Employment Relations Amendment Bill

I move, That the Employment Relations Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I thank members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their hard work and consideration of the bill, and I’d also like to thank all of those who made submissions on the bill. I’d particularly like to thank our coalition, and confidence and supply partners for working with me since the select committee reported back.

I’ve said several times in the House that if we saw a chance to improve the bill, we would take it. Today, I have tabled a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which does just that. I will return to the content of the SOP shortly, but it is appropriate at the outset to record my gratitude to the New Zealand First Party and Green Party for the constructive manner in which discussions were held. Concerns raised by both parties have influenced the final shape of the bill, with New Zealand First’s protection of small and medium sized enterprises and regional businesses, along with the Green Party’s advocacy for vulnerable workers at the forefront of our negotiations. Both coalition partners believe that a better balance has now been reached.

This Government is committed to building an economy that is growing and working for all of us. Changes made to the employment relations framework by the previous Government saw an erosion of working people’s rights and a weakening of their voice through attacks on unions. This Government believes that people should have a say in the running of their workplace and be able to bargain for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. We want to lift New Zealand into a high-wage, high-skill economy with thriving regions. This bill is one piece of our plan to do this.

There has been a significant amount of misinformation spread about the effect of this bill. I encourage everyone to focus on what the bill actually does. Substantially, the bill largely returns the law to something very close to the settings that existed when Labour was last in Government. Those settings resulted in decent wage growth, combined with low unemployment. It is encouraging to see that unemployment has fallen to rates not seen since that time, and that the economy is growing strongly. The Government is putting more money into the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders through the Families Package and minimum wage increases, and by strengthening collective bargaining settings. This bill gives effect to our vision by strengthening the role of collective bargaining, worker voice, and union rights in the workplace to deliver fair wages and conditions. It lifts minimum standards and delivers much-needed protections for workers—especially vulnerable workers.

The select committee heard submissions from employers, employees, and unions. The committee has listened to those submitters and has recommended that the bill proceed with a number of amendments, which I support. Cabinet has also agreed to three changes by way of Supplementary Order Paper 153. The first set of changes to the bill relates to submissions from employers, who wanted greater clarity about the effect of the changes. The bill introduces requirements for employers to pass on information about the role and function of the union to prospective employees to help employees decide whether or not they would like to join a union. The committee recommended some changes to ensure these requirements do not come as a cost to employers.

The committee has recommended clarification that the union is responsible for providing the information to the employer in the form in which they want it provided to prospective employees. This ensures that employers do not carry extra costs—for example, for printing or storage—and that this information can be passed on in the easiest possible way for employers. The committee also recommended giving employers more time to assess the union information to decide whether it meets the grounds to refuse to pass it on, extending this time frame from 10 working days to 15 working days. The grounds to refuse to pass on are confined to circumstances where the information either breaches confidentiality or the information may mislead or deceive the employee about the employer and would significantly undermine bargaining between them. The committee recommended clarifying that an employer representative may accept or refuse information from the union on behalf of the employer. Again, this ensures the process is made simple and straightforward for employers. These changes will ensure that employers have greater clarity and more time to meet their obligations.

Under the bill, employees are provided a form within 10 days of commencing employment that sets out a choice about whether the employee intends to join a union. Some concerns were raised about the existing time frames associated with providing this form and returning it. The committee has recommended changes to simplify this process and to align the employee’s choice to the 30-day rule. This means that the employee will have up until day 30 to return the form to the employer. This gives the employee time to talk to union delegates and understand the choice available to them while experiencing the terms and conditions of the collective under the 30-day rule.

The committee recommended sensible changes to clarify obligations around paid time for union delegates to undertake union activities. This included specifying when an employee is considered to be a union delegate. The committee also recommended clarifying that reasonable paid time is the equivalent rate they would receive while performing their normal employment duties. These clarifications ensure that rights and obligations for both employees and employers are clear under the provision.

The bill restores an employee’s right to a minimum number and duration of set rest and meal breaks. This will ensure employees have time to rest, refresh, and eat during working hours and to be able to continue to work safely. The committee recommended clarifying the bill to ensure that an employee with break requirements under the Act does not receive fewer breaks or breaks of lesser duration than under this bill. This ensures that, at a minimum, employees are entitled to prescribed breaks set out in the bill while allowing flexibility for other Acts to determine when and in what manner those breaks should be taken—for example, the prescribed breaks that commercial drivers are currently required to take.

The next recommendation relates to the vulnerable workers’ provisions. These rules provide critical protection for vulnerable employees such as cleaners and caterers by allowing them to transfer their employment to an incoming employer when a contract that affects the work they are doing changes hands. The committee has recommended that the categories of work as listed in the Act that provide protection in the event of restructuring should be able to be added, varied, or removed by Order in Council. Allowing additional categories of workers to be added or removed by Order in Council will mean the provisions are responsive to changing work practices and conditions over time. This will ensure that vulnerable employees continue to be protected.

By way of SOP, I have also introduced a clarification to the duty to conclude a collective agreement under section 33 of the Act. The bill restores the settings relating to the conclusion of bargaining that applied prior to the National Government’s changes in 2015. The challenge with these settings is that they do not make it sufficiently clear that employers are not required to settle a multi-employer collective agreement. With New Zealand First’s support, I propose an amendment to make it clear that an employer is not required to conclude a multi-employer collective agreement, provided that the opposition to concluding is on reasonable grounds.

Some submitters were concerned that the requirement to have pay ranges in collective agreements would not reflect what employees are actually paid. The committee has addressed this uncertainty, and has recommended amending the bill to remove references to pay ranges and require that collective agreements must include either minimum or actual rates of wages or salary, as well as an indication about how an employee’s rates of wages or salary may progress during the term of the collective. This ensures that the pay rates that are included in collective agreements reflect what employees are actually earning and provide employees with an indication of how their pay will progress.

I will now address the matter of union access. The most significant changes introduced by the SOP relate to this subject. The proposed changes create two categories of union access. For workplaces with a collective agreement in place or being negotiated where the coverage covers or would cover the work done by employees at the workplace, union officials need not seek employer consent to visit their members. This arrangement was the status quo prior to National’s 2010 changes. For workplaces without a collective agreement, a union official must seek employer consent before entering the workplace. For these workplaces, that is, effectively, the status quo under existing law.

I propose also that non-union members should be permitted to request union assistance with health and safety matters. Union representatives often have valuable health and safety knowledge and expertise, and it’s important that all workers are kept safe.

These changes negotiated with our coalition and confidence and supply partners strike a pragmatic balance between the rights of working people to freedom of association, and the rights of employers to control access to their workplaces. For all access types, the usual restrictions apply. A union representative must enter a workplace only at a reasonable time and in a reasonable way.

The committee also heard submissions about the use of trial periods for small and medium sized enterprises. There were concerns that businesses larger than 20 employees would be disadvantaged for not being able to use trial periods. The committee considers that the case for trial periods is more powerful for smaller businesses, as trial periods may reduce the risk taking when hiring. For larger employers, trial periods are used less frequently, and they have more sophisticated ways of managing the recruitment and performance of staff.

To summarise, this bill provides a minimum set of protections for all workers. These will deliver a better work-life balance and a healthier, more productive workforce. It also provides a fairer framework in which collective bargaining can occur and, finally, it enables workers to make meaningful and informed decisions about whether they wish to join a union. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. The National Party opposes this piece of legislation, and we give clear, firm notice that, at the first possible opportunity, a new National-led Government will repeal this legislation and return the New Zealand workplace environment to one where jobs can grow and where there’s flexibility to grow an economy to ensure that businesses and employees can thrive and work together in a happy environment.

This is an ideological piece of legislation. The key to it is in the introduction to the bill, where it says that the objective is to strengthen union influence in the workplace and to strengthen union membership, and that’s exactly what this bill does.

It comes as no surprise that one of the first pieces of legislation that this Government introduced in January of this year, very quickly after they gained access to the Beehive thanks to the decision of Winston Peters and his party, was to introduce this piece of legislation, and it is payback. It is payback to the trade union movement for their historical political and financial connections to the parliamentary Labour Party. This is a bill—

💬 Marja Lubeck: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member referred to financial connections from the trade unions. I don’t believe that that is in order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I think it’s not even really marginal. I think it’s a debating point, so I’ll let the member continue.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. What actually happens is that the trade unions declare openly their financial connections. They are affiliated financial members, and they are involved also in the election of leaders of the Labour Party. So these are connections that are deep, long, historical, and financial, and it comes as no surprise.

But what’s happened today is Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has introduced a number of amendments, and so this piece of legislation, which is an exercise in ideological mediocrity, is now watered down, to a degree, thanks to what Winston Peters and his party have referred to as “a work in progress”. Now, what we’ve really found out is that it’s a humiliating backdown, but not for the Parliament of New Zealand. It’s a humiliating backdown for the coalition Government, because when Winston Peters said that it was a work in progress, everybody thought that what would happen was that his party would bring to influence some kind of a white knight protection for New Zealand businesses, small and large, against the worst aspects of this bill, and that hasn’t occurred.

What we’ve got, in fact, is a situation where no one, apart from trade unions, is better off from this bill and no one, apart from trade unions, is better off as a result of the amendments that the Minister has introduced today. It’s not the Labour Party that’s better off, it’s not the New Zealand First Party that’s better off, it’s definitely not New Zealand businesses that are better off, it’s not New Zealand employees or workers that are better off, and it’s absolutely not the New Zealand economy that is better off. It’s only trade unions that benefit from this bill.

The most important thing for New Zealand workers is that they have a job. We’re fortunate at the moment, thanks to very careful, prudent economic management over the last nine years, to have one of the lowest unemployment rates that we’ve had in our history and also one of the highest levels of workplace engagement in terms of the number of people employed, but this is a bill that will significantly increase costs to businesses and put at risk a wide range of New Zealand’s small businesses and enterprises. That, ultimately, puts jobs at risk and it puts the economy at risk. This bill is part of a suite of legislative changes that the Government wants to introduce, and it’s just really the beginning of paying their political debt back to the trade union movement.

What we have found today is that the changes that New Zealand First have agreed to amount to something akin to a professional boxer who’s maybe had one or two too many bouts, because when they say “It’s a work in progress.”, what we have found is, actually, there was very little work and almost no progress. They made big promises about listening to New Zealand business. They made big promises and big commitments about trying to be the supporters of small enterprises and businesses around New Zealand. What’s, in fact, happened is that as a result of pressure that’s been put on them by the National Party and our spokesperson and people around the country—our various party people—who have rallied in opposition to this piece of legislation, they have felt that they needed to make a few minor tweaks. But what’s happened is really just hollow promises. They promised in Opposition that if they came into Government, they’d keep the Government honest. Well, actually, it turns out not to be so, because the winners are actually just the trade unions.

The worst aspects of this bill are, of course, still there. Multi-employer collective agreements are still there. The 30-day rule is still there, which enables union recruitment to occur in a way that most New Zealanders really don’t want to have happen—83 percent of New Zealanders are not members of trade unions. They have voted with their feet over the years, and that’s because there actually is no value proposition that the unions can currently bring to bear. Why would someone want to join a union?

One of the aspects in this bill that still remains is, of course, the ability to deduct pay for a partial strike—that is still not in the bill. That ability has been removed and, of course, what have we seen in the last 12 months? We’ve seen more strikes and industrial action than we have in several decades, and there’s only one reason for that. That’s because the trade unions feel empowered, they feel emboldened, they are deciding it’s their turn, and they’re using their muscle to disrupt and make New Zealand workplaces aggressive and adversarial. In fact, it was only last night that I heard the Minister, at another function, referring to how adversarial and aggressive workplaces did nothing for anybody. I agree with him on that matter, but, of course, that is what this legislation does. It creates an adversarial, aggressive, them-versus-us environment in the industrial landscape of New Zealand.

The, essentially, any time union access is still very scary for the vast majority of New Zealand business operators and managers. Yes, Supplementary Order Paper 153 that the Minister has introduced provides for a small tweak, but still nothing that really puts an infringement upon the access of unions to those workplaces so that they can come and recruit, because that’s really what it’s all about. The simple way of thinking about this bill is really to say “Well, follow the money, honey.”, because that’s really what it’s all about. This is a bill that is designed to increase union membership, to increase union influence in the workplace, and, effectively, to grow the market share of the trade union movement—and haven’t we seen a lot of that lately? So where’s the value proposition? Well, simply, there is not a value proposition.

The bill still creates a greater liability in terms of workplace discrimination if the employee is a member of the union. Now, that’s not the case if the employee is not a member of the union. So that’s where they’re trying to create a legislative value proposition for joining a union.

This is a Government that still dislikes contractors. They still want to create opportunities to create collective bargaining for independent contractors.

Rest and meal breaks are going to be statutorily defined. Now, nobody is suggesting that people shouldn’t have rest and meal breaks during their work hours—that’s exactly not what has been the case in the legislation. But by having a statutory definition—which, by the way, runs to about three pages in the bill—removes flexibility from the workplace, it increases costs, and it decreases productivity, and nothing in this legislation goes to increasing productivity.

The 90-day trials for businesses with fewer than 20 employees are still there, and one has to ask, well, where’s the philosophical principle behind that? What makes a business that employs 19 people different from a business that employs 21 people? They’ve still got in this piece of legislation reinstatement as the primary remedy for unfair dismissal, and that’s simply a situation that just defies logic.

What we will see over the period of time that this piece of legislation is in force—and it won’t be very long because, as I said at the outset, we intend to repeal it at the first possible opportunity—is that businesses will pay more; productivity will be reduced; ultimately, job numbers will be reduced; and businesses will adapt and adopt to ensure that they remain competitive, profitable, and effective in their market sectors. That is a simple reality of business, and this is a bill that will encourage businesses to do a whole range of things to ensure that they are protected from militant trade unions in the way that they did when, in the 1970s, they used to bring this country to its economic knees. So we don’t want to return to the 1970s. We oppose this bill.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m ready pleased to stand and take call on what I think is a fantastic piece of legislation that we have before the House today. I just want to say that as a business owner and an employer, I am really, really, really comfortable with this piece of legislation and I can’t understand why many would not be comfortable with it.

What this bill does is it sets out a strong regulatory framework for minimum employment protections and employment relations that will deliver a vision of a modern, highly skilled, and innovative economy that delivers good jobs, decent work conditions, and fair wages. I think it goes a long way to fix what we saw happen under the previous Government, where workers’ rights were chipped away—chipped away to the point where they were stripped of any rights in the workplace by introducing the 90-day trial period and by getting rid of the rest and meal breaks that people are actually so entitled to.

We’ve heard a lot of rhetoric out there—a lot of scaremongering from the Opposition—that getting rid of trial periods is going to stop people taking on those that they might not have otherwise given the opportunity or given a chance to by employing. But I totally disagree with that. The fact that you’ve got the 90-day trial still in place for employers with 20 or less staff—we know that small businesses have the most to lose, perhaps, economically when staffing doesn’t work out. So that provision stays in place for them. With the larger employers, they still have the ability to have a probationary period. What that means is that there is the responsibility on the employer to show due diligence in supporting newly employed staff to fit into the business. So it just is about supporting them into that business—regular meetings and supporting them, pointing out where they may need to improve, and things like that. So it doesn’t stop businesses having the ability to use that probationary period; it just means that the employer has to show due diligence and has a responsibility to the employee. What we had previously, with the introduction of the 90-day trial, we found that it was a bit of a “fire at will”. We know that the majority of our employers and business owners are good employers and good business owners.

💬 Hon Members: Scaremongering. What a scaremonger.

And I’m hearing that from across the House—“Scaremongering” or “Don’t scaremonger”. Well, actually, I would like to suggest that you perhaps take your own advice, because what I’ve been hearing as I travel around the country is there’s been an awful lot of scaremongering from members opposite as they take their tirade around the country.

I also want to talk about the rest and meal breaks and how they’ll be coming back in. I’ve heard the fact that people say that early childhood centres will struggle to meet this requirement. Well, my view on that is that if you are properly staffed, even to the minimum ratios, and you stagger your breaks—stagger your morning tea breaks, afternoon tea breaks, and your lunch breaks—you can easily meet the requirements to allow staff to have their rest and meal breaks.

I’ve heard about people talking about the fact that a union representative will be able to enter the farmhouse or people’s homes where employees work. Now, this is really relevant in the area that I live. That’s a predominately agricultural area where we have a lot of dairy farms and people live in houses on the dairy farm. There is nothing further from the truth than that a union rep can just barge on in to somebody’s home. It’s just absolute scaremongering, in my view. They cannot enter a home without prior and explicit permission from the owner. We’ve heard about union access—just being able to also walk into the workplace willy-nilly unannounced, and that again is simply not true. They must seek permission if there are employees there that are not part of a collective agreement or in the process of working towards a collective agreement.

So what this bill is actually doing is we’ve listened to submitters and listened to their concerns carefully, and there’s been changes made to this piece of legislation after listening to submitters. What we have is a coalition Government here that’s worked together really, really well to come up with this final piece of legislation, including the Supplementary Order Papers, and I think this piece of legislation is going to give clarity to employers and business owners and clarity to employees. And that, in my view, is really important and hugely beneficial, and I commend this bill to the House.

I stand to oppose this legislation. I’m surprised—I suppose the starting point would be: is there a crisis in the employment scene in New Zealand? Most people would come to the conclusion that at record low unemployment and having seen a jobs boom in this country over the past few years—particularly the latter years of the National Government, with 245,000 new jobs created in the last two years of the National Government. With the economy having great momentum, even still, and with jobs being created and with opportunities for young people and old people and people of all ages and backgrounds to get work in this country, you would have to say “Well, the employment relation scene’s working pretty well.”, and it has been working pretty well in this country. It’s been based on predictability and flexibility so that the New Zealand workforce has been flexible and able to provide people with the opportunity to work, and that is the most precious thing.

So what have we got here? The Government comes along and says “Oh well, we’re creating more jobs than we have in a generation. More New Zealanders have the opportunity to work than ever before in recent memory. Well, why don’t we just foul it all up and change it?”, and that’s what this legislation is doing. It’s taking out those foundations of that successful, flexible working environment that we’ve had over the long period of time.

We’re left with what is the most muddled and confused Government that we’ve had for a long period of time. On the one hand, we see Mr Jones over there—Minister Jones—who is responsible for what is, in effect, a very expensive job creation scheme in terms of the Provincial Growth Fund. As I’m sure he’s aware, when he goes around the countryside, the most frequent thing that he’ll hear is “We can’t find any workers. We’re desperate for workers.”, and yet he’s going out and spending lots of money to create more jobs so that he’ll have to import people from Vanuatu and the other Islands to plant all these trees, because there are no workers available in so many parts.

But there are definitely still some people who remain unemployed, and there are still some of what we call young NEETs—people who are not in education, employment, or training—and how do we draw them into the workforce, those people who are the most marginalised? It is not easy. It’s difficult. As Willie Jackson will know, it’s difficult to deal with these sorts of issues. But what is this Government doing? Well, for a start, it’s spending all its money that could be focused on drawing more people into the trades and helping those NEETs into useful education and training—it’s spending all that money on middle-class welfare for free fees. Billions of dollars are going in and not creating any more students, so that that’s a strange kind of way of dealing with the issue.

Then, on the other side, in terms of trying to get the nephs off the couch—as Mr Jones talked about—well, what are they doing? Well, Carmel Sepuloni is working very hard to undermine any of the sanctions within the welfare area. So we’re not going to do anything to compel or encourage people who aren’t prepared to work to work, but, somehow, we’re going to talk about helping NEETs.

Then we get to this legislation. I mean, what is the group of people that are going to be most negatively affected by doing away with the 90-day work trials? What is it? What group is going to be most negatively affected by doing away with 90-day work trials? Well, it is the young, unemployed, inexperienced young Māori from Northland, for example, who haven’t had any experience in work, who come from a background of not having been through school, and who have been in a difficult environment. That group of people is most likely to benefit from an employer having the opportunity to take a chance of them—take a chance on them. Whether it’s planting some of those trees up in Northland that we’re spending all the money for—the ones that haven’t gone into the mulcher. But there are still a few trees that will be planted, and the ones that haven’t gone into the mulcher and that need to be planted will be planted by young men and women who somebody is taking a chance to employ. This legislation takes away that opportunity for most businesses. So there’s—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Wild country—wild pigs.

Well, he’s referring to pigs. Well, even the pig farmers are going to need to have the opportunity to employ young people, and most of them will have more than 20 workers, because we’re not just talking about full-time workers. It’s a small little business which might have 20 part-time workers on their books—well, they can no longer use the 90-day work trial.

Anybody who has spoken to business people around the countryside who are wanting to take a chance on employing somebody who has no background in work and who may have all sorts of personal issues, addictions and all those sorts of things, where we’re wanting to take a chance on that person—they are going to be less likely to do that because of this legislation that we’re talking about here today. It is a confused and muddled Government that spends half its time talking about how it wants to help these people, and then the other half of the time passing legislation that will make life more difficult for that very same group, and—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Give us an example.

Mr Jackson—I’d be very keen to hear from him how he can possibly justify this piece of legislation which is going to hurt the very group that he says he’s working to try and help.

Now, we heard this huge, big claim from New Zealand First about how they were going to tough it out—they were going to straighten out this legislation and help the regional businesses to deal with it. They’re going to push back against the “Great Bearded Wonder” Lees-Galloway and toughen up this legislation. Well, what a wet blanket that turned out to be. They haven’t made any changes whatsoever, hardly. I mean, it’s a little tweak here and a little tweak there, but, essentially, this juggernaut still carries on, and it’s going to undermine the confidence that New Zealand businesses have and it is the primary reason why business confidence is at low levels.

Now, of course, we’ll hear from Government Ministers that all these references to poor business confidence is just rubbish, it’s mumbo jumbo, it’s confusion, and it doesn’t link with reality. Well, I tell you what: when business confidence is low, that leads, ultimately, to fewer investments being made, and the only way that we continue to create new jobs is through somebody making an investment, deciding to invest in a new business, buying new plant, and hiring a new worker, and those investment decisions are less likely to happen in an environment of poor confidence.

Now, it’s absolutely the case that this economy still continues to have momentum over a decade of good governance and very high terms of trade for our export prices. So, yep, we’ve got a good, strong economy with good momentum, but this Government takes that for granted and just assumes that it will carry on for ever. If they continue to chip away at the foundations of that success, we might wake up one morning and find that, actually, unemployment starts to increase and fewer people have opportunities. So that 90-day work trial, to me, is one of the saddest things that I’ve heard in recent times—depriving young people of the opportunity to have a chance taken on them by employers up and down this countryside. I think that the members on the other side need to take a long, hard, deep look at themselves and ask themselves whether they’ve got that one right, and I don’t think they have.

Just some of the other things that people will be shocked to discover about this legislation which hasn’t been changed: one is the idea that businesses have to, essentially, help unions recruit new members—because that’s what this is all about—and how employers should have to pay full salary and wages to someone even if they’re on a partial strike. Well, I mean, just imagine how that works in practice. You’ve got a group of people who are wanting to go and work only half-days or work to rule, work slowly—not do what they are supposed to be doing—and they expect to be paid full-time by their employers. Well, how do they think that sort of works? It doesn’t work very well—that’s how that’s how businesses go to the wall.

So this legislation is about helping unions strengthen their grip on the New Zealand economy. There are 82 percent of workers who aren’t—

Tim van de Molen: 83 percent.

—83 percent—members of unions at the moment, but this legislation is designed to increase that over time, and I don’t think that’s going to be a helpful thing for our opportunities. It won’t be an environment that will create the kind of jobs growth and jobs boom that we have seen over the past decade.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. That was the most befuddled contribution I think I’ve ever heard from the member “Goldstein”. He’s been pushing his bagel franchise for some time. In fact, the member should be probably more likely referred to as a member from the “Neo-liberal Free-market Trickle-down Party”, as opposed to a National Party, which it was once set up to be.

Now, I have to look around proudly at our coalition partners and our members from New Zealand First here today, who can say we are actually landing in a far better position than this country has seen for a balance between the workers and the employers for some nine years—in fact, 10 years. It was actually around about 50 weeks ago that I had the pleasure to sit down with the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway to initiate discussions around the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which was part of our 100-day plan for the coalition Government, to come out with some meaningful changes where we can bring back the balance between the employer and the employee. Now, I believe we have absolutely achieved that, and we have seen some moderation and some implementation of positive changes that are going to get that balance about right.

In fact, I want to read out our 2014 manifesto in which we, as New Zealand First, clearly articulated that “New Zealand First is committed to promoting an industrial relations environment based on fairness, flexibility, and neutrality between parties.” Now, this is something that the Opposition members failed to deliver on for nine years because of their neo-liberal, free-market, trickle-down ideology that has given us this theory that if the wealthy are being looked after at the top, somehow that wealth will be distributed by trickling down to the people at the bottom. But it is like molasses in a refrigerator—and that’s exactly what Fletcher Tabuteau said in his speech, and I actually want to pick up on that. It does trickle down, but it is like molasses in the refrigerator. The wealth never reaches to the bottom, which is why this side of the House, under this coalition agreement and this coalition Government, is talking about building our country from the bottom up. Introducing things—the living wage is not part of this bill, but it is certainly part of some of the things we are doing.

Now, the 90-day work trials which “Goldstein”—I mean Goldsmith, Mr Assistant Speaker—started to talk about is an area of concern. Well, 97 percent of the businesses in this country are actually small and medium sized businesses. So 97 percent of the companies in New Zealand are actually going to be looked after under this provision, which we have kept in there to keep those 90-day work trials continuing. Now, when we look at international examples around what a small to medium sized enterprise looks like, they vary quite widely and greatly from Europe to Australia, Canada, and the EU, and we maybe need to look at what constitutes a small to medium sized business as we move forward. But, today, businesses are invariably happy with what we have come up with to ensure that we actually look after the small and medium sized businesses that don’t have the resources of the larger businesses to actually spend time in the industrial relations area and in human resources specifically.

So I’m very pleased to announce that the 90-day work trials will be remaining. It certainly won’t have an impact on people being employed in Northland, as that member was articulating earlier. It is a pragmatic solution to a long-term problem—that’s what we want to see.

Furthermore, the ability for businesses to opt out of a multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) is, I think, a very important part. Now, this is where the parliamentary process has worked exceptionally well. We, at the end of the first reading, sent this bill off to the Education and Workforce Committee to hear from submitters. We have had hundreds of submissions from workers, from employers and employees, and from unions, etc., and I have to say that it was a concern raised by a number of people that those MECAs without an opt-out clause were going to be problematic. What it was going to do was actually tie up the provincial and regional parts of New Zealand with the cost structures of our larger areas and cities—something that the Hon Shane Jones mentioned early on in the piece. Now, what we’ve got is a position where those businesses, after engaging in serious negotiations, have the ability to now opt out of those multi-employer collective agreements, which, if not done properly, can be potentially problematic.

So well done to this coalition Government for sitting down, for listening to those submitters, and for getting back around the Cabinet table to discuss this at great length. It just shows you how a genuine mixed-member proportional Government can actually work when we listen to all sides of the House, all corners of the community and our sectors, businesses, and others to actually make sure that we get the right decision.

Now, when we enter into—I’m just looking at my time. The other part where I think we’ve found a balance is around the unions accessing workplaces. Where the union member wants to access a workplace, then the existing rules and regulations still apply to them. They have to give the right amount of notice, and it’s the status quo—business-as-usual. Where there are some changes is where a collective employment agreement has been reached and they are actually working under a collective employment agreement, then those union workers do have access, and that is making sure that we look after the safety and well-being of those employees under those MECAs.

Now, just remember too—for those people back home listening today—it’s the public sector that actually has over 50 percent of people employed under a collective employment agreement. It’s the public sector that actually is going to benefit the most from this, and a very, very small percent—less than 10 percent—of the private sector that is going to be affected. I think, again, this is where Governments—successive, previous, and existing Governments—need to look at ourselves to say “How can we improve the workers’ rights and the safety of our employees? How can we pay them better? How do we get better productivity? How can we ensure that businesses work sustainably for the long term for this Government?”, and this is exactly the outcome and the solution that we are trying to get to.

Business confidence, we hear from the other side, is waning. Well, we were at question time today. We read the Westpac report, and ANZ are coming out and saying the same thing. In actual fact, business confidence is growing. Business confidence—the fear that was fearmongered by the National Party in the early stages of this Government has turned out to be nothing but erroneous fears driven out of your discontent at been forced to the other side by New Zealanders. Now we see business confidence growing, we see the GDP per capita growing, and we’re seeing the lives of New Zealanders being more positively affected under this coalition Government than what we’ve seen for nine long years.

This is a very balanced, common-sense approach to ensuring that we get the balance right between the employers and the employees of this country—something that we haven’t had for a long time. In fact, my grandfather, if he was still alive today, would be very proud to see us moving in this direction. He was the head of the miners’ union on the West Coast of the South Island, but I’m telling you right now, this is something that we should all be proud of, because it’s about responsible capitalism. It’s about making money, but not at the expense of the workers of this country, and I for one, as a responsible capitalist, absolutely endorse that we treat our workers with the dignity and respect that we should all be putting forward—not what we’ve seen over nine years of neglect in the past.

I’d like to finish my contribution, on behalf of New Zealand First, by saying that it’s great to see this piece of legislation being tidied up and being fixed up collegially, collectively, together. It is no surprise that the Opposition—the neo-liberal, free-market, ideologically driven National Party—is opposing it, because they want to be seen to be strong. But, in actual fact, if you start reading what businesses are already saying about it, they are very pleased about it. I think you’re on the wrong side of the argument, and maybe you need to stop being so politically driven and actually get out and do the right thing for all New Zealanders. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Throughout that contribution, the member referred to the Hon Paul Goldsmith as “Goldstein”. I don’t want to suppose that that was a slur, potentially an ethnic slur to those of the Jewish faith who share the name Goldstein. I will not suppose that, but it is a—

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: It’s OK—it’s all right.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! This is a point of order. It will be heard in silence.

—breach of the Standing Orders to not refer to members by their proper names.

I absolutely agree. That is correct. I wondered about interrupting the member. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was a slip of the tongue—I hope it was. If it happens again, he might find himself apologising for that, at the very least.

I was quite sure I saw a discernible shudder from Willie Jackson at the revelation that he was sitting beside a capitalist—albeit a responsible capitalist, as Mr Clayton Mitchell claimed himself. He then went on to decry the neo-liberal experiment of the last 30 years.

One of the things about going in this order, in this slot, is that I don’t get the opportunity to hear from the Hon Willie Jackson before I retort, because I know exactly what he’s going to say. He’s going to portray employers as villains and employees as victims, and there’ll be some tub-thumping 10 minutes about how this is the right thing to do and how bad employers are, because we’ve heard it before. What he’s really saying, actually, the really sad part of that—and I predict we will hear this—is that what I hear in that message is that employees are too weak and too stupid to actually negotiate with their employers in a mature and respectful manner. That’s what I think we have at the moment in the employment relations landscape in this country. Not all employers do the right thing by their employees, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

What we see in this bill is an underlying philosophy that employers are the villains, and that being the rule. I’m very, very disappointed to note that, because the overwhelming number of employers do the right thing, and that inference is a stain on them and their efforts in being the backbone of this economy.

In my three years as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, I did at least the two things that Mr Mitchell mentioned, fairness and flexibility—and I want to give examples of that—but also safety. I think the passage of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 was a really important milestone that the previous Government saw as very important in our employment relations landscape, but it wasn’t just that. In fairness, it was increasing the penalties for non-compliance by employers to make very clear that that sort of behaviour wasn’t acceptable. It was suspending their access to the international labour market if they breached employment law, and it was, of course, the reality that if they themselves were recent migrants, they could be liable for deportation.

The zero-hour legislation was passed with the unanimous support of every single member of this House. That was a very important—

💬 Marja Lubeck: But it’s still happening—it’s still happening under this legislation.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Well, you’ve been the Government for a year or more.

—National-led amendment to protect employees from poor practice. That’s a very good point, Mrs Dean—not a single word about that in the 12 months that they have been in Government.

Flexibility, though—I think that’s where the saddest part of this bill comes in, because it reflects a completely jaundiced view of why certain things are necessary. I want to start with the 90-day trial, because not a single Labour-led Government member has actually explained why, prior to the sensible changes the Key-English Government made, New Zealand was the only one, if I recall rightly—there might’ve been two, but no more than two countries in the OECD that did not have a 90-day trial. Some of those countries were some of the most socialist, leftist Governments in the OECD, and they saw the 90-day trial as fair and flexible.

💬 Marja Lubeck: Where’s the evidence? No evidence.

So if they do, if Turkey does, if Australia does, if the United States does, if most of the Eastern bloc countries—all of the Eastern bloc countries that are members of the OECD—think that’s a very good idea, why was it such a terrible thing for New Zealand to have it? The answer, of course, is that it wasn’t. We started with small business, we extended it to all business, and I defy anybody to put substance behind the interjections of Ms Lubeck that, somehow, that was bad for employees. The marginalised, those returning to the workforce, and the recent migrants have all benefited from that. They will talk about the number of people for whom the 90-day trial didn’t work out. They don’t talk about the overwhelming tens if not hundreds of thousands of employees that were given a go coming out of the global financial crisis when they otherwise might not have had that opportunity.

I do credit New Zealand First with at least putting back the small business exemption to the removal of the 90-day trial. I say that if it’s good for those businesses, it’s good for all businesses.

Now, the other one that really upsets me, that disappoints me more than anything, is the rest and meal breaks one, and I’ve used these examples in the House.

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

See, they laugh—they think it’s funny. They think it’s funny that we don’t think employees are too stupid to negotiate for themselves flexibility in their shifts, and I’ll give you an example of that.

As some members know, I used to run a surgical hospital, and at certain times of the week, the ward at night was not busy enough to justify more than two registered nurses. In fact, sometimes it didn’t justify even that, but for clinical safety reasons it’s necessary to have two registered nurses on a night shift. Now, the definition of a “rest or meal break” is one where a staff member is able to leave the ward. That is not possible under those clinical conditions, and therefore I paid a generous allowance and gave them a meal so that they were compensated.

💬 Marja Lubeck: They can still do that.

No, they can’t—that’s the point. They simply cannot. They can negotiate the timing of their rest and meal breaks, but they cannot negotiate it away.

Indeed, shifts in hospitals traditionally—and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation still haven’t been able to negotiate this away; I hope they do redouble their efforts—are actually very, very bad for working parents. Most of them are women. The morning shift starts at 6.45 and it ends at 3.15. Now, I had arrangements with some of my staff to enable them to leave early. As long as the handover of patients was done, they could leave, if they didn’t take a lunch break, at 2.45 instead of 3.15 and be ready and available to pick their children up from school. That’s unlawful, and actually, rather, on one point, it may be possible to schedule the lunch break for 2.45, but technically, again, they can’t leave the ward.

The point is: why did we need this? When it was unacceptable, when it was inflexible, when the employers were not doing the right thing, there were already provisions to protect employees from that, and, frankly, the unions would and should and were doing their job of that. But the problem is we have an attitude of villainous employers, none of whom can be trusted, and therefore that kind of flexibility has to be rooted out with the bill. It’s a crying shame.

Now, I want to go on to access to the workplace. In fact, I was fascinated to hear Mr Mitchell say that this was some kind of watering down of this, because section 20A now, as a consequence of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 153 that the Minister has introduced, suggests that the union representative must obtain consent to enter the workplace. Indeed, that’s what it says, but the exceptions to that are not just if there is a collective employment agreement in place; it’s also “(b) at the time of the representative’s entry into the workplace,—(i) the union or employer has initiated bargaining … and; (ii) the intended coverage of the collective agreement, as set out in the notice given in accordance with section 42, covers the work done by employees at the workplace.” It doesn’t say that the workplace is going to be covered by the collective agreement, and, indeed, this could well be a place where the unions want to extend the coverage.

But we now have a provision that says there is an opt-out provision in the multi-employer collective agreement, and it’s far from clear to me whether or not this change is completely obsolete, in the sense that if the union intends and hopes and is trying to get an extension of the coverage to that workplace where one presently doesn’t exist, they nevertheless don’t have to seek permission to enter the workplace. So I see this as Clayton’s watering down. It is actually a stalking horse, with a lack of permission that I think a respectful union will continue to do even though this law has passed. I would like to think that they were overwhelmingly in that space, but members of the House should not think for a moment that this amendment in the SOP is something like akin to a watering down back to what the present Employment Relations Act says.

Now, the last thing I want to touch on is the issue of partial strikes, because I don’t believe there’s been any change to that. I wasn’t on the committee at the end of the process, but we have partial strikes going on in hospitals right now, with midwives. They are taking two hours off per shift between 22 November and early December. Now, when the Minister was confronted on this in January when the framework was announced, he talked about partial strikes as some kind of protest thing, and he used the Wellington Free Ambulance workers wearing red shirts at work and somehow being at risk of punishment, and that was a bad thing. Well, of course, that’s not any sort of definition of a partial strike. What is a definition is these two-hour breaks, and the employer will have to pay for that every single time they do it. It will become the norm. We’ll speak more about this in the committee of the whole House, but there is very, very little redeeming about this legislation.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It’s with pleasure that I rise and offer the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand’s support for the Employment Relations Amendment Bill this evening, in its second reading.

We’ve been hearing a lot from that side of the House about how terrible this is. We’ve heard about these terrible, militant trade unions who are just trying to bring business to their knees, and we’ve heard about, really, that we’re patronising workers and just think that they’re too weak to be able to defend themselves. We’ve heard a lot of rhetoric about just how the sky is going to fall because of this legislation, and I really do just need to reference back to—we survived the 2000s. We did, and, actually, I think we’re just getting unemployment back to the levels that we had it in the 2000s.

This bill doesn’t even quite bring us back to the employment relations conditions of the 2000s—not quite—but it’s a very good first step, moving in a direction of restoring some balance. But the hyperbole from that side of the House really has reminded me of the 1920s, of this kind of sense that, you know, the unions and these people joining together are out to destroy the foundations of our society. It’s quite—you know, I’m seeing people with top hats, and it feels very Great Gatsby to me, and not really grounded in the experience of individual New Zealanders’ lives.

Certainly, I’ve been hearing a lot from people around the country, and certainly the working people who submitted on this legislation told us a very, very different story. They told us about the value of these changes, and I do want to just pick up on one of the points that was made by the last speaker, Michael Woodhouse, which was inconsistent with the other speakers, talking about villainising employers. This legislation really just doesn’t do that at all, from my perspective. It just doesn’t even come close. But what we get from the other side is a denial of the imbalance of power, and also the added point to that: that New Zealand, from academic surveys, has found that we have the second highest rate of workplace bullying in the developed world, and that 70 percent of that bullying is from seniors down to juniors.

We’re told that enabling somebody to have a right to a rest and meal break is treating people as weak. I think the problem is actually in the other side’s denial of reality. I think that I do want to point out, as well, that I’ve been hearing quite a bit from that side that feeds what Helen Kelly used to talk about as a narrative that working people should be grateful for their jobs. For the last decade or so, that’s what we’ve been hearing, that people should be grateful for whatever they get paid and they should be grateful for a job in the first place, and that to ask for more was really just stepping outside of what you could expect. We’ve seen the impact of that kind of thinking by an absolute entrenchment in inequality.

Even the International Monetary Fund, quite a conservative global force, has now recognised that the rates of unionisation, of workers being able to join together, is one of the most effective measures that we have to address inequality, because an individual worker up against that boss—and many of those relationships will not be positive experiences. It’s just, actually, too big an imbalance. The way that you address that is by joining together with other working people who have a shared interest in the workplace and by working with your employer, having rebalanced that relationship through the strengthened numbers.

That’s not villainising employers; that’s actually making sure that good information can come through from the staff in the workplace to make a better workplace for everyone and a better society for all of us. What we’ve seen is that since the 1980s is that the top 1 percent—their incomes are now eight times what they are for low-income New Zealanders. It used to be only five times, which is bad enough, but that has been directly linked to the number of people in unions, so we have to do something about it.

This is only the first step, from the Greens’ perspective. You know, we would like to see 90-day rules gone entirely. I’m not entirely convinced that they play a positive role at all. When we heard, through the submissions on the bill, really terrible stories from people who told the select committee about how that rule had been played out for them, we heard the characterisation that it was, you know, possibly young Māori up in Northland who should be grateful that they had this opportunity to get a job, somebody who would take a chance on them—because “Otherwise, why would you?” was the inference—but this rule affects all workers.

We heard in the select committee from professional people who were saying that they hadn’t been particularly—who were National voters, might I also say. Professional people who never thought that that rule would be applied against them found themselves out of a job just the day before the 90-day trial ended, with no excuse given. They were lucky enough that they could walk into another job pretty much straight away because they were in a profession that was in demand, which is not the same for many other people. But they were very clear that there was no justification for this rule and that it was, in some cases, being misused and should not be supported—and that was from a National Party member. We heard of people with mental health difficulties struggling and being kicked out in that 90-day trial period and not getting the support from the employers.

You hear from the Opposition that this bill is ideological. It’s not ideological. This is based on the experiences of working people and the things that they told us—and are repeatedly telling us—would help them be able to keep a job and get decent conditions and have a safe workplace.

One of the other points I want to acknowledge around the 90-day trial is that New Zealand has one of the highest turnovers in the developed world between people in and out of work—of employment churn. There are only two countries in the world where people move in and out of employment more often—

💬 Dan Bidois: That’s called flexibility.

—than they do in this country. It is not flexibility, and when we have a social welfare system that punishes people for losing their job, we have to start looking at these policies in conjunction with our social security system and provide some security for people in our community. What is a job worth if you’re not able to keep a roof over your head, support yourself, sustain your family, participate in your community, and have a sense of stability? I would argue that if those things are not in place, your job is a force that is undermining you and your community. In this House, we have a responsibility to think about how we can actually provide a really secure platform for everybody in this country to be able to live their best possible life and be recognised appropriately for the contribution that they make through their paid employment.

The whole attitude of “People should be grateful for their job and grateful for what they get.” and the sense that businesses are the backbone of this society just ignores the fact that these businesses have people who are doing the work that produces the value that is the backbone of our society. If we ignore their contribution, then we all lose. This bill is not perfect, but it is a blimmin good start.

Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, I’d like to pick up on the debate on the second reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill and just say to the House that we have been treated this afternoon in the second reading of this bill to a degree of hysteria that is seldom seen in this House. I want to thank the Green member Jan Logie sincerely for reminding us what life was like back in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Well, I’m going to tell you a small anecdote of a story. It was last Friday night. I’d been to a function. I was in Alexandra, which is about as New Zealand as you can get. There are small businesses from one corner to the next of Alexandra. It is a very, very, very quintessentially New Zealand town. So the sun was shining—unusually—for the moment. I’d been to a function, and I returned to my motel to kick my shoes off, make a cup of tea, and bask in the window seat, as I did, at 7 o’clock at night. Across the road there was—because I was in town—a motorcycle shop and right next door to that was a light engineering business, and sitting out in the sunshine at 7 o’clock at night were a couple of bosses having a beer. Guess what? They had beers for their workers—yes.

💬 Hon Member: Seriously?

Yes. The workers and the bosses—except they don’t call themselves that; what they do is they call themselves the team—were sitting out in the sunshine at the back of work, enjoying a beer and a yarn after work on a Friday. How can this happen under current employment legislation? How can this even be that there is a trusting, warm relationship?

There was a young fellow there, who must have been an apprentice. How can that even be under the current legislation, which is so very bad, so very awful, and so oppressive—so oppressive? If you listen to the words of the Green members, who dwell in the 1970s, how can they even take part, because workers are the downtrodden? Well, that is not what I saw, and that is not what I see in the 21st century New Zealand that I know very well. All of this was happening, ladies and gentlemen, members of the Government, the Greens, New Zealand First, and Labour, under current legislation.

So that leads me to the next logical question about this piece of legislation, which is: if it is the case—and they really want to hear what I have to say now, so they’ve gone “Shush!” They’ve gone “Shush!” because, actually, they’re waiting to hear what I have to say. So what I have to say is that the New Zealand economy is doing very well, and they don’t ever shy away from taking credit for that, but why is the New Zealand economy doing so very well? Largely, because we have got flexible labour laws, which is giving business the confidence to hire, to invest, and to expand their business, to the point where we now have a—what? What is the unemployment rate in New Zealand? I know the Government members know what it is. What is the rate of unemployment in New Zealand? Oh, I’ll tell them what it is. It’s down to 3.7 percent—

💬 Hon Members: Nine.

—3.9 percent, which is the lowest unemployment in New Zealand for a number of years. OK, take the credit—you normally do in question time. So then, when you get up in this House, get up and tell us what is the problem the Government is trying to fix? What is the problem that this Government is trying to fix? I’ll tell you what it is—I’ll tell you what it is: it’s to keep their coalition members happy. That’s the problem that this bill is legislating for. That is all about Labour needing to keep its union mates happy. It’s in the bill. It’s in the purpose of the bill, right up front. Labour needs to keep its donors, its associate member affiliates—they need to keep them happy. But better than that, they need to keep their New Zealand First mates happy, and that is why we have got the amendments which have been brought to the House. Labour has been forced to back down to its union members and say, “Sorry, sorry. We wanted to get it over the line, comrades, but we couldn’t because New Zealand First would not buy it.” So that is why we have got the 90-day trial back in for businesses under 20 employees, and bring it on, I say, because that has been a really successful initiative.

And over the other side of the House where the Green member today, amongst all the weeping and wailing that was going on, gave us a very instructive quote where she was able to say that if she had her way—or they as a party had their way—the 90-day trial would have remained out. So here we have the internal struggle, the internal fights, and the long discussions in Cabinet—which we were helpfully told about today by New Zealand First, who, sort of, open their mouths and think a little bit later than that. So now we have revealed that there is a lot of internal strife as these parties seeks to pay their masters. That’s what this bill is about.

This bill is not about fixing a problem, because we have a strong economy still—say thank you. Say thank you to National for that strong economy. Thank you. We have an engaged workforce with flexible conditions thanks to National. Say thank you, National. Thank you, National. Yes. For a whole year, under this Government, who have hated the legislation and the oppressed workers and all that kind of hyperbole we’ve been hearing all afternoon, which has not been instructive—underneath that all we’ve had a whole year more—14 months, nearly—of industrial relations legislation as it stands.

So I want the Minister, in due course, in the next reading, and I want members to get in there and identify what is the problem they are trying to fix, except for—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Low union membership.

Thank you—low union membership.

So I just want to traverse very briefly some of the language that we’ve heard in this House today, because it’s been quite good. So a very new and, arguably, naïve Labour member stood up this afternoon and said, “This is the best piece of legislation we’ve brought to the House.” She went on to say, “I cannot understand why any business would not be happy.” That’s what a Labour member said. Well, I would suggest that that Labour member take a look at business confidence in New Zealand. The Government can argue the contrary all they like, but business confidence is being impacted. Hiring intentions are being impacted.

I get out there. My colleagues get out there. We talk to small business. We talk to medium business. We talk to large business. Hiring intentions are being impacted. People are not taking on apprentices, because they simply do not know what the future holds for them as an employer, and so it is easier in that vacuum of information and uncertainty just not to take on an apprentice just for now. They’re going to hold off. Now, tell me that’s good for productivity. Tell me that’s good for our economy.

And what about the 90-day trial and the impact that has had on young people’s lives? I’m sure the Green Party—if the Green Party were speaking, they would be eloquent on young people and employment. The 90-day trial was the best thing for business. And I know it gripes them to have it back in, but, my goodness, it gives a chance to young people, and somebody out there tell me that’s a bad thing. It is not a bad thing. So I challenge this Government, as they traverse their pay back to their union mates and union funders—I challenge them to truly justify in the economic conditions we have now and the rate of unemployment we have now just why this legislation is even necessary.

I think that was such a sad contribution that I’m almost feeling sorry for that member, Jacqui Dean—almost, not quite. I will give this piece of advice, though, for the people that were interjecting during Jan Logie’s contribution and on the previous member, just in case anyone else thinks that the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand made some big revelation about their stance over 90-day trials today. I’ll just give the piece of advice to the other side to read the bill, because it’s in the commentary what the Green Party’s stance is on it and what they’ve said. So instead of reading your speech notes from their advisers, perhaps they should take some time to read the actual bill.

We’ve heard here today that there is no crisis in employment. We’ve heard a whole lot of things. Perhaps, again, I should say to those people: go and read the submissions—or listen to the submissions, because they were videoed, most of them. Listen to the workers who told us—

💬 Dan Bidois: How many were against?

—about how bad the 90-day trial was for them. I will tell you how many submitters were opposed to this bill. There were actually 249 submitters opposed, Mr Bidois. When National had their bill in 2014, which sort of put this legislation into place in the first place that we’re actually reversing again, there were 16,500 submitters opposed to their bill—16,500 to 249. There’s not much of a crisis in employment, is there.

I’m really disappointed that they are creating or trying to create some sort of pretence around this massive opposition to this bill. This bill restores workers’ rights. It is fantastic for our workers out there. We heard from those workers. We heard how disempowered they feel. Anything that makes our workers feel more empowered and starts to restore that balance in that workplace is a good thing.

We did hear from employers, and we heard from employers that they are good employers. In fact, it was amazing how many good employers we heard in front of the Education and Workforce Committee—that’s fantastic. This bill will not hurt those employers. This bill will help bring those people up who are not the good employers, and we will restore workers’ rights to the workplace. That is a good thing, and so I commend this bill to the House.

I call Nicola Willis—five minutes.

The reason that business confidence is at an all-time low with this Government is because of speeches like that—speeches that send a very clear message that this Government does not trust small business. This Government does not trust business. This Government believes that businesses don’t want to do right by their staff; that businesses are all there to crush workers. And I would encourage the members opposite to spend some time visiting the real businesses of New Zealand, because the business people I sit down with—and I’ve sat down with more than 50 businesses over the past six months—say to me that what they want to do is do right by their staff, they want to ensure that staff want to stay working for them and that they want to progress within the business, and they say that this bill does not help them do better by the workers. They don’t see the reason for change, all they see is problems.

The members opposite think that this is some sort of amorphous thing. Business is actually the IT businesses growing in Wellington. It is bars. It is early childhood centres. It is the organisations that are at the heart of our community. And when I’ve talked to these businesses—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: It’s way more than that.

—about what these changes would mean for them—let me tell you a story, Mr Little, about the bar in Wellington I sat down with. I said, “Are you aware of these changes?” They said, “Yes, we are aware of these changes, and here is our plan to deal with them, Nicola. Because it’s going to be much harder to hire people in future without a 90-day trial period, we’ve thought up a really great scheme. Our scheme is that we going to institute buzzers in our bar.” So what the bar said was, “We realise that now bringing on lots of people is going to be difficult. So what we’re going to do is have a buzzer system so that customers who are wanting orders taken to their table will take the buzzer with them and when it buzzes they can get the food.” And that’s an ingenious and innovative response but it doesn’t mean more jobs for New Zealanders; it means fewer jobs for New Zealanders. It means fewer jobs in the hospitality industry; fewer jobs for young people, maybe, who need a second chance because things haven’t gone so well for them; fewer jobs for students who might actually want to earn some money in the summer break, fewer jobs for people who are wanting a second part-time job to get ahead. So, actually, these changes matter. They insult businesses, they reduce their confidence, and they will reduce the health of many businesses across the country.

These changes are also Draconian. They take us back in time, and if there’s one person who articulated that well, it was the Privacy Commissioner. What the Privacy Commissioner took particular issue with—and I think New Zealanders would take particular issue with—is the idea that it’s OK to give employees’ details out to unions so that they can recruit them. That is an appalling breach of privacy and in the words of the Privacy Commissioner he said, this “is poor privacy practice … [It] is against”—

💬 Kiritapu Allan: It’s a fantastic idea. The workers can be protected.

I want to talk to you about individual rights, Kiri Allan, because I think you studied them at university. This is what the Privacy Commissioner said. He said it “is against an individual’s right to exercise some autonomy over their personal information.” But the members opposite don’t care about an individual’s right to privacy; they care about the union’s right to recruit individuals in a workplace. They care about unions having businesses being forced to help them recruit. So this is a Draconian bill. It’s a bill that damages business confidence.

It’s also a bill that doesn’t take into account the realities of our changing and evolving workplaces—workplaces where there are factories like the one we heard about in Canterbury that has a continuous operation system, so it operates for three days in a row. And so, pragmatically, the good employer has said, “OK, so what we’re going to do, is we’re going to pay you for the breaks that you miss. We’ll pay you additional and we’ll make sure you have a meal the end of your shift because what we don’t want to ever have to do is down tools and stop our continuous manufacturing process, because that will be inefficient for our business. But we are really concerned”—they said—“about this bill, because it would make sure that we have to have meal breaks that are prescribed by law and alter the efficiency of our business.” And what’s the solution for them? Automation—so, yet again, bad for jobs; bad for the realities of businesses.

I want to just finish by talking about early childhood services, because early childhood services up and down this country have raised concerns with me about this bill and what it means not only for them but for the quality and viability of their services for children and parents. What they have said to me is that they think it’s wrong that they would be forced by this bill, in some circumstances, to reinstate an educator that they have dismissed. They think it is wrong that they would potentially be required to put children at risk in that way. They think it is wrong to take away the flexibility to say to a working mother, “You can work through your lunch break and go home early to pick your kids up from school.” They think it is wrong to make sure that trial periods are removed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member’s time has—

This bill—

Order! I just want to remind members that when I stand, the member’s speech is over.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I don’t know where to start. First of all, I would like to say on the second reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill that Jacqui Dean thanked the National Party, I think, two or three times for this what she called wonderful economy. I’d like to say, “Thank you, working people of New Zealand. Thank you for this economy.” It’s not one party that makes an economy great. It’s the working people and that is despite the employment legislation they have had to work under for years.

Now this this bill actually tackles many of the undermining changes made by previous National Governments that made it much harder for working people to get ahead. And I know that the member for the Coromandel called this a 1970s piece of legislation. Other members have said “Get into the 21st century.” and then they’ve described a very adversarial environment of companies and workers and unions, and that just shows how out of touch they are with modern workplaces. They don’t realise that in many instances the very well-performing companies of New Zealand, like Fonterra, Air New Zealand, KiwiRail—they all work collaboratively with unions and, in fact, they promote and they encourage their workers to join the unions when they first start working for them.

No mention has been made by the other party of the object of the Employment Relations Act, which is to address and acknowledge the inherent imbalance in the power in the working relationship, and over the years it has completely gone out of whack. This is what this bill is doing: it is the first step in righting a lot of these wrongs. Now the National Party has been going on about these earth-shattering changes to this bill, but let’s look at what they actually do. We are reinstalling the duty to conclude bargaining; that was removed in 2015. We are reintroducing the fact that employers cannot make pay deductions for a partial strike—2015. We are reinstating, God forbid, the requirements around rest breaks and meal breaks—2015. The 90-day trial was only instated in 2009 to 2010.

Mr Goldsmith had something to say about the right to strike, but the right to strike is actually an internationally recognised right. That is not just something that people want to do because they feel like it. This bill is about workplaces that will provide good jobs, decent working conditions, and fair pay, and it’s restoring some of the basic human rights of workers to be treated with fairness and dignity.

The changes that I just referred to from 2015—many of the changes only go back a couple of years. They were actually made against the advice of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; against advice from industrial relations practitioners and unions; and, also, they were contrary to New Zealand’s international commitments. One of them, for example, is the removal of rights of new workers to be covered by the terms and conditions of an existing collective agreement for the first 30 days of membership.

If I look at the then comment from the Minister of Labour, he actually said that the changes will enable employers to offer individual terms and conditions that are less than those in collective agreements. So that was what all of those changes were meant to do: they were trying to prey on the more vulnerable, drive down terms and conditions—all that for more flexibility or, like we call it, exploitation. There was another one: the 30-day rule. Advice was that it would disadvantage young people, those exiting benefits for employment, and also it would disadvantage other vulnerable workers, but National—at the time, the National Government—chose to ignore that advice, and we know the effects of it.

The member for the Coromandel says that under this bill nobody will be better off. Yet we’ve heard real stories, as our member Jan Tinetti spoke about earlier, from people that have been hurt by the last Government’s attacks on their working rights, on their lives and incomes. All that—what we heard from the other side—is to create record amounts of jobs. But what kind of jobs are they: insecure, part-time. The member for Northcote said it: “Flexibility. You know, who wants to be in a job for such a long time?” Well, actually a lot of these people hold two or three jobs to make ends meet and that’s pretty tough when you want to make sure that you provide for your family and perhaps also have a little bit of time to spend with them. It just shows us that the National Government at the time was absolutely out of touch with what working people needed and what collective bargaining does, because collective bargaining lifts wages and conditions and it does so not just for union members; it actually does it across the board.

So when people are saying, “Those bad unions and there’s only so few union members”—I think the member for Coromandel mentioned 18 percent. Well, actually, it’s the people not the unions that are missing out. If you look at the collective agreements that are negotiated by unions, there’s only 1 percent of all those members that missed out on a pay increase. But if you look at people on an individual agreement, 45 percent missed out on a pay increase. So it’s sad for those not with unions because they are the ones that actually are missing out more than the others. We know it pays to be with a union because the collective bargaining strengthening of union rights in the workplace will ultimately benefit most workers. So fairness and balance in the workplace is what it seems the National Party is not agreeing on.

Jan Tinetti mentioned the fact that a lot of good employers are not afraid of these changes because not only do they already respect and value the workforce they also know that what the current legislation enables bad employers to do is undermine them. When you are a good employer and you’re trying to make a fair and decent work environment for your workers, and there’s someone around the corner who doesn’t respect those rights for the same workers, you’re actually up against a very unfair competitive environment. Good businesses will also treat their employees right, their union delegates right, and they recognise that union delegates actually fulfil a really important role in the workplace. They help resolve workplace issues before they become larger problems, and I guess the constant narrative from the other side about how bad unions or union delegates are shows that they actually have no idea about modern workplaces and how everybody can win when people work together. The unions, in fact, warned the National Government at the time, back in 2010 and 2015, that those bills would be bad for workers as well as for employers, and it is exactly what has happened.

Someone mentioned the reinstatement—I think it was Nicola Willis. Now, I have also spoken to early childhood places that had some issues with that, because they had the completely wrong idea about reinstatement as the primary remedy. It is for an unjustifiable dismissal, so if somebody should not have lost their job in the first place, they get reinstated to the place they were in before. Now, there are a lot of hurdles still to consider. If, for example, a workplace cannot practically have that person back, then that person does not get their job back, but at the end of the day, if you’re dismissed and it wasn’t your fault, then you should get your job back. I don’t understand why that is such a big thing to consider for the other side.

The other one is the multi-employer collective agreements (MECAs). Now, there seems to be a really unclear message about MECAs—MECAs are not one size fits all. If you look at MECAs that are used by big businesses—for example, we had Chris Flatt from the Dairy Workers Union explain to us how it works at Fonterra and Jill Ovens from E tū about the district health board (DHB) workers. They actually explained to us about the schedules in the MECAs, and sometimes those schedules are larger than the MECAs themselves. So, once again, the narrative about it being one size fits all is not right.

There’s also insufficient understanding about the access provisions. Now, it’s not unfettered access, and we had an organiser from Together, actually, make that point really well. She said, “Think of me as an organiser, as a contractor. If there is a health and safety induction requirement, then as a union official, as a contractor, that’s what we do. We report in, we sign in.” So that’s exactly what it is. There’s no just walking in and doing whatever you like. But once again, this access is just going back to the way things were previously.

On the 90 days, there has been no evidence at all—because we’ve asked the officials—of extra job creation for the 90 days, but when it comes to flexibility in the smaller businesses, that has remained. But when it comes to young people, someone from Stand Up told us, actually, “The 90-day trials teach us as young people that we are disposable”, and someone said, “The 90-day trial caused an endless sense of anxiety”. That’s the sort of comment that we’ve heard from working people and how this old law has affected them.

So for all those reasons, I applaud this bill and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

This bill is payback for Labour’s union mates. They waited nine long years, grinding their teeth, and now that Labour is back in, here it is, they’re back, and they want Labour to scratch their backs. The unions have certainly scratched the Labour Party’s backs plenty, through donations, through campaign volunteers, and they even helped pick the former leader of the Labour Party, the Hon Andrew Little.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! We’re on dangerous ground here. When the member sits down, I want him to turn to page 49 of the Speaker’s Rulings and read 1 through to 7. I just want to give him a gentle warning around making accusations of the nature that he’s just said.

OK, understood, Mr Assistant Speaker. I will continue. This bill does nothing more than appease the unions. It’s a bill that does everything to empower the unions and nothing to empower the workers of New Zealand.

Now, let me walk through the purpose of this bill, which states very clearly that this bill aims to “restore minimum standards and protection for employees” and there are a suite of changes to promote and strengthen “collective bargaining and union rights in the workplace”. Now, what I have as a question is: what is it in our system that makes them think that they need to change such a great system? We rank fifth in the world for labour market efficiency, according to the World Economic Forum. We rank sixth in the world for the cooperation in labour and employment relations. We rank about 16th in the world for the flexibility of wage determination. Does that sound like we need a change? Absolutely not.

What about the minimum standards for employees that are actually listed in the bill? I see a lot of new rules for unions, but very few minimum standards and better conditions for workers. Workers have voted overwhelmingly against this bill. As my colleagues have mentioned, 83 percent of the New Zealand workforce is not in a union. In 2017, we had about 350,000 people in a union, and that’s down by 500,000 since 1991. I’ve spoken to businesses like McDonald’s—large, hardworking businesses that employ close to 10,000 workers—and only 10 percent of them are in a union. Nothing that even the previous Labour Government did has changed the trend towards declining membership, and nothing that this Government will do will, in fact, reverse that trend even further.

What about protection for employees, and rest and meal breaks, and conditions? The question that I have is what is the best mechanism to improve conditions for workers? Is it to empower the unions or is it to, in fact, empower employees? The feedback that I’ve had from the business community is loud and clear. They are worried. They’re worried about the uncertainty, and small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are worried, in particular, about the extra costs that this adds on to their businesses and the risks that we face because we’re putting our gold-standard labour market at risk. They’re being told what to do by the bureaucrats in Wellington, and these bureaucrats don’t even understand their industry. They don’t understand that most SMEs are very hardworking and good employers who take care of their employees. It’s going to be harder to remain profitable with this legislation and remain competitive.

Now, we in the National Party did a survey of businesses—several thousand, in fact—and 70 percent of the businesses that we surveyed said employment law changes are going to be most concerning. The feedback that I’ve had from businesses in my electorate is that these changes are simply not necessary. They’re taking us backwards—

💬 Kiritapu Allan: You don’t need to read your speech. Just give your speech—tell us what you think.

—and not forward. All right, let me tell you what I think about some of the provisions in this bill—firstly, the 90-day trial. I just got back from my electorate and talked to a big company named Thermosash. It’s a big employer—it’s 600 workers that work there—and they’re one of the largest subcontractors in New Zealand. You know what they said to me? They said that they use the 90-day rule to hire youth workers, and with that, they will no longer be able to do so under this provision.

What about rest and meal breaks? Well, I’ve spoken, again, to McDonald’s, and no one disagrees that people and workers need rest breaks. What we disagree with is the flexibility in which they occur, particular to different industries. For example, in the fast-food industry, sometimes customers come in and you’re busy and you can’t take a break. Now, under the rules of this new law, workers are able to go off site without any notice.

What about the horticulture businesses, I hear you ask? Well, again, the horticulture season goes up and down and they need a degree of flexibility in their workforce for rest and meal breaks. Again, the risk with these rest and meal breaks is that it doesn’t have a degree of flexibility. What about this compulsory multi-employer collective agreement (MECA)—

💬 Kiritapu Allan: You’ve got no bloody clue.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Sorry. Can we calm down? I’d really like to hear this speech.

💬 Kiritapu Allan: Oh God, really?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No. I’m on my feet. No good calling out to God to help you.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Let me get back to the important aspects of this bill. So we are talking about this compulsory MECA opt-out provision. Yes, there’s been a Supplementary Order Paper that’s been tabled today by the Minister, but, again, if your employment is signed up to a collective agreement, then that gives union representatives unfettered access to the workplace. Again, businesses that I’ve talked to in Auckland, in Northcote, and Porirua are upset about these changes. What about time off for union activities? Again, this is going to add extra compliance costs to businesses in the area.

So National, in this part of the House, is opposed to this bill. We don’t think that these changes are needed. We already have one of the most flexible, efficient, and desired labour markets in the developed world. The New Zealand that I want to live in, in the future, is one where our labour markets are indeed flexible, where we give Kiwis the opportunity to work when they want and how they want, where our employment framework is fit for New Zealand and fit for the future of this country in terms of rapid change in technology and development.

We have to understand that 90 percent of the businesses in New Zealand are small and medium sized enterprises—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: No it’s not. Fifty percent of them don’t employ anybody.

—and 10 percent—well, that’s a small and medium sized enterprise, sir. Ten percent of those are in fact what we define as large businesses. I also want an employment framework that is simple and worker-centric, not union-centric. There needs to be an empowerment of our workers, and this bill does nothing to empower workers. All I see is a bill that empowers unions. Now, these MECAs are a silly idea and the New Zealand that I want to live in is one where we don’t have these MECAs, where businesses in the area of Northcote don’t dictate the living wage for businesses in the Coromandel or Porirua or the Hawke’s Bay. We need a flexible employment framework for New Zealand’s future. We need unions that really—quite frankly, the New Zealand public have voted with their feet overwhelmingly in favour of no unions, and the employment framework that we want to see, on this side of the House, is a place where no unions are around; where, in fact, the power is given to the workers of New Zealand rather than to the unions. Thank you.

That was, sadly, one of the most confused speeches and contributions on a piece of legislation I’ve heard in a long time. The idea that you empower workers by making them isolated and standing by themselves and giving all the power to the employer—that apparently constitutes empowering, in the minds of the National Party! But that explains where the National Party is at. You see, the National Party has never understood about the dignity of labour. They’ve never understood about the dignity of workers. They do not understand that the dignity of labour is not just about having a job. It is about having a job, but it’s about more than that as well. The National Party has never understood that the dignity of labour is about having a rewarding job, a satisfying job, a job that is challenging, a job that is well rewarded.

But here’s the most important thing that the National Party has never got. They’ve never got the idea that the dignity of labour is about a worker having the right to have a say: having the right to have a say with their employer about their wages and conditions; having the right to associate with their workmates, to organise together, to work on issues of common interest—common interest to them as workers and a common interest between them and their employers. The National Party has never understood that. Sid Holland never understood it and he was good mates with Fintan Patrick Walsh, but ever since then the National Party has been steeped in the industrial politics of the 1950s, and they’ve never got out of it.

There’ve been one or two exceptions, I have to say. Jim Bolger did once and then he lurched off to the far right with the Employment Contracts Act, but even then he’s come back and apologised for it—and Peter Gordon, who I think was probably one of the greatest industrial mediators from the National Party we ever had. But the modern National Party has never got that. The modern National Party, actually, has signed up to the far right view that workers should be crushed and it is OK to exploit workers and it’s OK to take away the basic protections of fairness. That’s the reality of the National Party in the 21st century.

The reason they like the 90-day trial stuff is that it means that their employer mates—and there’s only a few of them anyway. Some of their employer mates know that they can get away with sacking somebody with no good reason at all, because that’s what the 90-day thing does. Many employers, certainly medium sized and larger employers, who employ the bulk of the nation’s workforce, don’t use the 90-day trial thing. They don’t like it and they don’t need it, because they are good managers. They know how to manage performance and that’s what they focus on.

The one thing that the last speaker never spoke about was actually about the experience of working people. What do working people want, apart from the good dignity of labour—a part of which is actually having a respectful relationship, mutually respectful relationship, with their managers? That’s what you want to achieve and that’s what this bill will do. It will start to restore mutually respectful relationships in the workplace once again—the right for workers to choose to belong to a union, the right for workers to choose to bargain collectively, and to have that choice respected. The National Party doesn’t want to do that because they don’t respect workers—have not for decades, and do not now. This is a question of respect, respect for workers, and the environment and the climate that this Government is about is about making sure that productivity in the workplace, which we all know we have to do a lot better at, is built on mutually respectful employment relationships.

This is a great bill, and it will go a long way not only to remedying the big problem we have of a huge gap in incomes and wages—starting to lift wages at the bottom—but creating those great employment relationships, workplace climate and workplace relationships, that’s going to lift productivity, create wealth, and benefit everybody.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Education and Workforce Committee by majority be agreed to.