Fair Pay Agreements Act Repeal Bill

Mōrena. The House is resumed and we return to the third reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Act Repeal Bill. I’ll call the next speaker, and that’s from call No. 6, which is a split call No. 2, the Green Party, a 5-minute call.

It really suits you up there in that seat, Mr Speaker. I’m never going to get tired of saying that.

My third reading speech is to our workers, is to our unions, is to our whānau and community members of workers who are feeling pōuri, are feeling the mamae from the signal that is sent out from this legislation, the message that is sent out from the repeal of the fair pay agreements legislation, which was for the first time in decades—in decades—going to finally address the particular inequities, including for those industries and sectors that are overrepresented by Māori and by Pasifika and by women and by young people and by disabled people and others. Those systemic inequities, despite best efforts over years to improve the conditions, the pay, the value of workers—those systemic inequities have been stubborn, have been stubborn to get recognition for fair pay, for fair conditions, for valuing workers in particularly precarious work situations, workers in lower paid industries, getting safety recognition, getting their voices included and valued in decisions that are made, getting training and advancement and development settled across those industries, those areas and sectors that we depend on, that we depend on to be able to go about our normal lives.

I mentioned in my contributions that even though many of us can stand here and point to our own whakapapa and our own links with—for example, both of my parents were decades-long bus drivers here in Wellington, actually, when the old depot used to be down the bottom of Courtenay Place before it moved to Kilbirnie, decades of bus drivers, multi generations of cleaners and cafe workers. My nana actually worked for Lion—the old Lion, was it in Ōtara?—as a cleaner and as a chef. I myself have been cleaning motels, a supermarket worker, a retail and bar worker. Those of us who, yes, can have those reflections and those connections—why are we not trying to do the best for them? Every single one of them, every single one of us in here, whether we have those connections or not—whether we have those connections or not. Why are we not trying to do the very best for the people with the least power, the least influence, the least resource, the least wealth and power?

That’s what this legislation is. My message is to our workers, their whānau, to unions—we are here. The Greens are here. We always have been. We are bringing your voices into the halls of power. We have been, even recently, including, actually, Mr Speaker, with early childhood education (ECE). Can I do that with ECE rallies? OK, I can’t. I’ll write that off. Including the Green Party members who have been on the ground with strike action and union collective action—myself and Ricardo Menéndez March were at the rally outside the Epsom electorate offices early in the week; our Labour colleagues were there as well—to hear directly their voices, their experiences, their insights, and their love for supporting people in whānau and communities. That is my top aroha and whakaaro for myself in this third reading speech for the Greens and our commitment ongoing, sustained, enduring, and that workers can feel and see and know that they have support here with our party, with our members across the community, with our volunteers and supporters.

That is the commitment that I make in this speech. To be really clear, the repeal of this legislation is an absolute assault on workers. There are all sorts of guises and pretences based on belief—is what we keep hearing from the Minister: based on belief. It’s not; it is a direct assault on workers. The Greens will always support workers. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker, congratulations on your new role. This repeal bill is the freedom to decide on the relationships that you choose to have as either an employer or an employee. This year, I door-knocked and called over 9,000 people personally across the Whanganui electorate. It may surprise members opposite that this included thousands of workers and New Zealanders of every background. Let me tell you, Mr Speaker, that those workers and New Zealanders of backgrounds across the range, overwhelmingly—overwhelmingly—wanted change, and in my electorate and across New Zealand, we delivered it. This repeal bill is part of that change and I commend it to the House.

Tuatahi e mihi ana ki a koe.

[Firstly, I’d like to congratulate you.]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Mihi mai, mihi mai.

[Congratulate me, congratulate me.]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: E mihi ana ki a koe, e te hoa, rawe ki te kite i roto i te tūru. Pai tō āhua, tino whakahīhī a Ngāpuhi i tēnei wā. Nō reira e mihi ana ki a koe.

[I congratulate you, my friend, it’s great to see you in the Chair. You look good, Ngāpuhi is very proud at this time. So I congratulate you.]

Well, what a shameful day for the—I was going to say the Opposition. They should be the Opposition—they should be the Opposition after this disgraceful day.

Hon Melissa Lee: You were self-reflecting.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’m always self-reflecting, Melissa Lee. But at this time here, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen what they have dished up: this disgraceful bill, this disgraceful legislation. I was listening to Marama Davidson, and for many of us, you know, we look at our families. I look at my mother; she used to clean. She used to clean across the courts, and when she used to come to Parliament, we used to look across and I’d go, “Yeah, you used to clean over there, Mum.” And my relations that are around town driving buses; my father, who worked on the wharf and drove taxis around here—these people are all very distant to this lot on the other side. They have no relation, they have no connection, they have no empathy in terms of what we’re talking about.

Hon Penny Simmonds: Say it like you mean it.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I absolutely mean it, because this is something where the vulnerable are being hurt—the vulnerable are being hurt. As Marama Davidson says, it hurts us, so the Labour Party gives its commitment, in terms of this fight for our people in the communities. For our people in the communities, it is a sad day.

I think so many people are now seeing this Government as a sort of far-right Government that’s very spiteful—very spiteful. There’s no reason this legislation should be passing. I’ve talked to some of our real strong activists and they just see it as the naked greed of the bosses who want to exploit and grind wages down. There’s no problems allowing unions to represent workers and push for better conditions and wages; that’s the cornerstone of enabling working people to get ahead, yet this new Government is only concerned with bosses’ interests. That’s what we’re hearing from the other side, in ensuring they benefit.

They talk about trickle-down economics. We hear that sort of kōrero all the time from the right, this trickle-down economics, which is a myth: pretending that bosses will pay workers decent wages out of the goodness of their hearts. That’s what we keep hearing: “Oh, look, I’m a boss and pay my workers well.”—normally just over the minimum wage, and that’s “well” to them. And what are you all moaning about? I’ll tell you, I was a former union president—

Hon Members: Ah!

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yeah, yeah. I know that’s hard for the other side to accept, because they don’t even know what a union is, but I remember the great Helen Kelly—all of our members know. She put so much time into shaping these fair pay bargaining agreements before she died. She’d turn in her grave—she’d just turn in her grave, watching this legislation go through. She would have been a wonderful MP, probably would have been a wonderful Prime Minister, but that wasn’t what she sought. She sought justice for workers, she sought rights for workers, and I mihi to her for her mahi. I didn’t know her well, but when I did meet with her we used to have a few laughs. I always admired her absolute commitment to workers, and today she’d be turning in her grave. She put a lot of work into this.

Today, too—yesterday, how people can change, so I’d hope that some of that useless lot across the other side will one day follow the lead of the great Jim Bolger. I never thought I’d say that about Jim, you know. In 1991, I thought he was a mongrel, because he brought in—and I’ve told him this, and we’ve had a few laughs—his union-bashing Employment Contracts Act, smashed us at ground level. But didn’t he change. What a good man: turned down knighthoods, and, as well as that, understood where New Zealand was going; understood where the working class were.

Carl Bates: Envious.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yeah, you’d be envious of him. I think it’s his strong Irish background. He actually understood the struggle, and so you saw him leading in terms of Māori issues, in terms of that useless National Government at the time. I’m getting mixed up about the times, the useless National Government then and the useless—I shouldn’t say “useless National” because, as we all know, it’s the New Zealand First - led Government by your relation Winston Peters. They just run around like puppies for Winston. But when you see Jim Bolger turning, maybe there’s a chance for him, and I mihi to Jim Bolger today for his work in shaping these fair bargaining agreements. And he’ll be here, probably shedding a tear today, saying “What happened to that pathetic, useless National Party that I used to lead?”

So shame on this party. Shame on this party in terms of the 90 days. So many whānau are reliant on their wages, but now their wages are going to be reduced as the cost of living crisis keeps biting, but shame on this new right—this extreme right Government that is being led by Winston and David Seymour.

The thing is, the Treasury already warned the far-right Government that repealing the legislation would hurt our most vulnerable workers: Māori, Pasifika, wāhine—our women, our women workers. You know, I’m a person who was involved, believe it or not, a few years ago, in the mid-1980s, in the northern clerical union. Our drive was equal pay for work of equal value—driven by some of your relations, actually, Camilla. You know, when I think about Evana Belich and all the great union organisers of the ‘80s and the northern clerical union—Linda Burrow, Sarah Murray—these were Pākehā women committed to the cause of supporting workers and Māori.

Hon Scott Simpson: A Willie Jackson history lesson.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Well, I need to give you fools a history lesson because you don’t know anything about equal pay for work of equal value. Government policy is supposed to benefit the many; repealing this fair pay agreement benefits so few—so few. This new Government should be ashamed of the hollowness of this move, because if Labour regain the Government benches—which is going to happen in three years—our first hundred days will be about restoring mana and rights back to workers.

Tom Rutherford: Well, you won’t be here.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’ll be here, but you may not be here. We will not allow this new far-right Government to undermine workers’ rights and water down collective bargaining. They refuse to understand why collective bargaining is so important.

Tom Rutherford: Yeah, “I know what’s best for us.”

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: They all think that individuals can all negotiate for themselves—no, no, here’s the thing: people go to work to do their mahi, to look after their family. They don’t go to work to negotiate with the boss. You can’t have the cleaners—you just can’t do this with our security or our hospitality workers all of a sudden being lumped with this job of being union delegates and union officials. That’s only for special people like our team here. That’s what we’re trained in. But our people just want to do their job, and these idiots, sadly, do not understand the whole line of collective bargaining. It all comes under market flexibility for them—“the individual can do this”. We’re not interested in that type of mantra; we’re interested in collective bargaining, teams, unions, people bonding together. That is something that is foreign to this far-right, useless Government.

ACT, National, and New Zealand First—they are bonded by their malice towards beneficiaries, renters, workers, and the environment. There’s no doubt about that. Now, a country that punishes them rather than supports them is a country that rules for the rich and not for the poor—that sums them up all again. Here’s one of the perfect examples just walking in: no aroha.

Hon Simeon Brown: I am a perfect example.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: They’ve got no aroha for the people. It’s a country none of us want to be a part of, and we don’t want to be part of that filthy right agenda. We want our people to come together, and I give a commitment that Labour will keep fighting against these right-wing fundamentalists.

I appreciate that members may have put too much sugar on their Weet-Bix this morning, but let’s try to keep the debate focused on the bill and less insults.

Firstly, congratulations on your new role, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): You too.

GRANT McCALLUM: Thank you. Today is a great day for small-business owners around New Zealand. For those that are out there on the farms doing the work and actually risking their livelihoods and employing people and having great relationships with their employees, and for the people of Northland and all the small-business owners round Northland and the tourism businesses in the Bay of Islands—it’s a great day for them, because this is one less layer of bureaucracy they have to worry about and deal with. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today is a day where a whole lot of New Zealanders lose a brighter future. What had been established over many, many years was that we had a problem. We had a problem of a low-wage economy where a whole lot of people were sinking, and we have the consequences of that, which we see every day. I used to see that in my office, because I worked in this area, and it sent me to Parliament because it was utterly tragic, what I saw.

Now, last night I told a story to you about that, on the other side of the House. I told you about how the comment that we’d had earlier about bus drivers, about them stopping to pee on the side of the road because there were no toilets, was true. I knew it was true because I had been in a situation where I had written a strike notice which simply insisted on toilet breaks. The response I got wasn’t the quiet I’m getting this morning; it was cackling. It was cackling and dismissive. But that’s a real story. What happened in that situation—and I’ll repeat it for those who weren’t here—was that I wrote a strike notice which simply said that the Auckland bus drivers would go away and take their toilet breaks as a form of strike action. The response of their employer at the time was to lock them out, because that was enough—that was enough—for them to tip all those workers out on the street and not pay them. We ended up with it going into the Herald as an editorial that perhaps on this occasion those workers weren’t to blame and, in fact, their employer probably deserved a little bit of criticism over this.

So when you talk about good employers, you’ve got to remember there are some ratbags out there, and the good ones are actually in a position where they’re harmed by those bad ones. Let me take that example a little bit further, because those bus drivers were in a situation where we had set them up, as a Government, as a Parliament, where the employers of bus drivers were constantly racing to the bottom because they had to compete with others who were willing to do that. So there was a competitive process between different bus companies, and the one that could pay the lowest wages won. That’s how we had set things up, because of the ideology that I am watching in the House this morning pass this bill. It was seen as a good thing for us, a good thing for New Zealand, to have the lowest-paid workers that we possibly could, because that would somehow bring about equality and wellbeing and growth to our economy. Well, it didn’t. What it did was it sunk people, sunk people to the absolute bare minimum, and we have terrible child poverty as a result. That is what you are reinforcing again today in the Government. That is a problem, because you are sinking people, in the Government today. You are sinking their hopes and their dreams and the dreams of their kids, and that is what is going on.

So we know we’ve got a problem. We know we’ve got a problem with all those sectors that have just asked for the bargaining that they have. One of them is bus drivers, but there are others. There are early childcare workers, there are hospitality workers. Those groups of people haven’t flourished in our society; they’re not paid enough, and the solution that was crafted was just to give them a minimum floor. The 80 percent of people who aren’t in unions were going to have a minimum floor. That’s all that we were doing. That wasn’t something that we should be afraid of. That was something that put employers on a level playing field so that we could get on with doing what we need to do best, which is paying people a decent amount, because growth means nothing if it’s all going to the multinationals overseas, which it was with the bus companies—they were all based overseas. These companies were making money and taking it out of the hands and the families in this actual society.

So that’s who we owe an obligation to, and we need a future. Today, we’re taking a step way back, and there’ll be consequences, but we’ll be here in three years with a future and a solution that is positive and that is all about growth and real growth and real wellbeing of New Zealanders, not this ridiculous hark back to the past.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll take this brief split call on the Fair Pay Agreements Act Repeal Bill.

The public of New Zealand voted for change in the last election. They voted for change because, unlike the previous Labour Government, they knew what a mess our economy had been put into and they knew that we had to have change to get maximum flexibility in our businesses to get our country out of the mess that it had been put in by the previous Labour Government. This is a small part of making that change. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s not a privilege to take a call on this bill today, because, as I said in my second reading speech yesterday, it is a dark day for workers. What has concerned me a lot about the debate—and it’s happening again—is that when those of us on this side of the House who are proud to have worked alongside some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable workers are telling stories about bus drivers having to take a pee in the bushes, the other side have laughed.

I just find it so offensive that people on the other side of this House actually think that stories about workers being mistreated in the workplace, having to go to the toilet in a bush, having to argue why they need to keep their job because they’re an older woman without savings and they just can’t stack a supermarket shelf that quickly—again, I’m seeing smirks. Please don’t do that.

This is why I’m so proud to stand here today on this side of the House—because these things aren’t funny. They’re not funny. I’ve sat with workers in tears and with, unfortunately, mental health challenges as a result of what’s happening in the workplace. I’ve heard claims of sexual harassment of women by their managers that are not being taken seriously. I say to the other side: maybe put yourselves in the shoes of some of those people just for 10 minutes, would you? This is a serious matter for New Zealand workers.

Back in 1991 when the Employment Contracts Act was brought in, it took away the ability for us to have sector agreements. And during this debate, they’ve been talked about as being some kind of weird thing. My colleague Helen White talked briefly about what they actually are, which is minimum standards, and I might just talk about some of the really basic minimum standards that could have been introduced into the retail agreement.

If you’re a retail worker, if you’re a supermarket worker, or you work for Bunnings or Farmers or one of those big-box retailers, quite often people will have rosters from Tuesday to Saturday, which is very normal. It’s expected if you work in retail that you will work a Saturday or Sunday and it’s reasonable to have that expectation as they are the busiest days for retail. But if you work a Tuesday to Saturday roster, given that most of our public holidays in New Zealand are on a Monday, you miss out on about six days of public holidays. It’s actually a whole week of leave that you miss out on. And just recognise again that these retailers are multimillion-dollar businesses. They’re making significant amounts of profit. One of the things that we built into collective agreements with retail was that if you worked a Tuesday to Saturday roster, the Tuesday would be treated like a Monday. It’s pretty reasonable. It’s a pretty basic minimum standard.

We have minimum standards in law already. We have the minimum wage, we have our annual leave, we have public holidays, we have sick leave, we have bereavement leave. But one of the things is that across each sector there are actually specific things relevant to each sector that don’t get covered by that, and this is what we were doing. We weren’t looking to achieve a gold standard agreement necessarily. That is actually still the opportunity between either a union and an employer or an individual and an employer—to get to gold standard. We just wanted bronze standard, you know, for a lot of these workers.

Take that bus driver example again. We’ve seen split shifts across the country. There are examples in Auckland of bus drivers starting their day in South Auckland ending up in central Auckland for a four-hour break before starting their shift again. So they’re not actually able to get home to spend time with their families or maybe pick the kids up from school. They’re expected to have this four-hour break hanging around in the Auckland CBD.

What a fair pay agreement would have been able to do is deal with that specific issue and set a minimum standard around it. It wasn’t about saying we’re going to pay people 100 bucks an hour or anything outrageous that the other side’s kind of scaremongering about. It was about saying what are the minimum standards that are relevant for that industry.

I think what’s really fascinating about this is that when Jim Bolger worked on this law in the 52nd Parliament, one of the things he noted in 1991—and we can talk about what happened in 1991. I think the Government at that time expected the union movement to push back harder than it did, and we all know from history that it didn’t. He has now accepted that they went too far.

So if you look at our history around employment law, the fifth Labour Government brought in the Employment Relations Act. It brought back collective bargaining. It brought back multi-employer collective agreements (MECAs), which are actually really similar to what we are trying to achieve with fair pay agreements. What we saw with those MECAs was that that only worked mostly in the health sector when the Government of the day instructed those departments to agree to a MECA. It was still a voluntary process. We didn’t see MECAs roll out across the country as we had hoped to through the Employment Relations Act. So it’s the missing piece of the employment puzzle that needed to be brought back in.

It’s really common overseas. Everyone in New Zealand, economic commentators, business leaders, unions—we all talk about how things are.

Simon Court: They’re all wrong.

RACHEL BOYACK: They’re all wrong, apparently—even business leaders, according to Simon Court. He just said they’re all wrong. So business leaders, economic leaders, Simon Court from ACT thinks you’re wrong. They talk about Australia. We have so much evidence to show that there are higher wages over in Australia. One of the reasons, as I’ve said in previous contributions, is that they have what they call enterprise bargaining, which is the comparable sector-based bargaining that we were looking to achieve. The sky hasn’t fallen over there. When you look around at where they have this type of bargaining, the sky hasn’t fallen. All it does is ensure that we have minimum standards that reflect the needs of that particular industry.

I’ve talked a lot in my contributions about supermarket workers and I’m going to continue with that theme a little bit. There are two submissions that have been sent to me that I want to read out. The first is from wonderful Connor, who was really brave and spoke on the forecourt of Parliament yesterday. He told me that fair pay agreements are important to him because they would lift the pay and conditions that essential workers could achieve. He said they would put an end to the status quo of those workers being undervalued by the most greedy and exploitative employers in the sector.

I want to talk a bit about that because we have a duopoly. We have Countdown/Woolworths, owned by an Australian company and all the profit heads back to Australia. Then we have Foodstuffs New Zealand, which is split into Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island—actually, a nice union of employers.

If you look at Foodstuffs employers, they are part of a collective and I’ve been on the other side of bargaining with a Foodstuffs supermarket, a multibillion-dollar one where they try to say, “No, no, no, we’ve got our own approach to this.”, yet they put the exact same terms and conditions from each supermarket into the negotiating space. So they try to pretend that they’re somehow unique and individual but they all come up with the exact same option for an agreement. So, you know, they can say one thing but the actions show something quite different.

As I’ve said in previous contributions, during COVID it really was wonderful to see people thanking supermarket workers. We saw art competitions from children in primary schools, and they sent beautiful art to say thank you to our essential workers during COVID. People dropped off cards and chocolates and thanked them in newspaper articles, but what they really need is actually to be treated decently in their employment and paid properly. Thanking people is all very nice, but a thankyou and a box of chocolates doesn’t buy your supermarket shop for the week. It doesn’t pay your mortgage or your rent.

I’m going to finish by reading the submission on the original legislation from my friend Jenny Wells. Here is what she said: “When employers can make unilateral decisions regarding employment without consultation with employees, it is unjust. When employers declare that an employee is not allowed to share their pay rate or employment conditions with other people, it is unjust. When an employer can set a pay rate for a position arbitrarily, it is unjust. It is unjust because it sets people against each other. Then the only way to deal with workplace disputes is through the Employment Relations Authority. It is unjust because the authority takes years to make a decision, however just. As William E Gladstone said in 1866, justice delayed is justice denied. The purpose of a fair pay agreement is to have a consistent wage and consistent conditions across an industry. I work in the retail sector in a supermarket. Recently it has been revealed that all supermarkets are making excess profits. However, what is different between the different supermarket chains is that they treat their staff differently. There are different rates of pay. There is a different approach to how public holidays are dealt with. There are different approaches to staffing levels and to places considered to need an extra level of expertise. Having a fair pay agreement means that both employers and employees will know what to expect.”

As a Labour MP I said in my maiden speech that I would not rest until I saw a retail fair pay agreement. That is the commitment from me but it is the commitment from all Labour Party members—that when workers’ rights are under attack, we will stand up and fight back. We will make sure that these fair pay agreements become a reality when we are back on the Treasury benches in 2026.

Congratulations on your new role. Despite the rhetoric from the other side of the House over there, our business owners in the Wairarapa electorate take their responsibilities to their employees seriously, in good times and bad. If they’re forced to lay off staff, reduce production, or close their doors, everyone suffers, and the fair pay agreement will do nothing—nothing—to lift the productivity that New Zealand desperately needs. I look forward to seeing this Act repealed.