Employment Relations (Trial Periods) Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to new clause 6, set out on Amendment Paper 7. This is an amendment proposed by Ricardo Menéndez March requiring annual monitoring and reporting on the use of trial provisions and their impact on the labour market. The question is that the amendment inserting new clause 6 set out on Amendment Paper 7 in the name of Ricardo Menéndez March be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Chair. We know that the coalition has agreed to follow the best available data and evidence and wants to be guided by the facts. My amendment is an opportunity to honour that commitment by ensuring that we monitor and report annually on the use of these trial provisions and their impact on the labour market, to see, then, if what the Minister has spoken about actually comes to fruition. If the Minister is very confident on what the coalition campaigned on, then there is no reason to fear having this reporting and monitoring in place.

What we hope that we can then achieve via this reporting is the effects of the trial provisions on things like wages. I’ve spoken about wages and about a couple of concerns we have around the negative impact these trials could have—things like job security, so these provisions, for example, enabling people to stay longer or shorter amounts of time in those jobs, and the terms of conditions of those employees. Are we improving health and safety standards in the workplace as a result of these trial provisions, particularly the effects on Māori, Pasifika, women, youth, and disabled employees? I’ve canvassed some of those population groups in previous contributions, but I think it’s really important that we do have information on how specific population groups are affected, and I think, particularly when it comes to Māori, that we also remind ourselves of our Tiriti commitments and therefore make sure that we are taking due diligence when it comes to policy making.

The other component in my amendment is for the department to prepare a report every year and for that report to be publicly available within three months of the end of the financial year. This is also important for public scrutiny and for the public to have access to that information about how those trials are going for employers and workers, as they are people we serve and they deserve to have that information made available to them. As part of my amendment, an employer “must—(a) provide information that is reasonably required by the department for the purpose of the reports;” and then we establish that link between those relevant departments and the employer, and we think that’s really important. Also, the employer must “(b) notify the department as soon as practicable if the employer becomes aware that the information they have provided is or has become inaccurate.” I think this is important as well, because we can’t just take that feedback about the impacts of those 90-day trials in good faith. We have to have those protections and safeguards to address information that may not be presented.

I cannot emphasise enough how much I think that the Minister should take on board these suggestions in good faith. If we are to be guided by the facts, and if the Minister is confident on what she’s spoken to, then this will just further add to her statement. It will further add to everything she has said, and there should be no concerns about this amendment, because sunlight will end up giving us clarity on the impact of the 90-day trials. It’s been well canvassed that there’s limited domestic evidence on the impact of 90-day trials here. Whatever little we have would not really be supporting what the Minister has brought forward, but I do think that amendment on the reporting would help guide us as legislators to make better decisions going forward.

So I’m really interested in hearing exactly what steps she wants to take if she doesn’t want to take this amendment on board. I know she talks about investigating it, but what does that look like? Can she give us confidence that the reporting and the monitoring will be thorough and that there will be resource allocated to this? Otherwise, I think this amendment presents a really good opportunity to be guided by facts and evidence.

I thank the member for his suggestion, but as I’ve suggested in clauses 4 and 5, and now in clause 6, I will consider any research and evaluation plans in the context of my wider work. However, I don’t consider it appropriate to include these provisions in this legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I would also like to speak to the amendment before us in the name of Ricardo Menéndez March looking at monitoring and reporting on the use of trial provisions. One of the things that members who have read the regulatory impact statement on this bill will note is the lack of information about how trial provisions are used, and I think that this particular amendment goes quite a long way to making sure that that information would be recorded.

One of the issues is that we can do studies on the relative impact of hiring, and there’s been quite a bit of a reference in this debate and in previous readings to the research commissioned by the Treasury that showed there wasn’t an uptake, an uptick of hiring even though that was the intention of the trial provision. But one of the things they did note is the actual use of trial provisions within individual employment contracts is not something that is centrally recorded in relation to if—so it’s really difficult to know to the extent that this is actually included within employment contracts in New Zealand.

So I think that this would be a really useful thing. I know the Minister has responded to Mr Menéndez March to state that she doesn’t think that she wanted to include this particular provision at this stage. But I think I would ask her to reconsider that because I think this is very sensible. I don’t think it goes against the policy of the Act at all. In fact, I think this would strengthen the bill that she has in front of her because it would show that she’s open to receiving additional information on the efficacy of the lawmaking on which she is endeavouring to put through the Chamber at the moment.

I support this particular provision, and I am interested—I found the responses from the Minister, although helpful, a little bit vague in terms of the actual concrete steps that she’s looking to take. So I’d just like to say that from my end, I support this amendment and I think it would be incumbent on the Minister to go into a bit more detail on the actual steps that she’ll be taking in order to monitor the various labour market impacts that extending the trial period as much as this particular bill does extend it from a very small section of employees, about 28 percent, to every employee would have on the employment market. So I support this amendment.

I too stand to support the amendment that’s been put forward by Ricardo Menéndez March. As the previous speaker Camilla Belich has asked the Minister, she’s asking for a bit more detail as to how this forms as part of the Minister’s business-as-usual (BAU), because the amendment that the member has put forward is not BAU. There is no monitoring BAU as part of a portfolio to be able to provide each financial year, make it publicly available within three months at the end of the financial year to which this report relates, which the amendment speaks to.

I also wanted to ask the Minister, again, adding on—can you provide more detail as to how much you will report as part of your BAU or monitor as part of your BAU? The Natural and Built Environment Act repeal that went through—was it yesterday or this morning; sorry, today, because it’s still Tuesday—had a specific post-100-day assessment clause in it. Now, it wasn’t part of the bill, but it was part of the disclosure statement. Apologies to the Minister; I wasn’t able to find a departmental disclosure statement. I wasn’t sure whether one was needed for this bill. But in that particular Natural and Built Environment Bill that was put through, it actually had a specific clause which said, as part of the 100-day initiatives—so the Government’s 100-day initiatives—there would be an assessment or monitoring of the bill because it had gone through urgency.

So my additional question to the Minister is—she has made clear that she is not supportive of this amendment. We are asking for a bit more detail as to how this comes within her BAU, but also, one, whether there was a disclosure statement prepared for this bill; and, if not, what is her intention in meeting the Government’s post-100-days monitoring evaluation—which we have seen in other bills—because this bill has gone through urgency? So those are the three various questions that I would like some answers from the Minister, please.

Thank you. I just want to add one simple thing to this debate, because I think it is very important. We have about 80 percent of employees who are on individual agreements. We have absolutely no idea what’s in those agreements, and this work about trials mainly fits into that area, because it won’t be something that is very happily adopted in the collective agreements. The collective agreements are things we have some sight of because they’re collected centrally, and so we can see those—we can see what’s in them. But what we can’t see is the complex situation in an individual agreement, which may be made with an employment builder or it may be something that’s entirely original.

What I’ve found in those agreements is that there will be clauses that say what you expect them to say, and entirely new clauses which you haven’t ever thought of, which might actually affect how these things are working. I’ve given you one example tonight, which is the restraints of trade that are increasingly used to tie up employees so they cannot go and work for others and they cannot ask for a pay rise, because they cannot afford to leave. In combination, a trial period in those agreements is a problem, and I haven’t heard an acknowledgment that it’s a problem. I’ve heard that it’s another piece of work, but it’s not another piece of work; it’s a way of finding out—monitoring this piece of work and its impact, and what’s impacting on it and what isn’t.

So what I’d like to know is: have you got a plan to have a look at the effectiveness of your legislation in this case? Have you got a plan that involves seeing the whole picture?

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): “Has the Minister got a plan?”—don’t bring the Chair into the debate.

Sorry—has the Minister got a plan? I apologise, Madam Chair. Has the Minister got a plan to look at the overarching work and the place of trial periods within the context of an individual agreement? And are we going to see what impact that clause is having in conjunction with other clauses? What is the plan to monitor the performance of her Government and her decision here to make this a policy, given that she has made a strong argument and she has pinned her flag to the mast that this will help a particular section of New Zealand? How will we know who it helps and who it does not help?

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the amendment inserting new clause 6 set out on Amendment Paper 7 in the name of Ricardo Menéndez March be agreed to.