Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to the final debate, which is clauses 1 to 3. This is the title clause, the commencement clause, and clause 3, “Principal Act”.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s good to be able to take some calls, hopefully, on the title and commencement. I do have a few amendments to speak to. The first one is an amendment to clause 2, which is to replace “the day after Royal assent” with “6 June 2026”. The reason that I have put that amendment forward is because I consider that there is not enough evidence on this being a good piece of law for it to be implemented so soon after this House has considered it.

The reason I say that is because, when we were at the select committee, we saw the vast majority of submissions were opposed to this bill. When we were in the House and we were scrutinising the bill and looking at the evidence provided by officials, we found there was no evidence to suggest that this bill, as it is currently drafted, will achieve any of the Minister for Workplace Relation and Safety’s aims. In fact, the evidence we heard at select committee was that it is more likely than not to result in full reduction of labour, a full strike as opposed to a partial strike, meaning that no work gets done. This means that this bill, in my view, is not fit for purpose. That is the reason we have consistently opposed this bill at every stage and the reason that we have put forward amendments to try and fix some of the problems in this bill.

That is why I consider that this bill should have a significant period of time where it is considered, and I have suggested a year after the committee stage was first started. I think that is a fair and reasonable amount of time to allow Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials, who do a good job no matter who is in Government, as neutral public servants, and you can see within their report, their regulatory impact statement, how hard they have tried to find some evidence or some direction that this partial strike bill will actually go any way towards achieving any positive aim at all for New Zealand workers or employers. And they have not been able to do so to date. I am sure, given a longer period of time in order to assess this particular Act, to look at some of the problems that potentially might arise under it, that come June 2026, it would be a much better time to either go ahead with this Act, if indeed it is possible to find any supporting evidence surrounding it, or to decide at that time for this Act to be withdrawn.

It is, in my view, a terrible Act. It doesn’t achieve a single objective. There is absolutely no evidence supporting it, and delaying commencement for a year would be a prudent and good decision in relation to this House and this legislature. So I implore the Minister to consider some of these changes to workplace laws that she has decided to bring through the House and, in this instance, to delay that so that the proper analysis and work can be done, so that we can be sure that the laws we pass in this House actually make a difference for New Zealanders, because, in my view, this one does not.

Thank you very much. In response to Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to increase the time frame to 6 June 2026, the Government will not be supporting that. But I also note that the reason for why she’s put it forward seems to be different to what was on the actual sheet here, which was to give employers, employees, and unions the chance to understand and prepare for the changes.

Camilla Belich: That was going to be my second contribution.

Hon BROOKE VAN VELDEN: That was going to be your second question? OK, well, in that respect, I’ll knock off your other two amendments too, which was to 6 December 2025, and an extension then to 6 June 2027. The same answer is that the Government will not be supporting those amendments.

Hon Members: Madam Chair.

Camilla Belich just signalled that she had another question.

Yes. Madam Chair, thank you. I do have another question. The Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is correct. Another good reason for supporting my amendments was the fact that it would give employers and employees a longer period of time to actually digest what’s in this particular bill and have policies in place. I do think that that is important. I do think often, in employment law, one of the disadvantages of implementing change is that as soon as a change is implemented—and I know this from my previous work—there is a long period of time where people need to get advice on what they need to do and what policies they need to change.

In this instance, this particular bill is mainly aimed at public sector workplaces, and you can see that from the regulatory impact statement, when it states that only some private sector employers would likely utilise this partial strike law, compared with the public sector, where the vast majority of these particular actions are predicted to take place. I do think that a longer period of time would be necessary. I do wonder whether the Minister considered the period of time that would be necessary before implementing these changes. That is not uncommon in legislation—to have a period of time where that can settle in. So that is my reasoning that I’ve put as an explanatory note, which I note is not mandatory for Amendment Papers, but I do think it is sometimes helpful, especially when we’re only talking about numbers and clauses—not in this particular instance, where it’s a bit clearer what the amendment does. But I do think the explanatory note is helpful, and that is why I’ve put that in there, because of the work that I know will have to be undertaken by human resources professionals, lawyers, and people who work internally within the Public Service in relation to any change.

It is a big change in relation to industrial action. There will need to be a lot of work associated with it. So, on that point, I did also want to raise that as a consideration for a delay. As the Minister has said, I have suggested different amounts of time that might be suitable for that, but I certainly think that they are more sensible and more pragmatic than the day after Royal assent, which could be next week, and that does not give people enough time to be able to make sure that they all understand the rules. I think, when we’re talking about deducting people’s pay, it’s a serious thing—prima facie not something that would be legal under common law—so something that should be taken seriously and should be considered without haste and with due consideration.

In response to that latest contribution, the Government supports it coming into force the day after the date that the Act receives Royal assent. And that’s twofold: the changes are not a surprise; as early as December last year, we signalled our intention to reinstate previous provisions, so there has been time for people to understand that this is coming. But, secondly, the bones of this are very similar to previous provisions that were in place, and so for unions to understand, they simply just need to go back in time.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two questions for the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety around the commencement date, and, actually, I do appreciate the Minister answering the questions.

I want to just follow up with another question, which is: when we’re looking at the commencement date being the date of the Royal assent, were there assumptions being made? Like the Minister said, this has been something that’s been signalled before and now it’s being reinstated. Is the Minister planning on releasing anything on the day after the Royal assent to actually genuinely notify people, and everyone who might be affected? That would be really good to know because, like the previous speaker Camilla Belich has mentioned, there might be people who might be paying attention to this as things progress, but there might also be really small unions or, potentially, ones who may not know. So what is the Minister’s plan after the Royal assent to actually roll out an awareness campaign? That’s my first question.

My second question—and I know that this touches on the Schedule, but I want to talk about it in the context of the commencement date. So the commencement date is the date of Royal assent. This bill has been going through the House for a little while, in dribs and drabs, over a number of months. Because the commencement date is the date of Royal assent, that particular date was not fixed. It wasn’t a particular date, like, say, 1 August 2025, which would have meant that everyone was working towards that. So having the date of Royal assent could be very flexible, and now we’re nearly at the end of the committee stage and then there will be a third reading, and so—like the previous speaker said—Royal assent could be as early as next week.

I’m just checking in terms of understanding of what isn’t covered by this bill, and in clause 23 under new Part 7 of Schedule 1AA, to be inserted in the Employment Relations Act by the Schedule, it does say that “any period of a partial strike that occurred before the commencement of the 2024 amendment Act.”, but it doesn’t necessarily state that it needs to end before the commencement date. As I said, I wasn’t here, unfortunately, for the debate on Part 1, and particularly the Schedule. If this is something that the Minister has clarified, I do apologise, but I just wanted to check that reading.

Let’s say that there is a partial strike happening right now, and then there is Royal assent, but the partial strike is still in action. That, technically, fulfils the requirement that it’s a partial strike that occurred before the commencement date, but it hasn’t concluded when this bill comes into effect, and that means that that partial strike is not covered by this definition—is how I’m reading it. So I’ll be really keen to hear from the Minister with any clarification.

Helen White—but just before I take Helen White’s contribution, there’s a lot of conversations going on to my right. Either speak more quietly or take them out in the lobbies, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to suggest a title that’s more appropriate to this bill, and I take this seriously in terms of the need for the title to actually express what the bill does. So I’m suggesting to the Minister that a more appropriate title would be “(Allowing Penalties to Curb Freedom of Expression by Workers in Bargaining)”.

Now, it’s a long title, but it says something really important. Because what it says—and it’s absolutely what happens here—is that if you’re wearing a T-shirt, then your employer can penalise you 10 percent of your wages for doing that. So your freedom of expression is curbed. So this is a penalty. It’s not something proportionate, as suggested occasionally by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety that, actually, if you wore something at Air New Zealand, it would affect the brand and that would be worth 10 percent. It’s not that. It’s utterly arbitrary. It’s a penalty on a worker who does something the employer dislikes and embarrasses them. It doesn’t matter the context; they are going to lose that right of expression unless they’re willing to pay 10 percent of their wages to do so.

It’s a funny thing that we’re doing when, in fact, we have enormous ability in this House to express ourselves, including the Minister, who’s made some interesting comments in this House recently. So what I wonder is, yes, whether we could afford to actually tell the public what we’re doing here, which is we are penalising them for using their right of expression, which, up until now, has been one of the tools in the tool box. They have been able to tell the public how they feel, but apparently no more. What we’re going to do now is they’re going to have a 10 percent penalty on them.

Is the Minister willing to accept that that’s actually what this bill does? It’s curbing that freedom of expression because the Minister doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like that people can wear a T-shirt that says things like “equal pay for women”. That’s going to be a problem. She doesn’t like it if they are actually saying something against her ideology or in support of their wish to be paid more, which is an interesting thing to do to people, particularly because the Minister comes from a party called “ACT”, which is all supposed to be about freedom of expression. We hear a lot about it, but this is the talk in the walk, isn’t it? So the walk here is that this Act is going to penalise those workers. So I want to know from the Minister is: will she put her money where her mouth and tell the public what this really is—which is an attack on workers—a 10 percent penalty? It is disproportionate to many things.

Now, I put an example to the Minister—I have never heard the answer to it. I put the example of people who stop to use the toilet when they didn’t use to do that because they’d run around as a bus driver doing that, but that’s what they notified their employer they would do and they got locked out. What happened in that case—because they had to notify because it was an essential industry—is when it got out that the employer had locked them out for taking their toilet breaks, the Auckland public turned on the bus company, and it actually changed the whole nature of the dispute. Suddenly, the public was sympathetic to the bus drivers because they didn’t know that they weren’t being able to go to the toilet. They didn’t know the kinds of lengths that that employer was taking over them. So, actually, it did make a difference. It was a way of them actually expressing where they were, but not actually harming the public. It was a very moderate response. So that was an example I put to the Minister.

I appreciate that this goes beyond this and the title might have to be a bit longer if we’re going to incorporate taking actions which seem incredibly reasonable but having a disproportionate penalty attached. We could extend it a little bit, but, actually, I just want to know: will the Minister front-foot it on this and tell the public transparently what her bill does by giving it this kind of title? Thank you.

Thank you. You know what I will front-foot, Helen White, is the fact that we’ve just heard more Labour Party misinformation tonight—that is, in your contribution. There’s a lot in that contribution. But the member suggested that myself and this Government are against equal pay for women; I would ask the member to stop peddling misinformation. This Government has never been against equal pay for women. The Equal Pay Act remains, and no woman has had their pay cut. Pay equity has changed, but it still remains. There is a difference between equal pay and pay equity, and so the member should stop peddling misinformation.

However, getting back to other points that people have made tonight, Helen White has also suggested a different title. The Government will not be agreeing to a different title because the bill is actually what it says it does, which is about pay deductions for partial strikes.

Lawrence Xu-Nan also had a question about if the bill applies to partial strikes before and after commencement. It’s actually quite a good question, so I thank him for it. That was covered in the debate on Part 1, however. But to clarify, the provision would not apply to the period of the strike that occurred before the commencement.

Lawrence Xu-Nan also asked: are there plans to notify parties of the changes? Yes, I plan to put out a press release tonight. But, also, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment provides updates on changes to legislation on its website, and they also utilise other channels to communicate with stakeholders on changes to legislation.

Right, before I take any further calls, I’m going to make the point that we are on title and commencement and, sadly for people asking the questions, I was here through a large part of Part 1 where I did hear the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety clarify about T-shirts, so I don’t think we need to go down that track any further. And I don’t want to hear any more relitigating of Part 1 and Part 2; this is about title and commencement.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on the answer from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety about alerting people on a press release and also on the website, could she give us some more detail there as well? My concern is you put these things out and then people just don’t know that they’ve happened, right? If that happens, then you leave people high and dry. I take her point that maybe people could go take a look at how it was back in 2018, but I think the counter-question to that is that the workforce has actually changed since then. The workforce changes regularly, and so you’ll have a cohort of people who are now in the workforce who would not have experienced what it was before 2018. I think it would be incredibly important for the Government to have very specific communications to let people know exactly how this will impact them, across all the different sectors, because there will be different impacts right across, given the particular changes that this will bring, particularly for that new cohort of workers that are now with us. I think it’s also really, really important for that to be communicated across the public sector, to teachers, and to everybody else that is impacted, so that their employers themselves can actually prepare themselves, because this thing will land on their desks and a lot of them will think, “How will this actually impact my workers? How will this actually impact my employees?”

Some of the answers that the Minister has given have, for me at least, been too vague. What does it actually mean—the definitions of “work”; that voluntary work and the examples that we gave around with teachers as well? What does that actually mean? There’ll be different arrangements. So there needs to be more specific clarity on how that will impact—in this case—teachers as well.

I think this is incredibly important. There are a lot of changes coming from this Government right across everything around workplace relations, and it is important, in my view, that this Parliament shows respect to those workers, shows respect across all the different sectors, particularly those that will be impacted, because we want these people to stay in the country. We don’t want them to wake up after—what is it?—26 June and think that they’re not being respected and that they don’t have the information to actually figure out how this will apply to them, because they’ll just jump on a plane and go somewhere else where they are more respected.

I hear that through my conversations with different workers all the time: “There’s all these different things coming out of this Government. There’s road cones.”—sector of so on and so forth. What we’ve got to do as a House is actually demonstrate to all the workers, to the people that look after our kids while they’re at school, look after our hospitals, and do all that really, really important work, that they’re actually valued—that there’s actually purpose and value from this House for those workers—and, at the very least—at the very, very least in my mind—is being able to communicate with them very clearly about how this impacts them and how their employers should be able to communicate these changes to them. Because if you don’t—if the Government doesn’t—then that will mean more workers jumping on a plane and leaving this country.

I’ll take a call from Camilla Belich, but we are getting to the pointy end of this, because I’m starting to hear more repetition, and repeating over old ground.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am grateful for the call but I do note that my colleague Ginny Andersen has not yet been able to take a call on this part, and I know she’s incredibly enthusiastic.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): There is no guarantee that everyone will get a call, right?

CAMILLA BELICH: Noted, Madam Chair. I just wanted to advocate for my colleague as I feel slightly guilty having been able to take another call.

I do want to suggest some changes that have not yet been suggested to this bill in relation to the name. I think it is important, as we pass laws through the House, to make sure that they are as accurate as they can be. I have recently been chairing the Governance and Administration Committee, which has been looking at the Plain Language Act Repeal Bill, and I’m convinced more than I ever was that that is a really sensible piece of legislation. One of the reasons for that is how important it is for so many different people within our society to be able to read and understand the language of Government. So I think it is really important, and not a trivial matter, to ensure we get the titles of particular pieces of legislation correct. So I have some suggestions to change the title.

At the moment, we have the title of the Act, in clause 1, as the “Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Act”. I want to suggest, and ask the Minister if she would consider, changing that title to the “Employment Relations (10 Percent Pay Cut Even If You Do 1 Percent Less Work) Act.” The reason I suggest that is because this is what this Act—as it soon will be if it’s passed—actually does. It means that people can in fact do 1 percent less work and receive 10 percent less pay. So I think that is a good suggestion for a name change.

I want to suggest another name change, which is the “Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Wearing a Badge) Amendment Act”, and the reason I suggest that is because that is exactly want can happen as a result of this soon-to-be Act. I want to suggest another title change, and that is the “Employment Relations (Pay Cut For Stopping Doing Unpaid Tasks Like Coaching a Sports Team) Amendment Act”, and that is because that is actually done in this Act as well.

This legislation institutes a number of particular provisions that result in genuine unfairness, and, in the committee stage, we did suggest sensible and pragmatic solutions to these changes. These were ignored and, regretfully, we’re left with an Act that does a number of things that I think many people in this Chamber, people watching, and the New Zealand public would not find acceptable.

I have another suggestion, which does not relate to the title and does not relate to the commencement.

Arena Williams: New material?

CAMILLA BELICH: It is new material, Arena Williams. It is in relation to clause 3, “Principal Act”. Now, this is the Employment Relations Act. I think that is correct and it should remain that way. What I want to suggest is whether the Minister would consider adding a more fulsome list of the Acts that are impacted by this legislation. For example, could we consider having clause 3, “Principal Act This Act Amends the Employment Relations Act and Makes Consequential Amendments to the Education and Training Act”—

Arena Williams: Does it?

CAMILLA BELICH: —yes, it does but it’s not listed—“and Makes Consequential Changes to the Wages Protection Act 1983”. These are the substance, as we’ve just discussed in Part 2. In fact, the entirety of Part 2 is discussing two Acts that are not mentioned in the title and commencement clauses in relation to the principal Act. So I want to ask the Minister whether, as she has suggested in other parts of the legislation, we need to cross the t’s and dot the i’s and make sure that we include all relevant information for clarity, including those pieces of legislation in those initial clauses.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll take a very short call in response to that question. Look, I actually have a lot of respect for the Parliamentary Counsel Office. They do very good work and they take their job extremely seriously, and the bill does what it says it does because those very good people who write our laws made sure it does.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 2 changing the commencement date to 6 December 2025 be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 2 changing the commencement date to 6 June 2026 be agreed to.

The question is that Camilla Belich’s tabled amendment to clause 2 changing the commencement date to 6 June 2027 be agreed to.

Mr Speaker, the committee has further considered the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

The Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill is set down for third reading immediately.

Third Reading