Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: I present a legislative statement on the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move, That the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 22 April 2025.

The Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill reintroduces the ability of employers to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes. This change to collective bargaining settings will provide a far more effective and efficient bargaining environment where rights and consequences are more balanced and which minimises potential disruption to public services.

We have seen partial strikes result in patients facing delays to receiving medical scans and treatment due to medical staff limiting the number of scans they completed each day, and kids missing out on education due to teachers refusing to teach certain year groups on certain days. However, in spite of these inconveniences created by the withdrawal of people’s work, there were no pay packet consequences for the medical staff or teachers involved in these partial strikes.

Earlier this year, train operators in Wellington undertook a work-to-rule industrial action, including refusing shift changes, which led to disruption for travellers. Currently, the New Zealand Defence Force Public Service Association union members are working to rule. They’ve been taking coordinated breaks and stopped working at heights or off site. The Minister of Defence has responded by authorising uniformed personnel to cover civilian work in selected areas. Needless to say, this is a rare move from the Minister of Defence, and it’s a shame that it’s been made necessary by this industrial action.

On the other hand, when a full strike occurs, employers can respond by suspending the employees and not providing pay. In this situation, there are negative consequences for both sides: the employees lose pay; the employer loses output. This provides an incentive for both sides to cease industrial action and return to the bargaining table as soon as possible.

The same cannot be said for partial strike action under the current rules. If an employee is engaged in a partial strike, the employer’s options are to either accept the partial strike action or to lock out or suspend the employees for the duration of the strike. Employers who do not want to be so heavy-handed in their response have no choice but to continue to pay the partially striking workers in full. There is currently no provision to allow a more nuanced or proportionate response, as would be normal in a society where people believe in cause-and-effect thinking.

The ability to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes was introduced in 2014 as part of a package of amendments aimed at ensuring a flexible and fair employment relations framework for both employees and employers. In 2018, the previous Government removed employers’ ability to reduce pay in response to partial strikes. Now, once this bill becomes law, an employer will not have to make a pay deduction in response to partial strikes. Under this bill, it will be an option for an employer involved in a negotiation. Employers will again be able to respond to partial strikes by being able to either reduce an employee’s pay by a proportionate amount or deduct 10 percent of their pay. The ability to make a fixed deduction of 10 percent gives employers a choice in situations where it may be difficult to calculate a proportionate pay deduction. For example, for a large workforce, without the option to make it a fixed deduction, the administrative costs of calculating the proportion of work impacted could mean that it is not practical for some employers to make a deduction.

Restoring employers’ ability to make pay deductions for partial strikes could help incentivise both parties to return to the bargaining table and reach agreement sooner. This will reduce the impacts on communities that result from ongoing industrial action. I consider that enabling employers to make partial pay deductions provides the opportunity for a more balanced and appropriate response to partial strikes. It’s also more consistent with the approach used in Australia and the United Kingdom.

While I recognise the entitlement of employees to strike in support of their collective bargaining claims, they should not be able to do it at no cost to themselves, effectively putting the cost on to the employer and, as we heard in the case of school children and their parents and those patients waiting for vital medical scans, actually putting the cost on to the customers or the patients or the students of their employer.

In conclusion, this bill will provide employers with a specific response to partial strikes by reintroducing the ability to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes. It is sensible, proportionate change that should minimise potential disruption to public services. All New Zealanders will be able to have their say on the bill when it goes to select committee.

I just hasten to add that I have brought this bill and taken this speech on behalf of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, the Hon Brooke van Velden. I have to say that, while she could not be in the House today, she is doing a superb job across the portfolio of making our labour laws make sense—

Camilla Belich: A lot worse—constantly attacking workers; taking workers backwards.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —for contractors with holiday pay, with personal grievances. I hear Camilla Belich, the one-time employment lawyer, braying away there saying she’s constantly attacking us. Actually, she’s not, and it says something about Camilla Belich’s attitude towards the workers that she believes something like this bill—the idea that if you work, you get paid; if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. If you work less, you get paid less; if you work more, you get paid more. To most New Zealanders, this kind of logic is common sense and first nature. To the Labour Party, they believe that you should be able to go on strike, inconvenience patients, inconvenience students, inconvenience parents, and still get paid the full amount, all the while creating incentives to continue industrial action.

Well, once upon a time, there was a Labour Party that actually believed in public services for the public. Their interest was in equal opportunity for every child to get an education; for every patient, whether or not they had the means, to get healthcare. And what do you have today? You have a Labour Party that’s going to stand up and complain and say it’s an attack on workers to say that if you don’t work, you don’t get paid, and if you do work, you do get paid, and if you go on strike, you are withholding your work—

Camilla Belich: Does it just apply to work—does it just apply to work?

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —and not working, so you don’t get paid. And then they’ll say—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Ms Belich, I note that you’re the next speaker. That might be the better opportunity than yelling across the House.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Mr Speaker, I’ve seen Ms Belich give many speeches, and I’d never contest your ruling, but I’m not entirely sure about that one. The thing about it is—

Yeah. Mr Seymour, sit down. Camilla Belich.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): You’ve criticised the Speaker’s ruling, so I’ve curtailed your speech. If your point of order is in relation to that, don’t bother.

Hon David Seymour: Well, actually, Mr Speaker, it is, because it was clearly in jest. I was facing significant barracking—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): On which, Mr Seymour, I had intervened. You didn’t need to do that—sit down. Camilla Belich.

Hon David Seymour: Well, actually, Mr Speaker, I’ve got a right—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Sit down, Mr Seymour.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to take a call on this bill, but it is absolutely not. The harmony that has presided over this House in relation to this urgency motion has well and truly ended with this terrible bill, which does attack workers’ rights and does take working New Zealanders backwards, both literally in the sense that this was the law that used to apply. Does the ACT Party have no new ideas apart from rehashing things that were tried and tested and found to have failed? There is no evidence for this bill to go ahead at all.

Not only that—not only does this bill take workers backwards—but there is absolutely no evidence provided in the regulatory impact statement on the effectiveness of this bill or the fact it is actually needed at all. In fact, the regulatory impact statement goes into great detail on the fact that there couldn’t be proper assessments done on this bill and the bill itself only partially meets the quality assurance standards of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the very ministry who drafted this bill. Why is the ACT Party deciding to, at every attempt, bring ideological changes to this House which simply do not work in practice, do not take New Zealand workplaces forward, and actually have no evidential basis and not only to bring them forward but also with not sufficient time for their own officials to actually scrutinise them and put them through the proper processes?

This is absolutely terrible and I want to speak—I don’t have much time, as this is first reading; five minutes—to the real heart of the problem of this bill, and that was, in essence, the interjections that I was making to the previous speaker, the Hon David Seymour. This is a bill that does not just apply when people do not work; partial strikes are often situations where people have things like a union T-shirt on, a badge, a sign on their fire truck. These are all examples of partial strikes that would be covered by this bill. In those circumstances, at the passage of this bill, an employer would be able to deduct 10 percent—or more, possibly, if they use the other type of calculation of an employee’s wages—when they have done their job, when they have fulfilled their contractual entitlement, and the only thing that they are doing is taking action to support their bargaining that they’re having with the employer.

Now, this bill, I would even go as far to say, goes against the object of the Employment Relations Act. The object of the Employment Relations Act is to promote collective bargaining. We’ve seen the Council of Trade Unions state this today—that this bill would do the exact opposite of promoting collective bargaining. This will actually, possibly, encourage the use of the full withdrawal of labour from workplaces—so encourage more strikes, so be more inconvenient to the public, meaning that people can’t access the public services that we all want them to see, because they don’t have the option of a partial strike without financial penalty.

This is a ridiculous proposition to put forward that people should, and employers should be able to dock people’s wages—their hard-earned wages—when they have done the job they contracted to do. This could include things like coaching at schools—that would be impacted by this. If you decided not to do that, if you weren’t paid for it, that could be considered a partial strike and you might actually be paid less as a result of that.

Hon Simeon Brown: Doing what, sorry, at schools?

CAMILLA BELICH: Doing extra duties, attending a rally during your lunch break—that would be considered coaching. Yeah, you know? Like a sports coaching team. It’s something that happens quite often in schools, and schools do have industrial action. The coaching that people might do is an additional thing to their job.

Now, I do note the bill—and I’m grateful that it does—excludes partial strikes for things like health and safety. That is correct; that is the way that it should be. But there are so many other different types of ways that people could be political in their role, supporting the role of their union, their right to collectively bargain, which is protected under the Employment Relations Act, which would be covered by this bill. This is a bill—and I’m looking at members opposite—that stops people being paid the minimum wage if they have a deduction for a partial strike. This is what you’re passing today. It could be people who do their entire contracted duties, who do not breach their contract, who do not get paid the minimum wage because they are taking part in their union action for better pay and conditions.

This is taking New Zealand workplaces literally backwards to a different time when the law came into place. There is no evidence. There are actually mistakes in this legislation. It is being rushed through—I know that we are having a select committee, and I feel silly saying that I’m grateful for it but I am. I do not commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Once again, this Government is the Grinch that stole Christmas. Here we are just a couple of weeks out from Christmas and the workers are getting another kick in the teeth from this Government.

This legislation is appalling. The Government is introducing legislation that will make it easier to penalise workers fighting for better pay and conditions. It is dire, Draconian, and outright disgraceful, even by this own Government’s standards. The ability to strike, organise, and collectively bargain is a democratic right. These are critical tools that have empowered workers to contest and challenge unfair working conditions in the uneven playing field between them and their bosses.

We did hear comments about concerns about interruptions to public services, and I think we all share that, but do you want to know something? If you want to minimise disruptions to public services, you pay people properly—you pay the nurses, you pay the teachers, you pay people properly. What’s the count now of the number of people across the public sector that have lost their jobs—6,000 or 8,000? I’ve seen numbers up to 10,000.

Everybody across the House likes to talk a big game about the brain drain, but where do you think these people go? Where do people go when they lose their jobs? They get on a plane and they get out of here to find better work and conditions.

The Government is also getting ahead of the collective bargaining in the big public sector workforces next year to undermine their ability to strike and try to frighten the workers into accepting their miserly offers that are coming. It is so important that we protect workers’ rights, that we protect the right to strike as well. Acknowledging the comments of my colleague Camilla Belich as well—all of those different ways that are expressions of frustration with workers. If you are wearing a T-shirt as a part of the partial strike, that will count as your pay getting docked; the different ways that people find to express their frustrations.

This is something that should be opposed across the House. The Greens will continue to fight this legislation every step of the way. Just to reiterate that point again, that if we do want to see fewer strikes—if we do want to see fewer strikes—you have to pay people properly. You have to pay the nurses properly. You have to pay the teachers properly. You’ve got to pay those people that do all of those different bits and pieces.

We have this wonderful saying in te reo Māori, which goes “Ko te amorangi ki mua ko te hāpai ō ki muri”, which, if I can translate that into English, says, “If you take care of the front and you take care of the back, that’s when everything comes along in a good way”. Particularly on the marae, if you look after the paepae and you look after the kāuta, the marae is well.

What we have with this Government is a commitment to gut the back office without any concern with what that means to the front office. This bill is Draconian, it is dire, and it is diabolical, a couple of weeks out from Christmas. This is a kick in the teeth for workers. Workers should be getting ready to organise against this Government and make them a one-term Government. We oppose this bill.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I think it’s important to clarify for the House what partial strikes mean and how disruptive they are to the community. I have worked in transport for most of my career, and I have seen examples where bus drivers will turn up for work and they will drive around the route with the door closed and refuse to let passengers on, or they will refuse to take revenue to subsidise the ratepayer-funded public transport. Not only do all of these things detrimentally impact the bottom line of a regional council or a business but they also affect the customer, the very person that every business and employee or public service and public servant purport to support and be there to work for.

At the very end of the day, the purpose of this bill is to introduce balance to a situation that is currently out of balance. We are reintroducing a piece of legislation that was revoked in 2018, which is not saying that nobody can strike, which is not saying that nobody can partially strike; it’s to say that there actually has to be a consequence for the impact that this has on a business, on the Public Service, on the customer, on the member of the public that is entitled to that public service or to that service that they are expecting to pay for.

Another example is where partial strikes have been in the healthcare system, where, yes, people have turned up to work, but they’ve taken half the number of, let’s just say, MRI scans that they are supposed to. Now, again, not only is this actually putting more pressure on the future workforce, it’s actually really a critical healthcare concern. There are examples of this across all sectors. It’s not just public transport, it’s not just health; in some cases, it’s education, where the teachers, yes, are on site, they’re at the school—and they do that to avoid taking full strike action, which has its own repercussions—but they aren’t taking class or they aren’t teaching certain things. Now, who does that disbenefit? It disbenefits the public.

We are here to reintroduce the balance, and that is what this is about. It’s all about limiting the effects that strike action takes on the consumer, on the communities, and on the Public Service, because, ultimately, businesses and the Public Service don’t have the resources to respond to every single strike action—in this particular case, partial strikes. They have no ability to have recompense for what happens. In so many cases, actually, the Public Service or businesses have to put on additional staff that aren’t part of the strike action and pay them additionally to the person they’re still paying. Again, in this case, partial strikes, they might be on site, they might be reporting for duty, but they’re not performing the duty, and so all of this has a cost.

At the very least, to expect businesses and the Public Service to be able to take some of that, in this case, 10 percent—up to 10 percent—and take that as compensation, whether it’s for the logistics involved in the disruption, the additional cost of having to put extra staff on, the compensation required for customers, the follow-up that’s required when that partial strike action is complete and we have to put extra staff on to cover the backlog of work. All of these things cost. Actually, that is absolutely a disadvantage to the very people taking partial strike action, because they are bargaining for better terms and conditions or pay. If it’s costing more to cover that strike action, what is that doing? Again, that’s disproportionately affecting those people that are taking partial strike action.

Again I will summarise what I have said today, which is that, in the end, this is about putting balance back into a system and a situation where it is disproportionately disadvantaging those people that are entitled to a public service—for the most part, it’s people in the Public Service that are disproportionately impacted by this situation. The reintroduction of balance is bringing something back that we had prior to 2018, that is in step with the rest of the world; it is the norm around the world to be able to take this kind of consequence. It’s a very simple thing to expect—that that is what we would do in this case—so to be throwing our arms in the air, saying that this is sending us back into the dark ages, is absolutely untrue.

This is a proportionate response to something that has a disproportionate impact on the public, and I think that when we go through the select committee process, we will hear just that. I look forward to that process. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. New Zealand First supports the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill. We have always believed in the egalitarian principle that a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay, but both of those things need to go together. To get your fair day’s pay, you do have to do a fair day’s work, and to be able to withdraw your labour and still get paid doesn’t balance, in our view. There should be some consequences, and we absolutely support the right to strike and withdraw your labour, but it cannot be done at the expense of your employer who you’re bargaining with. That’s a disproportionate balance of power and exactly the opposite of what the previous bill purported to do.

We do think that this rebalances and is proportionate, and it does incentivise both parties to settle. The employer, if there is a partial strike going on, is still paying a price—they’ve lost that productivity during that period—and the chance of a spurious walkout is mitigated because there are consequences for people withdrawing their labour, workers withdrawing their labour. It’s sensible to us, it’s balanced, and it will hopefully save the nuclear option of having to have a lockout or full strikes, because it will incentivise both parties to come to the table. That seems fair to us.

We have seen the consequences of this on a number of occasions since the law that we’re repealing came into place, particularly, I know from personal experience, the teachers’ strikes under the last Government, where the teachers were just striking and striking and striking, and the inconvenience to the general public was enormous. We didn’t have the flexibility and the parents didn’t have the flexibility and had to work around all those scenarios. It was tremendously disruptive to the broader community, and the teachers were able to strike with impunity at that point. That was under the previous administration.

All the dire catastrophising over there from the Green Party, saying, “Just pay people better.”, well, they were in confidence and supply with a Government that conceivably would have wanted to pay them as well as they could, but there are real-world consequences. Everyone and every Government has got a budget they’ve got to keep to. Every employer has got a budget they’ve got to keep to. This balances that out. We’ve got consequences on either side. It is a sensible bill. It is a balanced bill. New Zealand First will commend it to the House.

We continuously hear from and see from the Government for the elite, by the elite, from the elite; out there to make sure that they’ve demonised every hard-working person, every community, anyone that wants to fight for their rights—what we’ve continuously seen from this Government. While I heard my colleague on the right calling them the Grinch, I just think that’s way too kind.

What we have here—and I think probably about this time last year we were speaking to the reintroduction of the 90-day trials. That really should be of no surprise that we’re here today again, talking about why people shouldn’t strike, pretending that we’re worried about the services. Actually, what you’re worried about is the shareholders’ profits—the shareholders’ profit margins—because that’s, effectively, what productivity is turning around for you. Let’s just remind ourselves what we’re here about. This Government’s whole tough on crime, now tough on employees, seems to be really the key message.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder if you might draw the member speaking’s attention to Standing Order 112. She’s so far spoken for a minute and hasn’t actually addressed the bill. She has made a number of imputations about the motivations of the Government to which you might draw your attention—to Standing Order 121, I think it is.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Well, that’s also the purview of the Chair. Thank you for that advice. Carry on, Ms Ngarewa-Packer.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Thank you. What we see here is, sadly, a bill that’s been put forward—a bill called the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill. What we see is it’s been brought forward here to demonise workers—to demonise—and enhance and help bad employers. It’s always been that a good employer will not want to see things carry on—they will not want to see their staff strike and they will want to mitigate it and come together and negotiate and settle as fast as possible.

I just want to give a list in respect to this bill and how it relates to marginalised workforces. Wāhine Māori and Pasifika are, effectively, working for free for the rest of the year when they compare the pay to the average Pākehā man’s salary. Over a lifetime, Māori women will have earned over $400,000 less than Pākehā men. Discrimination in the workplace—because this is why we fight for rights: discrimination in the workplace. We know that Māori are adversely affected. Approximately 93 percent of Māori have experienced some form of workplace discrimination, as disclosed in findings released just last year. This is why we have strikes. Māori are often—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Ms Ngarewa-Packer, some references to the bill would be good around now, and some speaking about the bill.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Yep, sure. Māori are often represented in sectors including agriculture, construction, and hospitality. These types of working environments are notorious, and why they are part of the partial striking environment. When we strip workers of their rights to protest and strike against these types of realities, these types of working conditions in place put bad employers ahead and use the balance of power—because that’s really what this bill is about. It’s about the balance of power and those in workplaces that are unsafe, those that are sitting there fighting for their rights to be paid better, to be recognised better, to end discrimination.

The right to strike is a fundamental democratic right, one that we’ve been very proud of having in Aotearoa, especially when working conditions become so dire that there is no other means by which to make their voices heard. The amendments to this bill absolutely revoke the democratic rights of workers. In this Government, particularly the ACT Party, these amendments expose their true agenda—the agenda to support and look after the profits of the shareholders that we see from entities like, I don’t know, Atlas, revealing not a democratic party but rather one that would prefer to silence the voices that advocate for change. In this case, better working conditions.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Point of order, David Seymour. This had better not relate to the current speaker and her reference to the bill. That, again, as I’ve reminded you, is the purview of the Speaker.

Hon David Seymour: Well, Mr Speaker, you acknowledged my previous point of order, and the member appears to have completely ignored what you’ve said. I would argue that she’s now trifling with you and perhaps you could be a bit consistent and sit her down too.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Well, you can argue all you like. Carry on, Ms Ngarewa-Packer.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Thank you. This bill is not about protecting workers or the general public; it’s about protecting unfair, bad employers from any consequences. Really, what it comes down to is being able to make sure that those workers are able to deliver these services and that they are working for good employers and that they are able to strike and demand better conditions that cannot put themselves and their jobs at risk. It’s simple. A broken workforce means broken services—whether it’s healthcare, education, or public safety. Te Pāti Māori do not support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can’t help, as we speak this evening on the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill, to listen to the irony that’s coming from the other side of the House. On the one hand, they want us to create employment relationships here in New Zealand that are fair and reasonable, but on the other hand, if we make a change that is fundamentally about fairness to both parties, they’re worried about people going to places like Australia. Well, I want to remind you of the speaker from the Green Party—Teanau Tuiono—who spoke about them getting out of New Zealand and heading off to Australia.

Well, it’s interesting, if we go to the regulatory impact statement on this bill, it says in paragraph 32 that “Enabling employers to make partial pay deductions in response to partial strikes would be consistent”—would be consistent—“with the approach in Australia (from 2009)”. The Australians didn’t repeal this in 2018—unlike some Government that wanted to take New Zealand backwards that happened to be in these seats then. It goes on to say, “and the United Kingdom (UK)(in case law from the 1980s).”

The Opposition want to argue this concept of fairness, and when it’s not fair in their eyes—because they have a one-eyed view of fairness. They think fairness all relates to one party in a relationship. They don’t understand the concept that fairness is about both parties coming to the table and determining a relationship that works and is appropriate for both parties. If it’s not fair in their eyes, “Send them off to Australia. Send them off to the UK”. Actually, they’ll just find that not only are the rules the same over there, or very similar, but they’re going to those places or they’re looking to go to those places because they’re more productive.

Unlike the view of Te Pāti Māori, which thinks that productivity is all about shareholders making money, productivity, fundamentally, is about these workers earning money at a value for the roles that they play. Now, it didn’t fall on deaf ears—it did not fall on deaf ears when Te Pāti Māori referred to the work that is being done, that these employees are partially striking from, as being the “bits and pieces”. Now, I don’t know about you, Cameron Brewer in Upper Harbour or Mike Butterick there in Wairarapa, but I reckon the teachers in Whanganui, the nurses in Whanganui, the doctors in Whanganui, the police in Stratford, the tradies in Hāwera, the MRI operators at Whanganui Hospital, the kindergarten teachers, the bus drivers, even here in this precinct, the Parliamentary Service staff, would be offended by their work being referred to as the “bits and pieces”.

I think the Opposition needs a dose of realism as we come to Christmas, needs a dose of realism when it thinks about the relationship between employees and employers, because, fundamentally, the relationship has to be based on fairness. This legislation is going to rebalance it. It’s going to ensure, as we had prior to 2018, a relationship that recognised that, if you did a good day’s work, you got a good day’s pay, but if you choose not to do a good day’s work, if you choose not to help the health sector deliver, if you choose not to help your employer earn some money, then there’s going to be no money to pay you.

Both the State, who employs people, this economy, the Crown here, has to be financial, and that’s why we’ve been making the changes that we have, but companies need to be as well. Money doesn’t just materialise out of thin air; you can’t just appropriate it. We need to ensure that our employment laws here are consistent with those around the world as we build a nation of productivity that can pay the sort of incomes that these people deserve.

That was a shocking speech—absolute shocker—and par for the course from an ill-informed National Party, who, sadly, are being led around by the one and only David Seymour over there, who is taking all their votes at the moment, as you can see. The puppet master is leading them.

Now, in terms of this Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill, just for Mr Seymour, I wanted to quote that bill for him, because we had a hīkoi the other day. Mr Seymour, he’ll recall it; he was bravely standing three kilometres from the hīkoi with all his police escorts around him, but the very brave and courageous David Seymour was there and he was looking out at the hīkoi. Why I’m mentioning the hīkoi is because thousands of workers were participating on that hīkoi—thousands. That’s why this is so relevant.

It wasn’t just about Māori; it was about New Zealanders participating and protesting against Mr Seymour and his useless, rotten ACT Party and a National Party that has walked away from their principles and what they stand for. This is, as Camilla Belich said, yet another shocking attack on workers’ rights.

Hon David Seymour: Point of order.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, you’re not going to complain about me calling your party—

Sit down, please.

Hon David Seymour: I shouldn’t need to do this, but I wonder if you might draw the member’s attention to the Standing Orders I referred to earlier, particularly 112, about relevance to the bill.

I wonder if the member considers, when he stands on his feet to do this, whether he actually might be buying another minute or so for the person who’s speaking, but I’ll let him consider that. Carry on. As I’ll point out, that is a job for the Speaker. Carry on, Mr Jackson, but please don’t take that as an invitation.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, no, that’s all right, Mr Speaker. That’s all right. But I do have to make it clear to Mr Seymour that on that hīkoi, 60,000-plus—so many workers were protesting against his dirty, rotten ACT Party and this coalition. It’s important that we make the point today that workers are sick of it. This is a day when nurses are walking out—they’re walking out.

This is a cynical move by the Government. They’re amending our work from 2018, and it weakens workers’ ability to ask for better conditions and pay; that’s just the reality. It’s part of this wider Government’s strategy in terms of rolling back workers’ rights, including getting rid of fair pay agreements, 90-day trials. It just continues and continues.

You have to ask, what is driving this coalition Government in terms of their agenda? It’s very upsetting for us when we think about workers who could get docked or penalised for nonsensical things. It’s already been mentioned by Camilla Belich—wearing a T-shirt, losing their wages. Going by this particular agreement, if they went on the hīkoi, I mean, they’d be in their own time, but Mr Seymour and this—

Hon David Seymour: Totally irrelevant.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Absolutely relevant, because so many of those workers hate you, and absolutely relevant that I put on the table that thousands of people are not just protesting against the breach of Māori and Treaty rights but they’re standing up for their rights, for their workers’ rights.

As Camilla Belich said, this doesn’t stack up. It doesn’t stack up on the regulatory impact statement, it doesn’t stack up in terms of what the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions is saying. In fact, we had the president, Rachel Mackintosh, calling on political parties to vote down this terrible piece of legislation. She said that it will undermine the ability of workers to engage in industrial action and may even lead to workers losing pay for simply doing their job.

What I’m saying here is that on the job they can lose money. They can be docked for wearing a T-shirt. They can be docked for anything, all in the name of productivity, as the brilliant member from Whanganui talks about, and I’m actually talking about Tariana Turia, certainly not that member over there. They can be docked for nonsensical things, all in the name of productivity. What is that? We know what it is, but the other side have a different view in terms of how productivity works. Market flexibility is not the be-all and end-all in terms of workers’ rights in this country.

I say today, on behalf of Labour, we are disgusted by this bill that Mr Seymour and his team are putting up. It’s yet another attack on workers’ rights. It’s another attack on basic rights that every worker in this country should be entitled to. We just ask the question: when is this going to stop, Mr Seymour?

The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the meal break. The House will be resumed at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill, despite what we’ve heard from the other side of the House, does not take workers backwards. There actually seems to be an inherent distrust of employers on that side of the House. Who are employers? They’re mums and dads that work hard.

We’ve also heard about people heading across the Ditch for the brain drain. Well, you’ve got to ask yourself: why are they going? It’s because of a recession forced by the administration. It’s a bit rich.

This bill’s about restoring proportionality and balance between an employer and employee. I commend this bill.

Well, once again we’re here in this House as the National Party and its coalition partners chip away steadily, progressively undermining the rights of workers and of unions to negotiate on their behalf. This bill is manifestly both unfair and impractical. It’s unfair because it is diminishing the rights and the bargaining power of workers in this country to negotiate and get a fair share of the wealth that they contribute to producing. It’s also completely impractical. The apparent, professed intent of this bill is that it will incentivise people to settle their industrial disputes.

Well, let me tell you why it’s unfair, first. It’s unfair because the simple act of, for example, a nurse who’s part of industrial action wearing a union T-shirt, which includes a demand for better pay, for example, instead of their uniform at their place of work, could actually be penalised, could have their pay deducted by 10 percent or whatever it would be under the formula in the bill. Teachers taking industrial action, partial industrial action, by, for example, declining to do things that they normally do, like teaching sport, that are not in their collective employment agreement, but doing things like that as a way of actually protesting against their employer as part of a bargaining process could have their pay deducted. That’s not an incentive to settle a dispute—it’s actually an incentive to go all the way and not protest by a partial withdrawal of labour, but it actually incentivises a full withdrawal of labour. It’s completely impractical. It doesn’t do what it says on the tin.

I want to say also that this just once again really exposes the doublespeak that we constantly get from the National Party and their allies on questions of collective bargaining and industrial relations. They say from time to time that they want to see incomes increased and they shed crocodile tears about people going to Australia so they can earn more money, but every single time—every single time—a bill comes before this House that has the potential either to increase incomes or to diminish them, that side of the House always votes to reduce the incomes and the bargaining power of workers in this country. We saw it in the demolition of fair pay agreements earlier in the term. We saw it in the minimum wage increase that wasn’t actually a real increase; it was a real reduction in the minimum wage. We saw it in the restoration of the 90-day, fire-at-will trial legislation, and now this.

Why is that? It’s because for that side of the House, wages are a labour cost for them. That’s how they see it. It’s a cost—of course they want to drive it down. They don’t see and they don’t understand that actually low pay is a scourge in this country. It’s at the root of so many of the social problems that the State spends all of its time and money trying to fix. Why do they want to actually take away and constrain the ability of workers to partially withdraw their labour as a way of showing protest in a bargaining process? It’s because they actually believe and they favour low wages. They don’t support increasing the wages of working people in this country. They take every opportunity to undermine the bargaining power of workers and to drive down wages, because for them labour costs are just that: they are a cost.

I look forward to digging in a bit deeper in the select committee on this bill, and learning just how pathetic and tawdry and undermining it really is.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take the final call in the first reading of the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill. A very simple principle in life: if you want to get the full pay, do the full day. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Instruction to Education and Workforce Committee