Employment Relations Amendment Bill

The debate now moves to the “Title”, “Commencement”, and “Principal Act” clauses. I want to point out at the start that normally during this part of the debate people are inclined to come up with witty titles that they think that the bill should be called, but this is such a serious issue and such a serious attack on workers’ rights in this country that I am not inclined to go anywhere near coming up with humorous titles for a bill that has no humour in it whatsoever. It is called the Employment Relations Amendment Act and to suggest that this is about improving employment relations I think is completely and utterly incorrect.

I noted in the Speech from the Throne earlier this week that the Prime Minister characterised this legislation as improving collective bargaining. Nothing could be further from the truth unless, of course, the people for whom it is improving bargaining happen to be some of the Prime Minister’s mates and the employers, or perhaps improving some of the Government’s interests in this, because it is going to be those people who have been paid wages from the Government who are going to be under the most attack most immediately. But, of course, after they have been attacked and after their wages and conditions have been suppressed, the Government is going to move on to many other groups of workers as well. Anyone, in fact, who has a collective employment agreement in place will be feeling the effects of this.

So there is that group of people, but then there is also the group of people who are not covered by a collective agreement at all—the people who probably do not belong to a union. They have much to fear from employment relations under this legislation because those people are the ones who will start missing out on their tea breaks, their lunch breaks, and their rest periods, and therefore will have a much less safe workplace because of it.

The commencement date in clause 2 is interesting, because what it says is that the Act comes into force 4 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. For those people who follow parliamentary debates, they will know that that is quite unusual. Normally an Act will come into force the day after it receives the Royal assent or shortly thereafter, and I would be interested to know from the Minister in the chair, Michael Woodhouse, why the period of 4 months has been named in this clause. As we have just finished discussing in the debate on Part 2 of the bill, actually the really dangerous insidious parts of this bill start before now—before we have even been debating it. That is, if people are engaged in collective bargaining already—it does not matter when they have initiated it—that very dangerous ability to not even have to come near concluding a collective bargaining agreement will start already. It has started now. The clock is already ticking on that very dangerous provision.

In that context, I am very much perplexed about why the commencement date is specifically 4 months after the date on which this legislation will receive the Royal assent, because, as I say, the most damaging part of this Act will already be in place and, in fact, is already in place before we have even concluded the debate. Four months after the date of the Royal assent—I have no idea when the Royal assent is going to be, but let us think about some of the collective agreements that are going to be affected by that. As I said before, we have got a number of them happening in the health sector. I note, in particular, that the primary health care one is coming up shortly. The primary health multi-employer collective agreement expired on 31 August 2014. This collective agreement covers about 3,000 health workers. They are people who—

💬 Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member is straying far away from the title and commencement clauses, and I ask that she either be brought back to the very narrow focus of these clauses or that we shut it down.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think that is a fair point of order. The member will come back.

Speaking to the point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, it has been ruled on.

OK, it has been ruled on. Just so people can understand what the point is, the point is that this bargaining is actually already under way. This is about the commencement of this bill. The commencement title says it is going to come into force 4 months after the date. What I am pointing out here is that there is a whole lot of bargaining that is all under way that covers large numbers of workers. There are 3,000 under just this one multi-employer collective agreement. That bargaining commenced in September. The collective agreement expired on 31 August 2014. The commencement clause, clause 2, says that “This Act comes into force 4 months after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.”, but it is too bad, really, for those 3,000 workers. These are practice nurses, actually, and receptionists in doctors’ practices. It is too bad for them. The commencement date means nothing to them because Part 2, which we have already debated, means that they are going to be captured by it anyway, irrespective of the fact that there has been a 4-month lag time after the date of the Royal assent.

I would be very interested under that set of circumstances to know from the Minister why it is that there is a 4-month period. That is quite a specific amount of time that has been set aside. Are there transitional provisions that the Minister had in mind that the parties—the parties being employers, employees, and sometimes unions—would need to undertake in that 4 months before this Act kicks in? What was the thinking about the 4-month period? I would be very interested to know that.

The good thing, though, is that it does mean that there is going to be at least 4 months before anyone can have their right to a tea break or a lunch break taken away from them. So it will be at least 4 months when people, if they want to uplift their legal right to be safe at work, can do so. You have to go back to the days of Dickens to think about the idea that people might not get the right to have a tea break. The only thing that the 4-month period really saves now in this legislation is the right for all New Zealand workers—no matter what sort of workplace they work in—to actually have the right to a break.

I know that it is too late for some workers. I know that that period will be far too late. I heard yesterday after my speech in the House about the death of a forestry worker. It was reported to me that when the wage and time records of that forestry worker were looked at, they had gone days and days and days without a break. Is it any wonder, working in a dangerous environment like that—

💬 Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member is again addressing neither the title nor the commencement date. She has ignored your previous ruling.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Speaking to the point of order, I say there are two issues that I want to raise, the first of which is that the sole judge of relevancy is the Chair and it is, in fact, out of order to interrupt someone speaking, other than if you were the Chairperson of the Committee, and the second of which is that I draw your attention to Speakers’ ruling 115/1: “When debating the preliminary clauses at the end, members should have some latitude to summarise, and make concluding remarks about, the issues they have raised during the committee’s consideration of the bill.” That is a longstanding provision in the Speakers’ rulings and, in fact, dates back to 2003 when it was decided by the Standing Orders Committee, which is a committee made up of all members of the House, and has been reinforced by two further Speakers.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Thank you, Mr Hipkins. That is a very fair contribution. I think both members have made good contributions. I think the key word is “summarise”. I think if we can do that, we will be OK. We cannot repeat.

I think that the National members are now starting to squirm in their seats about the implications of this bill because the deaths of forestry workers and other workers in the primary sectors, actually, are utterly dependent on their ability to have safe procedures at work, and that does include the ability to have by right—not by negotiation—decent breaks at work. That is what National is going to deny them. That is actually what National is going to deny them. If workers have pressure put on them to negotiate away their right to these breaks, then that is exactly what will happen. We will end up with unsafe workplaces. It will not be, as the National members were trying to say before, because workers are stupid. It will not be for that reason at all. It will be because of the fact that 40 percent of our children who live in poverty are in families where there are wages being earned. When a worker is forced to choose between having a break at work or having a bit more in the pay packet, being able to feed the kids, being able to pay the rent, and being able to pay the mortgage, guess what? They have no choice, often, in that scenario.

This idea about freedom of choice that underpins this piece of legislation is utterly, utterly wrong. It was proven wrong in the 1990s by Bill Birch, who used exactly the same arguments. He used exactly the same arguments—freedom of choice, he said. It was freedom of choice to stop getting penal rates for working Saturdays, Sundays, and long hours. That is the freedom of choice that happened in the 1990s. Exactly that same freedom of choice is going to happen when it comes down to people’s meal breaks and when it comes down to their ability to have a rest period at work. That is exactly what is going to happen in some workplaces. I am going to qualify that statement by saying it is only in some workplaces, but that is why we have these sorts of laws.

I move, That the question be now put.

I am going to talk to the title of the bill. The title of the bill is, I think, a misnomer. The Act is going to be called the Employment Relations Amendment Act. That is what it is going to be called—the Employment Relations Amendment Act. Actually, I do not think that describes the content of this bill at all. Like the previous speaker, Sue Moroney, I do not think it is terribly funny either. I am going to try to make some points based on the title of this bill.

I guess we could call it the “Undermining Employment Relations Bill”, because that is what it does. It basically sets up a situation where employers are much more advantaged over workers, where the employment relationship can and will become even more stressful. This bill does not give any signal to employers that this is the type of environment where they should be investing in their workers, where they should be providing good relationships, where they should be providing good conditions, or where they should be ensuring that workers can speak up at work and take an active part in the planning of their work, and basically have some democracy on the worksite. This bill is not going to do that, so let us call it the “Undermining Employment Relations Bill”.

We could also call it the “Undermining Every Piece of Health and Safety Legislation There Ever is to be Bill”, because this is what the bill will do. It will undermine the legislation that this House is looking at around health and safety. It will do that in two ways. It will do that through removing the right for a worker to have a tea break or a rest break. We have heard examples from other speakers of people who have worked continuously—hour after hour after hour, day after day after day—in dangerous and isolated working conditions, who needed a break. They absolutely needed a break. And because they do not get breaks because they are required to work all the hours of the day and night, these are the people who are being harmed at work or who are not coming home from work at all.

The second way that this bill undermines all our health and safety legislation and the reason why it should be called the “Undermining Health and Safety in Legislation Bill”—

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 5.56 p.m.