacedly go through the process tonight. They know it is wrong, and we will oppose it with all the fibre in our bodies.

It is a Green call. Look, the member should call. I think we need to clarify something. The member should call. The Speaker will determine who gets the call. Just because someone else stands up—we have a sort of rational approach to doing this.

This is a noxious piece of legislation and the Greens will not be supporting it. The Employment Relations Amendment Bill is another nail in the coffin of workers’ rights in Aotearoa New Zealand. This bill is designed to force wages down and to keep workers in insecure jobs, and it is a blatant attempt to undermine unions and limit a worker’s ability to collectively negotiate decent wages and conditions with their employer. Put simply, this bill is a return to the 1991 Employment Contracts Act. It goes hand in hand with other noxious legislation this Government has introduced like the youth rates, the 90-day rule of the last term, and the reform of the welfare system, which is designed to flood the labour market with workers who are desperate for a job and prepared to take anything, which, of course, undermines the pay and conditions for all workers.

This bill perpetuates a narrative that employers are benevolent creatures who charitably offer jobs to workers and that we should all be grateful. It deliberately creates an industrial relations environment that is hostile to unions and hostile to workers. Effectively, it tilts what was never a level playing field in the power relationship between the employer and the employee heavily into the employer’s favour. This is hardly surprising when one considers that the entire policy setting from this Government since it entered power in 2008 has been to advantage its rich friends and privatise as much of the common public assets and capital as it possibly can. There are numerous examples of this—Skycity is one, charter schools are another, and private prisons and countless road building projects—that do not stack up economically.

The privatisation agenda is evident in this bill when you see the removal of the requirement that collective bargaining continue until the collective agreement is resolved. This is the Ports of Auckland dispute. This is the clause that was put in the bill because of the Ports of Auckland dispute. If we cast our minds back, we will recall that over a year and a half ago the ports’ management was keen to avoid settling the collective employment agreement for the Maritime Union of New Zealand workers because union workers refused to allow the complete casualisation of their jobs. The company then attempted to contract out the jobs. However, it was stopped by an injunction, and the company has been forced into negotiations. There has been a raft of unsavoury behaviour from the ports’ management since last year, including revealing leave details of one worker, utilising the right-wing media to tell lies about how much wharfies earn, advertising jobs overseas to replace striking and locked-out workers, and, of course, punishing union members who were already casuals by reducing their hours until they were forced to leave the union. Since then, of course, there has been the setting up of a yellow union, which has settled the collective employment contract—containing less favourable working conditions—for fewer workers. The collective employment agreement for Maritime Union of New Zealand members is still unresolved, despite the Employment Court directing the parties to have facilitated bargaining.

The removal of the provision to conclude bargaining undermines the ability for any union to negotiate collective agreements on behalf of its members. As Helen Kelly said quite recently: “Currently an employer can refuse to settle on an issue … but they can’t walk away on ideological grounds from the bargaining … The new law will remove the obligation to conclude allowing instead for surface bargaining by employers who have no intention to settle.” In last month’s employment law update from law firm Buddle Findlay, it described the changes to the collective bargaining by this bill as being “the most significant since those made by the last Labour Government in 2004,” and also said that it favours employers.

As well as removing the duty to conclude bargaining, the bill allows employers to opt out of multi-employer bargaining, which effectively means we can wave goodbye to industry standards. It means employers can carry on competing on price by reducing wages below their competitors, which reinforces a low-wage economy. The dreams that this Government said we would achieve, like catching up to Australia, are fast becoming far-fetched when it takes this kind of approach. New Zealand, as we have heard recently, is now becoming the centre for low-wage workers, and some Australian companies are contracting out their call centre functions to Wellington. It is no wonder. With these types of laws—and I include the dubious Hobbit legislation in this—we have become a nation of State-sanctioned sweatshop workers.

The bill takes us back to 1991, with a focus on individual rather than collective bargaining. It removes the 30-day rule, which is the requirement for employers to offer the collective, if there is one, to new workers. This provision was to protect new workers from being taken on at lower rates on individual agreements that they may have felt compelled to accept, or else they would not get the job. In so doing, that protected their colleagues, as well. When you combine that provision with the 90-day trial provisions that this Government introduced last term, we see a lack of a level playing field in very stark relief. In practice, what happens is that new workers have no choice but to accept whatever the employer offers them, or they will not be employed at all. I, for one, have already seen examples of workers being too frightened to join a union during their 90-day trial, in case they get the sack because they are “too stroppy”.

The meanness of this legislation is really, really apparent in the removal of the only protection vulnerable workers have under the current provisions in section 6A of the principal Act. This is the section that meant that the mostly low-paid workers employed by contract cleaning companies at least kept the same pay and conditions if the contractor changed. It is no secret that the previous Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, was lobbied substantially by one small contract cleaning company, which complained that this provision was unfair. So what did the Minister do? She changed it so that the provision would not apply for companies that employ fewer than 20 staff. Similarly, for the removal of tea and meal breaks, the law being changed to remove those rights in the legislation is due to one issue where an employer and a sole-charge air traffic controller could not agree on a time for a tea break. Once more, we see the Government use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

This bill is backward-thinking. It creates an environment where workers will not speak their minds at work, and this is a huge risk for health and safety for those in dangerous occupations. When we create a culture where workers will not speak up in case they are seen as troublemakers, we put workers’ lives at risk. That is why the Australian health and safety regulations have more worker participation, because those on the job know what the problems are. We could learn a lot from them, instead of carrying on with our appalling accident and death rate for workers in the forestry sector, in the agriculture sector, in the building sector, and, yes, even in the mining sector. This legislation is Draconian, and I urge the House to oppose the bill.

The previous speaker, Denise Roche, suggested that this bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, is all about employer sweatshops. I would like to suggest that the only sweatshop around this place would be the deodorant-free Labour—I mean the Green Party conference. Sorry, I almost got the Green Party confused with the Labour Party there, but they are kind of merging together. What happens when one combines green and red? You get this kind of muddy brown colour—that is right.

Flexibility, reducing compliance costs, freedom to compete and expand, duty of good faith, proportionate responses, relaxing provisions, and—here is the pearler; here is the pearler—additional choice. Well, in the words of Catherine Tate, “How very, very dare they.” What a liberty that the National Government might introduce this to the workforce of New Zealand! Welcome to 2013 to the Labour Party and its mixed-ownership model friends on the watermelon benches. Welcome to 2013, where work is valued, where hard work and initiative are actually valued, and where employers are given some choice and the ability to reflect their initiative and their enterprise in their workplaces and actually get ahead and succeed. That is about flexibility and freedom to thrive and survive. What is Mr Cosgrove pointing at?

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Why is Tony out the back?

That is another hard-working National Government member, Mr Cosgrove—something the Labour Party is very unaccustomed to. Yes, it is like some sort of foreign animal. That is a hard-working MP. What could that be? What could that be? [Interruption] There is fire in their bellies—there is fire in their bellies.

This bill, it has been suggested, is returning to the master and servant, subservient relationship. I think that describes the unions. And, really, what is clear is that the unions’ day has come and gone, which is why—[Interruption] That is right. That is right.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Are you a member of the Police Association?

That is right; I am a member of the Police Association. That is right. That is right, but you will find—[Interruption] There is no enemy of the unions here. There are no enemies of the unions here. The difference is that that association has moved with the times. That party certainly has not, and the master and servant description, that sort of mentality that employers are the enemy of the employees, is why the Labour Party is still languishing over there, propped up by its xerox printing friends in the Green Party. I commend this bill.

Order! [Interruption] Order! I cannot hear the honourable member Barbara Stewart. Was she trying to get the call?

💬 Barbara Stewart: Yes, I was.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): In that case, I call the honourable member Barbara Stewart.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. This bill is creating challenges even before it has got through its first reading stage, and we in New Zealand First have no doubt that as it goes further through the process, the outcry will be louder.

💬 Mike Sabin: That member doesn’t believe what she’s reading.

I do not believe this bill. New Zealand First is not going to support this bill. We believe that it is an affront to the rights of workers, and we are continually seeing under this Government the slow erosion of workers’ rights as anti-worker legislation is pursued.

New Zealand First believes that if the economy is going to actually prosper and grow sustainably, then the relationship between employers and employees needs to be appropriate. Employers need flexible, dedicated staff, and employees need appropriate conditions and remuneration. There is a really fine balance between assuring and affirming the rights of workers, on one hand, and allowing enough worker flexibility so as not to hinder any business’s production or productivity. In New Zealand First, we understand that, and we believe that the New Zealand public also understand this.

There is always a trade-off, a balancing act, between the two extremes. Kiwi workers and Kiwi business owners know this. The biggest percentage is more or less in the centre. They are very aware that to go to either end of the spectrum is to invite the prospect of workers’ strikes or their own businesses failing, and we do not want to see this. There are too many businesses going under. They are already downsizing, closing, and we do not want to see the job numbers fall even further than they have. An increasing number of jobs are required. We want our young people to come back from overseas to work here in New Zealand.

In New Zealand First we do not believe that there is actually any demand for these changes that the Government is proposing. Just what is behind all of these changes? Radical changes are being made, and there is no need for them. In this regard it is like the other piece of employment legislation we had a couple of weeks ago, where workers are going to be paid less—young workers—than the minimum wage. In New Zealand First we are going to be very interested to monitor this and check whether or not businesses have actually increased the number of young people they have employed.

💬 David Bennett: New Zealand First monitors the public?

No. We actually do not believe this. We have already seen numerous businesses come out against this particular legislation. They want to protect their workers and they want to protect their brands against all of the unnecessary nastiness that this Government is actually creating.

For a party that is really cosy with the public relations firm Crosby/Textor, National has poorly assessed the political risk that businesses are facing when they implement this legislation. This bill today is another kick in the head for New Zealand workers, but it is also more than that. It is seeking to apply a set of rules when there is already a great deal of flexibility for employers and employees and, in this way, it just goes to show how out of touch this National Government is with the small and medium sized businesses throughout New Zealand.

Small businesses have always had understandings with their employees, and will continue to do so. Cafe owners, retailers, electricians, petrol stations—they all expect their staff to go the extra mile when it is busy or when they are faced with a deadline, and the staff are, by and large, obliging. That is expected, and it is appreciated.

This Government is discussing employee strikes and union action, and is trying to create a level playing field. The employment relationship is not a level playing field, and it never can be. It is about collaboration, and it is about working together. If we look at strikes, they are usually with large corporations. They are corporations that employ numerous people—corporations that have the resources, the ability, and the nous to be able to cover the rostered tea breaks.

This bill is not about improving business; it is about the National Party actually pandering to its extreme-right minority at the expense of the more moderate majority. As parliamentarians, we are expected to represent the views and the interests of people, yet how many of us here could truthfully say that we do not expect a dinner break at 6 p.m.? We expect it, we want it, and we need it—we definitely plan around it.

Once again, this Government is showing how out of touch it is. It is attempting to pass legislation for which there is no need, and it does not exist in reality. Once again, it has misunderstood the working relationships in small businesses. Once again, it is pursuing an anti-worker agenda when most businesses are content with the status quo. For these reasons, we are very pleased to be voting against this bill and all of the challenges that it is going to create in the workplace. Thank you.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

Have we finished? I am just trying to deal with the situation on my left, but I recognise the honourable member Chris Auchinvole.

Why is it that whenever we have an industrial relations bill, those on the other side of the House—nice people individually, in every sense and in every way—

💬 Mike Sabin: Oh, don’t exaggerate.

No, they are—they are. Why is it that they leap into a stereotypical transformation, in a gang, and assume the various unionist roles so aptly played by Peter Sellers in films like I’m All Right Jack, where the archetypical trade union shop steward had a nose-to-nose confrontation with the archetypical personnel manager, played by Terry-Thomas? The trouble is that this was the 1960s, when even I was young. Why do those members want to drag us back to the wicked old days of constant confrontation? The reason why—I can tell them why, and they will not disagree—is that that is how unionists make their money.

I cannot understand why they adopt this despicable attitude towards employers, as if employers do not like in any shape or form the very people who work for them and who produce their profits, their well-being, and their continuance in business. I find myself—and this shows you the extent to which I have been moved by listening to those miserable speeches from the other side—agreeing completely with my colleague David Bennett.

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

Oh, yes, it has come to this. I am not so sure—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The Speaker will not allow a person addressing the House to be drowned out. This is not a pub.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I feel that it is only fair that you advise the member that he may want to withdraw and apologise for that last statement he made in his speech.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Chris Auchinvole.

I shall ignore the comment that came from the other side of the House because it is the best way to deal with the comments from that particular member, and I am sure that, on reflection, he does not really mean what he says. But I am sure that I will also agree—and here is the member David Bennett—with my colleague Cam Calder, who is yet to speak.

I was intrigued, though, at Andrew Little’s example of each of us belonging to a union, but saddened that even he, a scholarly person dedicated to his profession—and yet so angry—is still, in his own words, locked in the time of Downton Abbey and sees labour relationships in terms of servility. I never saw labour relationships in terms of servility when I was a worker, and nor did I when I was an employer. If Andrew Little is the leader of a trade union, it speaks volumes in terms of attitude.

This piece of legislation, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, is good legislation, but it will not be seen as such by Labour or, indeed, by New Zealand First, which wants to keep everything the way it is at the moment. Labour wants to drag it back 30 years. I hesitate to say it, but Labour views it through an old-fashioned pair of spectacles. I would encourage those members to freshen up and see the opportunities offered by this excellent bill.

Just a final word for Andrew Little, because he brought up the question—[Interruption] No, listen to this bit. Andrew Little brought up the question of Air New Zealand workers wearing mufti. I cannot believe—think back a week—his temerity and duplicitous attitude in his approach. He was hailing them as heroes, whereas when I, in innocence, wore my sleeveless jersey—60 stitches to the inch, merino and alpaca, hand-knitted, probably by the women of Wānaka—who was it who objected? Who was it who raised the point of order to you, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson, in the Chair? It was Andrew Little. I was deeply hurt and offended. Thank you.

Well, does that not just about say it all? That last speaker, Chris Auchinvole, thinks that this legislation, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, is to be debated as a piece of theatre. Because that is what we just had—Chris Auchinvole, from the National Party, thinking that this is a piece of theatre. This is about people’s lives. I do not know what it is that that Government does not get, or how it has become so out of touch so quickly that it does not realise that this piece of legislation is about everyday people’s working lives. It is about what people do when they leave their families every day. It is about the relationship that happens in their workplace. It is about them returning safely to their families at the end of that day, and having the income on which to live. That is what this bill is about. It is not a piece of theatre; it is about real people’s lives.

I have become used to hearing Simon Bridges butcher the English language in this House, but here he is butchering people’s rights at work this time—butchering people’s rights at work. That is exactly what is happening with this piece of legislation. The member who just resumed his seat, Chris Auchinvole, told us that it was a good piece of legislation, and then could not even tell us why. He had not one reason to offer this House about why he thought this was a good piece of legislation. I think that deep in his heart and in those of most of his colleagues, they know that it is a piece of nonsense. It is a piece of nonsense. What is the Government doing but actually trying to take away people’s rights at work? And for what purpose?

Let us have a think about the moment in history where we sit, here in New Zealand. We sit in a moment of time when we are trying to struggle our way out of a global recession.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: And doing very well.

And not doing very well at it, actually, Mr Auchinvole—not doing at all well. We have been in a recession for 5 long years. That Government has been promising to get us out of recession every single year since it came in, and it has been failing. But I digress.

We are in the midst of a global recession—a global recession, by the way, lest we forget, that was brought about by a lack of regulation. I think people have almost already forgotten that. It was brought about by a lack of regulation on the financial sector. That is what brought about this global recession, and who have been the people who have lost out as a result of that lack of regulation of the financial institutions and the investment bankers like John Key? Who have lost out? It has been ordinary working people who have lost their jobs. Every day you pick up the paper there are 50 or 60 or 100 jobs being lost somewhere in New Zealand. They are the people paying the price.

What is the solution? The solution the National Government has come up with is the same one its members have always trotted out, no matter what the circumstance is. The solution is to attack people’s rights at work. That is the solution they are putting up to get us out of this global recession. Well, it is an absolute piece of nonsense, and no wonder Chris Auchinvole could find not one reason to say why he thought this was a good piece of legislation, because it is not.

It is not about a level playing field, Mr Bridges. I listened to his first reading speech, which was, I think, yesterday in the House. He said the reason for this was to create a level playing field. Well, hello, Mr Bridges. Have a look at the environment we are operating in. When we have 1,500 people lining up for 30 minimum-wage jobs at supermarkets every day of the week—as if there were that many jobs every day of the week—

💬 Darien Fenton: That’s a level playing field.

Yes, tell us about the level playing field. Tell me where the power balance is in that exercise. When you have got hundreds of people lining up for a small number of minimum-wage jobs, guess where the power lies in that relationship? [Interruption] David Bennett would have us think that the people lining up, begging for the minimum-wage jobs have got the power on their side. That is how far removed the National Party members are from reality. They are so out of touch with what is actually going on in New Zealand.

One of the parts of this bill says that it is going to require any workers taking strike action to give notice. This dreadful strike action is obviously causing our global recession. What strike action and where? No answers. What is the problem that National members are trying to fix? For these strikes that are not taking place, they want these striking workers to actually have to give notice. Well, I am in the middle of a debate on a first reading bill of my own in this House because that Government is refusing to actually agree to workers having any notice of their jobs going—of their jobs being made redundant.

I have got a bill in the House now, asking for it to be put in the law that notice is given to workers whose jobs are going to go, whose entire income is going to be taken away from them. That Government refuses to give that notice in the law, and yet here its members are saying that workers—who are actually not even striking, by the way, because we do not have a problem here in New Zealand on this issue—have to give notice that they might withdraw their labour for a period of time from the employer.

Well, that just goes to show how out of touch that Government is and how against the ordinary working person its members actually are. They do not value workers. They actually do not value working people or the contribution they make to this country. Bills like this show us and expose the National Party members for what they are.

But the other piece of this bill that I want to draw people’s attention to is something that we should not even be debating in the year 2013 in this Parliament. That is the right for working people to have a lunch break, and to have a morning tea break and an afternoon tea break. This is an issue that is actually close to my heart because I in fact wrote the piece of legislation that they are amending. I actually wrote the amendment that was brought in by the Labour Government in 2008. While Kate Wilkinson, when she was the Minister of Labour, was going about writing this amendment that says that employees do not have to have a break, they can bargain it away, her department was reviewing the law that Labour brought in, to see how it was working a year after it had been established. And do you know what they found? They found that it was working fantastically well. They found that of the employers—and I think there were something like 1,000 employers whom they interviewed—just 11 percent of them have had to make alterations as a result of that law. And the vast majority of that 11 percent of employers said it was a really good change, that it made a difference, a positive difference, in their workplace when they gave more regular and longer meal breaks and rest periods to their workers, because productivity went up and health and safety issues came down. Employee morale went up. That is what they told the reviewers—that is what they told them.

Here comes this Government with its dreadful, dreadful record on health and safety. Have its members learnt nothing from the Pike River mine? Have they learnt nothing at all, because here they go again, not understanding that people’s rights to take a break at work is a fundamental issue around health and safety. When people do not get regular breaks at work, that is when things go wrong. They have learnt nothing from the Pike River mine inquiry, and they need to get that out and read it good and proper before they pass this piece of legislation. The impact of what they are trying to do here will reduce people’s rights at work, and it will make their workplace less healthy and less safe. It will mean that we will have more accidents at work, and productivity will go down, employee morale will go down, and health and safety problems will go up.

Is that the brighter future? They campaigned on a brighter future, and I can see no brighter future in this piece of legislation. I can only see New Zealand going backwards to the bad old days of the Employment Contracts Act.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the call. It is most civil of you. It is a great pleasure to take a brief call on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. This bill, as is very clear, is aimed at improving fairness and flexibility in workplace relations. We were asked what it is about—this is what it is about. Our focus simple, again: creating more and higher-paying jobs for New Zealanders as part of our plan to build a more competitive economy.

What does this bill do? It is simple. The bill amends the Employment Relations Act 2000 in relation to collective bargaining, flexible working arrangements, good-faith bargaining, rest break and meal break provisions, and the Employment Relations Authority. The bill also introduces an exemption from certain requirements of Part 6A of the Act relating to continuity of employment, and I am sure we will talk about this further in the debate.

This bill is about pragmatically improving and promoting flexibility and fairness in the labour market. It continues our strong and unrelenting focus on reducing compliance costs and unnecessary and burdensome regulation—much of it put in place by the previous Labour Government. We are committed to maintaining the framework for collective bargaining—maintaining the framework for collective bargaining—but we wish to ensure that there is adequate flexibility and choice within that framework.

We are also keen that ineffective and unnecessarily protracted bargaining that has productivity and other social impacts is avoided and that the fairness and balance of bargaining requirements are appropriate. National is ensuring employees and employers have the freedom to compete and expand while key protections for employees are maintained. I commend this bill to the House.

I advise the House that this is a split call. I call the honourable member Iain Lees-Galloway.

Well, the National Party has never seen a workers’ right that it did not want to get rid of, has it? That is basically what this Employment Relations Amendment Bill is about. The National Party has never seen a workers’ right or a working condition that it did not want to get rid of, and all this bill does is take us back to the bad old days.

Some people have said that it takes us back to the 1990s. I reckon it takes us back to the 1890s, or maybe even before then. It is positively Dickensian, this bill. If a worker should dare ask for more, sir—if a worker should dare ask for more—the Mr Bumbles over there will send them off, not even to the workhouse but out of the workhouse out on to the streets. That is what the National Party wants—that is what the National Party wants. I am not sure whether they are the Bumbles or the Fagins over there, but either way this is a Dickensian piece of legislation that takes us back to the bad old days of the master-servant relationship in the workplace.

In the 21st century the workplace is supposed to be a partnership. It is supposed to be about the employers, the capitalists, and the employees, the labour, working together to build a better business. But that is not what the National Party believes in. It believes in the old master-servant relationship, where it tips the balance in favour of the employer every time. This is all designed to drive down wages, and to make sure that the workers have so few rights and are so on edge in the workplace that they will never demand anything. They will never ask for more.

Removing the duty to conclude collective bargaining is about bad employers—not the good employers. There are plenty of good employers out there, but the law is always about making sure the ratbags cannot get away with their bad behaviour. So bad employers will be able to put ludicrous terms on the table, and when the union does not agree to them, they can just walk away. They can just walk away from collective bargaining. They can spray and walk away.

Repealing the 30-day rule, allowing employers to opt out of multi-employer collective bargaining—this is about getting industry standards. It is about unions and employers working together to build their industry. National does not want that. It does not want multi-employer collective agreements. It does not want to see the kinds of pay rises that the nurses got when the district health boards settled a multi-employer collective agreement with the Nurses Organisation. It does not want to see wages rise. John Key said it himself. He would love to see wages drop, and that is what that part of this legislation is about.

Then we have got this awful thing, the so-called strike tax, the partial action tax. So if workers wanted to, maybe, wear a sticker to work to show that they were taking the smallest, tiniest form of industrial action, just to show that they were not happy with the way bargaining was going, then the employer would have the right to deduct 10 percent of their wages. Mr Bumble would be proud of this. Of course, removing workers’ entitlements to rest and meal breaks—I mean, how petty. How petty can the National Party get?

Actually, if I could just go back to the strike tax, we know that this is not the end. The northern region of the National Party voted in the weekend to support employers being able to lock workers out and to then replace those workers. So it is not even workers wanting to strike or take their own industrial action. The employer—one day, if National gets its way—will be able to take the industrial action, lock the workers out, and then replace them with somebody else.

Some people have said the National Party is anti-union. The National Party is not anti-union. The National Party loves some unions. It loves the Employers and Manufacturers Association, a fantastic union that works for employers. The National Party loves it. The National Party loves Federated Farmers. If Federated Farmers say “Jump!”, the National Party says “How high, sir? How high can we jump for you?”. The National Party actually quite likes unions; it just hates workers. It just hates the labour force. It sees the labour force not as a vital component of growing business but as a cost—a cost to be reduced and a nuisance to be annihilated. That is how the National Party sees hard-working employees in New Zealand.

This legislation is simply about removing rights, removing bargaining leverage, and ensuring that workers are so on edge about the ability to keep their jobs that they will ask for nothing. There will be no more requests for more under this legislation, because if you ask for more, you will be out on your ear.

I rise to speak on this Employment Relations Amendment Bill, asking the question of who will benefit from this law, and also how consistent it is with the Government’s agenda to increase productivity. My position and my belief is that this bill will benefit very few people, and only in the short term; it will make things much worse for many, many more people; and it will not help us collectively as a country at all. This bill undermines the influence of workers’ unions, and that, fundamentally, undermines the ability of people to join together to help each other to create a good workplace, and to help each other to have decent conditions and better lives. This Government has articulated its vision, whereby freeing up employers from the restrictions of such negotiations and any pressure to provide decent conditions means that these employers’ profits will grow enough so that they can employ more people. We are told that this is going to be good for people in New Zealand because it will create more jobs.

This bill is yet another example of the trickle-down theory in action. At the heart of this is the same justification given for the existence of sweatshops. We are reminded again and again by this Government, whenever we raise issues of equity, of the global financial crisis in this world. It is almost as if it is suggesting we are greedy to want the poorest people in New Zealand to be able to live decent lives. This bill increases the power of employers and encourages rogue companies to come in and underbid good employers who offer decent wages and conditions. And you can be sure that that underbidding will come from the wages, rather than the profits. This is going to impact on cleaners, mostly, who are some of the lowest-paid workers in this country, and many of whom are women, many of whom are Pasifika—the people that this Government gives lip service to wanting to improve the conditions of.

This bill removes the guaranteed meal and refreshment breaks. This bill makes it easier for employers to opt out of bargaining for multi-employer contracts, which is our structure for getting industry standards. In the words of the Service and Food Workers Union: “There is not one thing in the raft of proposed changes [in this bill] that will help New Zealand workers to increase their already very low wage rates,”. Welcome to the dystopia of National’s industrial relations. The National Government is failing to share fairly the benefits of economic prosperity, which is happening right now for a small group of people. There are people in New Zealand who are getting richer by the minute in this country, and that benefit, that wealth, is not being shared. The OECD report out today cited incomes well below average and particularly high pre-tax capital income inequality as problems needing redress. It highlighted the low levels of people management skills across the business sector as an underlying cause for low productivity, and this bill feeds poor management practice. It encourages employers to see workers striving for better conditions as a pure cost, rather than an opportunity for productivity.

The Green Party has a much different vision for our future prosperity. It is a vision based on investment in our people, adding value in terms of the value chain, and our getting a greater share of that. This bill undermines that brighter future.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I note that we have a Minister in the House who has got his earplugs in and is listening to an iPad. I raise just two points with you. There is a convention around telephones, cellphones, and what not. I doubt whether the Minister, Mr Ryall, can hear us—because he is probably listening to Liberace or something like that; I am not sure—but could you give us a ruling as to whether it is appropriate to listen to Kylie Minogue or the top 20 in the House when you should actually be listening to the proceedings of the House, especially if you are on a quarter of a million dollars a year as a Minister.

I am not sure what the Minister is doing, but everybody in the House would be aware that—[Interruption] Order! I am on my feet. Everyone would be aware that it is improper to use a cellphone in the House, and it should be turned off. The Minister should know that, if that is the case and what is happening.

Is it not a paradox that we have been listening to an hour and a half, you know, of “This is an attack on workers.”, and then it is someone from the Labour Party who stands up and starts to point at someone who is actually doing some hard work in the House. I think the word is “paradox”—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! [Interruption] Order!

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Point of order—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Just a minute, Mr Cosgrove. The member cannot refer to points of order that have just been held. The issue is closed; it is not for him to do so.

I thought it was purely hypothetical and—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have just made two definitive rulings. I know that the member is a new member, but you made a very, very clear ruling that it is not appropriate to challenge the Chair, and he does it again. You have some course of action available to you.

💬 Tim Macindoe: The member on his feet had barely begun. He was not even halfway through his first sentence. I challenge that member to say how he could possibly have known what he was—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I know it is one of those debates. I just ask the members to show some restraint. I have called the honourable member. Would he please get on with his speech in this debate. Chaos may be the parent of creation—

Indeed.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): —but in this place, we will have order.

We will, indeed.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I have just given a ruling.

💬 Hon Member: He’s trifling.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No, I am not trifling. I think it is important, because the Chair has ultimate authority in this House. The point was made that I was being challenged in respect of my conduct—taking a point of order. The reason I knew that the member was out of order was that, the whip may note, the Assistant Speaker leapt to his feet and ruled that he was out of order. Wakey, wakey.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Mr Cosgrove, you were doing exceptionally well, and then you had to ruin it right at the end.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am all for bringing order out of chaos. I think the original Hebrew or Aramaic is “tohu wa bohu”.

But as I was saying, hypothetical and paradoxical is an element of what we have heard tonight, as we have heard, basically, a number of philosophical positions being put forward. One of the primary ones is the whole Hegelian element of master and slave. We have heard of power dynamics, which is delightfully Marxist, and, for some who want to be slightly, slightly more modern, it is very Foucault. The problem with all of those people is, firstly, they do not know what we are talking about. Secondly, of course, those are names of a past and discredited philosophy.

This bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, is not hypothetical. It is not paradoxical. It is about balance and it is about trust. This is about rebalancing dynamics within the employment sector. We have heard a number of things here tonight, but I have got only a few moments to speak to it. The first is around the meal and rest breaks. Most of us have enjoyed them in different ways. This bill does not get rid of them; this just steps away from being prescriptive. This is about maintaining a clear signal to employees and employers that they can negotiate these breaks; it does not get rid of them. It is all about flexibility. At the ultimate end, this is about trusting Kiwis.

💬 Sue Moroney: Oh, that old chestnut—there’s power in that relationship

Ah, yes, we hear “power relationship” again—old term, Hegelian philosophy. This is about trusting Kiwis. This is about trust and this is about balance. This is moving away from the hypothetical and the paradoxical. This is moving on to real, good legislation. I commend this bill to the House. [Interruption]

Order! I am just about ready to give out a yellow card.