Fair Pay Agreements Bill

We come now to Part 10A. This is the debate on clauses 228BA to 228Q, “Determinations in absence of bargaining side”. The question is that Part 10A stand part.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to focus on clause 228Q, “Access to workplaces”. I was having a bit of a look through this while we were all talking away, and a lot of my colleagues were making some very good points and putting some very good questions through to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, who I thought answered most of them pretty well as well. And we are winding up to the final part of the night, so I will walk us through the access to workplaces. I note that “A representative of an employee bargaining party”—bargaining—“is entitled, in accordance with this Part, to enter a workplace without the employer’s consent if the primary purpose of entering the workforce is to discuss with a covered employee, or an employee who may be affected by, an application for determination” in terms of such determination. What you’re, effectively, doing there is saying that you can enter a workplace—there only needs to be one employee covered—if you want to go there to communicate, to seek feedback or discuss the terms.

Now, that might sound good if you’ve got a big factory—and I assume that’s probably what it was tabled for—or a big retail shop, or whatever it may be. But the fact is that we’ve got a lot of small businesses in New Zealand, and a lot of them are on private property. You know, they’re not out there in a big factory or in a shop on a mall. It may be someone’s home; they may live above it. It may be a person’s place.

💬 Joseph Mooney: That’s right. Very good point.

Excellent point. But I am very concerned that this will enable people just to come through, so I want to say to the Minister and ask him: what provisions have been put there to ensure that the privacy of people is protected in relation to clause 228Q? Thank you.

The ability for union representatives to enter workplaces to engage with the employees is well established in the Employment Relations Act 2000, which has been in place since 2000, and its core provisions have been broadly consistent over that period. It is important, in terms of the generally recognised right for people to be able to access union representation, that union representatives do have that ability. It is subject to reasonable constraints and always has been. This particular clause specifically rules out access to a workplace allowing access to a dwelling house—that covers off, I think, some of the privacy concerns that the member has alluded to where there might be a small workplace, where a home and a workplace are joined together. But, fundamentally, if there’s not a basic right of union access to workplaces, then (a) New Zealand would be in breach of many core International Labour Organisation conventions that we are signed up to, and (b) it would be not possible for those employees to access reasonable support and assistance and collective bargaining rights.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m interested in clause 228O, “Entitlement to attend FPA meetings”, and the requirements for arranging meetings. I note that “if [an] employee has attended 2 or more FPA meetings in relation to the proposed agreement”, then “no additional … meetings [are] under this Part.” But, indeed, attendance at two meetings and then the meeting’s to “last no longer than 2 hours”. Again, I said in my last question, I’m struggling to get my head around the scale of this and the logistics of how this will all take place if we’re talking from Stewart Island up to the Far North—just the logistics of having these meetings and how they are going to only be for two hours.

Not every workplace is going to have access to audiovisual equipment. And is it going to be suggested that these might be Zoom meetings, what is the logistics of holding meetings with potentially hundreds or thousands of employees across the country to get buy-in and feedback and for people to feel that they are being taken on the journey of negotiations, and just how are the logistics of this going to work? And if an employee chooses to go to a meeting in person, is the employer going to be obligated to allow them to take half a day’s travel to go to the meeting in person? There’s nothing here that stipulates that an employee has to join it through a virtual meeting, so, presumably, someone in Invercargill could ask to attend a meeting in Auckland, even though the actual duration of the meeting might only be for two hours—it would, in fact, take a day either side of that to be able to get to the meeting.

So I am really struggling with the logistics of how this is all going to work, and I note that an employer who fails to comply with the clause is liable to a penalty. We’ve discussed those applicable amounts back from clause 196 when we were debating that section. So it’s real for the employers. They are not wanting to be in a position where they might be subject to an imposition of a significant penalty—up to $20,000—if they get this wrong. So just what might the logistics of this look like? And I know we sit here in Parliament, and we’ve got access to all the latest audiovisual equipment, but if you are a small cafe out in Orepuki in Western Southland, you probably haven’t got great coverage out there in terms of being able to get internet coverage to be able to have Zoom meetings etc., so I’m perplexed by the scale of this and just how it logistically is going to work and how people are going to be able to go to a meeting for two hours. It said that an employee who’s absent from work for more than two hours is entitled to their ordinary pay for a maximum of two hours, but then if an employee still chooses to go to that meeting in person, the employer might only have to pay for them for the two hours they’re away, but then it’s that loss of productivity in their business if, in fact, they take the whole day to get up to a meeting and a day to get back. I know the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety feels that perhaps we are overcomplicating it, but he has himself said it’s a new process, it’s a complicated process, the scale of it can be significant, and I’m interested.

I would not want the member Penny Simmonds to leave this committee feeling perplexed about this matter, so allow me to assist. The important thing, I think, for the member to be aware of here is that these provisions are not know to the employment relations system. They’re more or less lifted from the existing Employment Relations Act, where these provisions have been used for about 22 years to organise paid union meetings across New Zealand.

I remember when I was, for example, an organiser with the finance sector union and we were responsible for bargaining with Westpac, which had about 220 branches across the country. We would sit down with the employer, we would work out a schedule of meetings over a period of a couple of weeks. We would do that in such a way to enable the business to continue operating, and we would work out times that were manageable for everyone. It is something that can be done with a bit of goodwill and a bit of organisation.

The member specifically asks: could the member travel for half the day or all of the day to get to one of these meetings? The obligation in the Act is for two hours to be paid; no more than that. If an employer wanted to release someone for more than that, then they could, but the obligation is only for two hours. In my experience, these things are generally organised to be one-hour meetings that would usually allow for travel time either side to keep it neatly within those two hours. So, as I say, this is a well-known provision. It is one that is generally able to be organised in a reasonably efficient way, it allows businesses to continue operating, and it is strictly for two hours only.

I do also note that this particular provision, clause 228O, that we’re talking about is not an additional entitlement over and above paid union meetings earlier in the legislation.

Members, I can guarantee that this is going to be the most popular speech of the evening: the committee is suspended and I will resume the Chair at 9 a.m. for the extended sitting. Good evening.

Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday).