Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill will reintroduce the ability for employers to make specified pay deductions in response to partial strikes, to help minimise disruptive impacts on the public. Providing employers with additional tools to respond to partial strikes will help incentivise parties engaged in industrial action to return to the bargaining table and reach agreement in good faith sooner. Intentionally causing disruption and refusing to undertake key parts of the job not only impacts the employer’s output but often it is the public who are heavily impacted and tend to lose out or are caught in the middle when partial strikes occur. That is why I am reintroducing these changes.

Since the previous Government took this option away in 2018, we have seen the impact of partial strikes on the public—for example, cancer patients receiving later medical scans and treatment due to prolonged waiting lists due to partial strikes; kids missing out on education, and parents’ ability to work was then disrupted; and train passengers left waiting at platforms.

Employees who are bargaining have the right to strike, but those actions affect the employer and sometimes the public, so that rights should not be without consequence. This is about fairness. Once this amendment is made, there will be a balance, with proportionate negative consequences for both parties, where the employees are losing some pay and the employers are losing out too. This provides an incentive for both parties to return to the bargaining table as soon as practical, while also minimising community impacts. We have canvassed all the arguments as part of these debates, and through the select committee process. I am confident that this bill will work well and promote more harmonious industrial relations across New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

What a shame; here we are again, in a real attack against workers in this country. We have seen it so much over the last 18 months from this Government. It is an absolute disgrace to this Government and it is a disgrace and a shame for our country.

Let me just remind you of some of the things that have happened prior to this bill being passed tonight. We have seen fair pay agreements that were one of the first cabs off the rank, once again, scrapped—once again going through urgency, just as we are here tonight. At least this one had a select committee, but, again, we’re pushing it through under urgency for no reason that has been given. The scrapping of 90-day trials; an effective cut to the minimum wage rate, against official advice—against official advice; stopping the work on pay transparency and stopping the work on modern slavery, even though the Prime Minister campaigned on that and said that that was the one thing he would march in the street for. That is something that has not progressed under this Government.

Stopping the minimum wage for disabled workers—an absolutely appalling piece of work that hurts some of our most vulnerable workers, and yet this Government has pushed that through as well. Cutting 6,000 Public Service jobs—absolutely horrific for our workers and our hard-working people in the Public Service. Not only does that impact upon them, it impacts upon many industries. You only have to go and walk the streets of Wellington out here at lunchtime to know the impact that that has had on this city—but not only on this city, a New Zealand - wide impact. The banning of charter school employees being able to negotiate their multi-employer collective agreements awards, something that is a fundamental right. One of the most egregious—and what I think is the most egregious, and, actually, most of New Zealand thinks is the most egregious—errors and actions that have been taken against workers is, of course, the cutting of the pay equity claims and the cutting of the 33 claims in order to make a Budget work.

Here we are again, with another attack on New Zealand workers. We are seeing pay deductions for partial strikes. Actually, people might, on the other side of the House, have thought some of those name changes in the committee of the whole House might have been a bit frivolous, but they were not frivolous at all, when you know it’s not just partial strikes. The definition of “partial strikes” is absolutely broad in this definition. A partial strike could be somebody wearing a T-shirt to work. They don’t want to take time off; they want to be able to complete their job to the maximum, but they also want to have that ability to be able to show their discontent with what is happening in the industrial process at that particular time. That could be seen as a partial strike. We have heard the Minister say, the whole way through this debate, that this is about another act of restoring the balance, that employers have had that balance taken away from them over the last few years. Well, this isn’t about restoring the balance; this is about taking any power that employees have away from them. This is about making sure that our employees, our workers in this country, don’t have any ability to make a difference in the industrial space and in the industrial bargaining times.

This isn’t about stopping disruptions. In fact, we know from evidence, both here in New Zealand and overseas, that this has the potential to cause more disruption, because now you’re taking that right away and bringing in the partial deductions. Those deductions are at an abhorrent rate. It doesn’t make sense at all, and we haven’t heard anything, the whole way through this debate, that it makes any sense that, for a loss of 1 percent production there would be a 10 percent loss of pay. That makes no sense at all. Now that this is happening, workers will be more than likely—and that has been proven—to withdraw their labour completely. So, instead of having partial strikes, partial withdrawal of labour, now there is that ability. The workers can say, “We will take that away completely.”

This is something that is, again, as I’ve said, an absolute attack on the workers of this country, and that Government has shown their true colours around how they really feel about the workers in this country. They don’t care. They do not care about the people who are going along to work every single day and trying to do their very, very best and then trying to get their absolute best in that industrial situation. It is incredibly hard when the power balance is very much in favour of the employer, and that Government does not care about those people and their ability to be able to make a difference for their families, to be able to take home more, to be able to get the best conditions they can. They need every tool in their tool box. This was another tool they could have had in their tool box that has been taken away.

Now, there has been lots of debate over this, which I still haven’t got a clear answer on, and the Minister, even in the last part, when we were talking about Part 2, still couldn’t answer questions. I noticed that that was about the only question she didn’t answer, about giving notice to the employer when there was a piece of clothing or a badge being worn. We still didn’t get an answer around whether that notice had to be given. So I feel that there is something a little bit more underhand here, which really concerns me. The fact that we tried really hard to give the Minister a solution to that. She talked about wearing a T-shirt, and St John ambulance people having to wear a vest over the top, and that that wasn’t OK. I actually agreed with that; that’s not OK. But we said, “How about we put an amendment into that and we make an amendment around that that enables that to be within good working and health and safety conditions?” But no; there was an absolute flat “No”, which says that freedom of expression of our workers is being denied as well. Freedom of expression so that our workers can tell people what they value and what they stand for has been completely wiped away with the stroke of a pen, in this bill.

That is so surprising. When we get people on the other side of the House who say they stand for freedom of expression, that is not true, because they have shown, right here with this bill tonight, that they absolutely do not stand for freedom of expression at all, and they do not stand for our workers being able to stand up and tell people their values and what it is they stand for. Those protests in the past have been very effective, incredibly effective. They have not stopped productivity at all. They have kept the productivity up.

Hon Member: Pull the other one!

Hon JAN TINETTI: See, Madam Speaker, you hear that over on the other side, but they don’t understand that wearing a T-shirt with your values on it does not stop productivity. They think that absolutely does, and that just shows how they absolutely have no idea of the perspective and refuse to see the world through the lens of the worker—absolutely refuse to see the world through the lens of the worker—and that is incredibly disappointing. But make no mistake: they have shown their values, they have shown what it is they stand for, and they have shown that they do not respect the people who do the work in this country, who are absolutely turning up every single day.

This is an incredibly disappointing day, but not unexpected for the people here in this country—not unexpected, because, as I started my contribution, we have seen attack after attack after attack. In fact, I have a list of 20 actions that this Government has directly taken against workers. Some of them have gone unnoticed, but make sure that we know, from now on, every single one of those is going to be highlighted to the people of New Zealand. That shows that his Government has no regard for the workers in this country, and that will come back to bite them. I absolutely condemn this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in opposition to this bill. Let me start by saying that I think that everybody deserves dignity and decent jobs. I think that’s something that everybody around the House would agree on. I think, also, it’s important for workers out there to at least expect the bare minimum of respect for the work that workers do for us; the work that teachers do, the work that hospitality workers do—the work right across our society that they do to keep our communities functioning. We in the Greens also believe that we must uphold workers’ rights to secure an adequate income, to fair treatment and safety at work, and for workers to actually be involved in the decision making in their workplace, democracy, and collective organising.

But what we have seen over the parliamentary term is an attack on workers’ rights. From the repealing of fair pay agreements to the bringing back of 90-day trials, road cones the other week, loosening up of health and safety regulations—it’s been an ongoing onslaught. And, I guess, my question to the House is this: if you’re going to introduce so many different changes, you’ve got to be able to give people the decency and the respect for them to be able to digest these changes in a way that makes sense for them. Because there have been so many changes coming from this Government. As it has been mentioned before, we had the pay equity claims cancelled, 33 of those claims cancelled—and let me acknowledge the people: as soon as they found out about the cancelling of those pay equity claims, they were out the front there in a couple of hours—out there in the front in a couple of hours. The reason why they cancelled those pay equity claims was because that side couldn’t actually make their Budget add up. They couldn’t make their Budget add up, so what they did was take the money away from the poorest women workers. This is a disgrace.

There have been so many changes—negative changes—on workers in this Government. All I can describe it as is death by a thousand tax cuts—it’s death by a thousand tax cuts. My challenge to members opposite is this: we understand what the ACT Party is about; you can see it from outer space. I mean, if it was up to them, they’d turn this country into an overpriced mall which is owned by their corporate friends. But I think there is an expectation from the other two coalition partners that they would actually pause, that they would actually rein in their friends to the right, that they would rein in and actually give the workers a break. Give the workers a bit of a break from the myriad of assaults on workers’ rights.

What this proposed legislation, partial strikes will do is it’ll push more workers into taking full strikes. It’ll push more workers into taking full strike action. Just for people that are tuning in tonight as well: a partial strike could be something as simple as wearing a T-shirt; it could be something as simple as wearing a badge. It is a way for people to express when things have not been going well in the workplace. Some would call this freedom of expression, the ability to have one’s say, the ability to be able to express themselves. So why would this House want to curtail that? Why would this House want to stop the freedom of expression of workers, particularly when you look at the research and it shows that this is a way for people to actually have their say without going to full strike action. And so it was said a number of times within the debate that this will actually push people towards full strike action.

Let me just pick up some of the comments or lack of comments from the Minister through her speeches, but also through the committee of the whole House. When we asked her, “Well, what are you going to do to be able to communicate this with employers and with employees? How are you going to describe this? There are so many things coming from this Government that are impacting and stripping back workers’ rights, how are you going to explain this one?”, what she said is that she’s going to put out a press release. She’s going to put out a press release and she’s going to put something on a website. She’s going to put something on a website. No talk or mention about how this would impact all the different sectors out there—how this would impact teachers, how this would impact nurses, how this would impact collective action—let alone the new cohort of workers that are in the workforce at this particular point in time. What this points to is an utter lack of respect—an utter lack of respect on that side of the House for workers.

At the end of it, if this House keeps going down this track, if the Government keeps going down this track and the workers see what they’re continuing to do, what’s stopping them from getting on a plane and flying over to Australia, where there’s better work, pay, and conditions? When I’ve talked to workers across the country who are concerned about the myriad of changes coming from this Government, this is what they tell me. They tell me that, actually, “Maybe we should just get up and get out of here.” This is not what we want. We want people to feel that they are valued. We want people to feel that the work that they do is valued. We want to make sure that they feel appreciated. We want to make sure that for all of the workers, there is a career path for them as well. Where is the signal from this Government that that is happening? It isn’t. All we get is this kōrero all about “Growth, growth, growth.” What about the growth and pride for the workers? What about growth and pride for the work that these people actually do for us? We need to see more of that from this House, and it is sorely lacking, particularly from that side of the House.

So we oppose this bill. We believe it is the right of workers to collectively organise themselves to advance their interests, and we think it’s important that that is protected. It is vital that we uphold the right of workers and the unions to campaign for political, environmental, social, and work-related industrial issues, including the right to strike—including the right to partial strikes, right? We should be able to have a space there where you can actually express yourselves without going down the full strike path. As noted by many speakers on this side of the House, there is no evidence to show that partial strike provisions which existed from 2018 have encouraged more or longer industrial action. That is not what the research tells us. That is not what the submissions told us. There are a number of negative consequences to this bill, incredibly negative consequences of this bill, particularly when you look at it in the context of everything else that is happening.

The provisions from this bill can lead to manifestly unjust consequences, such as workers losing 10 percent of their pay—10 percent of their pay. Just say you might want to express yourself, just because something’s not happening that great in your work site; you might want to wear a badge, you might want to wear a T-shirt to express yourself, and your boss might be able to dock you 10 percent—10 percent. Not to mention the actual vague definitions that we actually got from this Minister of actually what constitutes “work” as well. Because we know that a lot of these workers do a lot of voluntary work. They do a lot of work which is actually attached to this work—and we have the example of teachers, who do a whole lot of other work on top of that. What happens when, actually, they’re being forced to be able to do that work as a part of this legislation?

The Greens absolutely oppose this legislation. We will continue to oppose this legislation, just like we oppose the smashing of the 33 pay equity claims, just like we oppose the repealing of the fair pay agreements, the reintroduction of 90-day trials. I would also warn workers out there, as well: there are changes coming down the pipeline where they are looking at loosening health and safety regulations, as well. So, again, I would caution members in the Government parties to actually rein in the ACT Party—rein them in. This is what they’re actually all about, but that’s not necessarily true of the others. This is too much. This is too much for the workers. There’s too much happening in this space. Workers need to have a breather, and by not giving them the decency to actually consider all these different changes that are happening day after day, week after week—what that shows is disrespect. What that shows is a lack of care. What that shows is a lack of duty of care for all those people that we are all—all of us across this House—elected to represent. It cannot just be about the bosses; it cannot just be about the employers. We’ve got to think about everybody. So we absolutely condemn this bill.

What we’re hearing this evening is that the Opposition want to tell you how to run your business and run your life. If you are in a business—whether it be McDonald’s, Mitre 10, or an accounting firm—and you agree to a set of relationships, a set way of working, a uniform as part of that, you know what you’re signing up for. The Opposition want to tell you, as an employer or employee, what you can and can’t do, and we oppose that. On the Government side, we believe in the ability to contract and be held accountable to your agreements. I commend this bill to the House.

New Zealand First always approach these issues of employment relations with a view to getting fairness and balance. On the matter of these partial strikes, we do believe the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety is seeking to address a genuine imbalance. Employees at the present are, essentially, at liberty to take action impacting the functioning of a workplace with impunity. Despite the catastrophising of the Opposition, they are not losing any rights. They can still do all the industrial action that they’re able to before; it’s just that employers will have the ability to have a proportionate deduction to compensate them for their loss of productivity. It’s a sensible bill. New Zealand First support it.

This is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So what we are seeing with this particular legislation is this Government’s continued war on workers—continued war on some of the most hard-working parts of our population. We heard the previous speaker, the Hon Mark Patterson, talking about “Oh, this is the Opposition trying to tell people how to run their businesses.” Most of these are from the Public Service. They are people like teachers, they are people like your doctors, your nurses. They are the people who look after your children, look after you when you are sick, look after your parents, and yet you decided to kick them in the teeth with continued bills like this. You got rid of their pay equity. You would like to say you didn’t, but you did. You kept pay equity, but you basically said—it’s almost like running a race or if you’re in the Olympics. Suddenly, you’re like, “Yes! I’m going to get over to the finish line.” And they’re like, “Uh, uh. We’re going to just shift the goalpost. Start from scratch. You can still race, but start from the beginning. Actually, you know what, start from training.” This is what it feels like to the hundreds of thousands of workers that have been affected by the changes of the pay equity claims and by changes of bills such as this.

During the committee of the whole House stage, we’ve heard from the Minister on a number of things, but let’s be clear: the officials and the official advice that we have received—the impartial advice that we have received—says that this is going to create more risks. This is going to create the risk of more full strike action. This is going to affect your children. This is going to affect the treatment if you are sick. This is going to affect people being able to look after your parents. This is going to affect people being able to respond to you when you’re in an emergency. This is going to affect people more than if this bill was not brought to the House.

In addition, although the Minister said a lot of things, we still did not receive any clarity on the relationship between the employer and the employee on the definition of some of these elements, particularly when we were looking at what is meant when we say that some work is being done. I think that was a great question line in the committee stage from my colleague Teanau Tuiono. When we’re talking about teachers and when we’re talking about the complexity when there is negotiation or complexity of people’s workplace, this is not just simply a tick-box exercise. This is not just people who are sitting in an office, deciding on what to do. This is not Ministers sitting in their ivory tower of untouchable circumstances, telling people what to do and telling people how they should be acting. This is people’s real lives, and people’s real lives being affected.

When we were looking at situations when it comes to teachers, we have been given clear examples by people who work as teachers—not many people in this House can say they’ve stood inside of a classroom for decades. But we’ve heard from people who work as teachers, who talked about the complexity that this will create in terms of non-contact hours—how that will be considered. Are they doing work? Are they not doing work? Their contracts are complex. What is considered “some work”?

This bill, along with many other bills we’re seeing from this Government around workplace relations, is something that is simply pandering. I don’t even know who they’re pandering to, to be honest—but clearly they’re pandering to someone—because it is not the people of Aotearoa New Zealand who are affected by a suite of changes we see in workplace relations. So the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand will absolutely not support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Thank you for that outstanding contribution from the member Dr Vanessa Weenink on the opposite side! This bill, the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill, docks the pay of nurses, it docks the pay of teachers, it docks the pay of police, it docks the pay of firefighters, it docks the pay of any essential worker if they ask for fair pay and better conditions—better pay and better conditions. That is what this bill represents. It’s a sad indictment on a Government that has already taken a complete assault on the rights of working Kiwis, through scrapping fair pay agreements, 90-day rules, and also what they’ve done with pay equity.

In a cost of living crisis, this Government has taken it upon themselves to make the workers hurt even more than what their changes are making. At a time when families are struggling to be able to afford food, when there is high and rising unemployment, when there are record numbers of people being laid off, this Government takes it upon themselves to further drive down the working conditions and the ability of workers to stand up for their rights. We condemn other nations for stopping the freedom of expression of people. Why does that make it any different for workers here in New Zealand? It’s a double standard, what this Government is doing to working Kiwis with this bill.

Partial strikes are an important tool to flag that there is something not right with the employment relationship before reverting to a full strike. The deep irony of this bill—and maybe that’s what the intention of the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety actually is—is that full strikes and full industrial action will be more likely to ensue by removing the ability for workers to partially strike. It will be even harder for employers to be able to calculate how much they will deduct, and that was one of the key reasons, in the first place, that it was removed. So those calculations will be made far more difficult.

This legislation really seeks to introduce the ability for employers to dock the pay of workers that are clearly participating in the ability to work to rule and to exercise that right, where the employee does nothing more than carry out the duties that they are stipulated to do. And that is not fair. Under this bill, as we’ve heard, a worker can be financially penalised for simply doing their job properly. For fulfilling their contracted obligations and no more, they will be docked. For wearing a T-shirt that says, “I fight for kids. I stand up for children.”, they can have their pay docked under this. It’s freedom of expression, and it’s basic workers’ rights.

It’s not just bad law; it’s cynical lawmaking. This is a pre-emptive strike on the very public sector workers—teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers—who are expected to enter into collective bargaining in the coming years. It’s a deliberate move to weaken the hand of employees before they even get to the bargaining table. It’s punitive and it’s regressive, but those members opposite do not have an eye to what that is doing to employment relations in New Zealand. Let’s call this what it is: it’s an ideological crusade by ACT, who’s Batman, and National is Robin in this sad act, and it’s shamefully enabled by the National Party. It’s a dismantling of union protections and a tip of the balance even further towards employers. Let’s be honest: we’ve heard about that balanced relationship; it’s tipped, under this legislation, for the employer to hold all of those cards, and that’s exactly what they’ve set out to achieve.

Under the proposed amendment, employers will have the statutory ability to impose pay deductions on any employee engaged in partial strike action. That could be refusing, for example, to work overtime. It could be deciding not to take on duties outside what is already a contracted role. A clear example we’ve given a number of times is those lovely people that teach your children softball or netball or football or touch rugby and they do that after 3 o’clock on the school field. Well, that is outside of what their contracted employment relationship is, and if they refuse to do that, then they can have their pay docked. So you are pressuring and, really, standing over people to take up jobs for free without being remunerated.

All of these flaws with this legislation have been picked up by the regulatory impact statement (RIS) that we’ve been through. Let’s just take a moment to reflect on that, because if there was ever evidence that this bill is not backed by evidence, then the regulatory impact statement gave a pretty good case. It completely lacks any qualitative data. It relies on anecdotal and historical examples, and it makes completely untested assertions. It fails to outline how the Government intends to meet any of its Treaty obligations. The Labour Party considers it an absolute shocker to have no evidential basis to make such sweeping changes. In fact, I’ll quote from the RIS: “Neither the number of partial strikes and [the] full strikes, [nor the] number of persons days lost, show any clear pattern in relation to the ability of employers to make pay deductions during partial strikes.” There is no evidence that the previous law caused any problem whatsoever, and so what is the point of this bill? Why are we reversing it? The truth is it’s not about evidence; it’s completely about ideology.

In 2018, when Labour amended the Employment Relations Act to remove pay deductions for partial strikes, we did so to restore that balance and working relationships in the workplace. We recognised that industrial action is a fundamental right for working Kiwis in New Zealand. We understood that partial strikes are a legitimate and a proportionate way for workers to express their dissatisfaction without resorting to the full withdrawing of labour. This Government’s proposal will remove that option. It will force unions and workers into the binary choice: either stay silent or go full noise and strike. That is dangerous. It’s dangerous for working relations, but it’s also dangerous to productivity. I really fear that this will undermine New Zealand’s productivity down the line. It does not promote industrial harmony; it just escalates conflict. My concern is that is the intent of what this bill is there for.

The likely result of this law will not result in any fewer disruptions, and we’ve heard that. We heard that in the submissions. We heard it from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. One of their quotes I liked the most was “This will escalate disputes, it will tip the balance of power even further in favour of employers, and it will lead to more litigation and prolonged industrial conflict at the expense of both workers and also employers.” It’s absurd that a Government would introduce a bill that increases the risk of full strike action in the middle of a cost of living crisis and looming industrial negotiations.

I’d like to conclude by saying that, on this side of the House, we believe that workers deserve dignity, fairness, and the right to take reasonable proportional industrial action. We believe in collective bargaining. We believe that strong employment relationships should be grounded in respect, not fear. But this Government—they’re rolling back fair pay agreements, 90-day trials, and now they’re targeting unionised workers with legislation that will make it easier to intimidate and punish workers. Make no mistake, this is not the end; this is part of a wider pattern, a pattern that attacks the most basic protections that working people rely on. I want to speak directly to those workers watching this debate—nurses, teachers, emergency responders, cleaners, and everyone else who keeps this country running—we hear you and we see the work you do, and we know this law is not about fairness; it’s about control and it’s about weakening your voice. Labour opposes this bill because we believe in partnership. We believe that the employment relationship works best when there is trust, when there is dialogue, and when there is a fair playing field. To the Government—if they really wanted fewer strikes, they would be investing in good-faith bargaining and equitable pay and settlements, not this rubbish.

Let me close with this thought: the right to strike is not an inconvenience to be legislated away; it is a cornerstone of a democratic society—and, without it, there is no balance, no accountability, and no justice in the workplace.

The principle is simple: a full day’s work equals a full day’s pay; a partial day’s work equals a partial day’s pay. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call.

Well, it’s a pleasure to be able to have the right of reply after that speech, because basically everything that the last speaker, Grant McCallum, said was wrong in relation to this bill. It is not a full day’s pay for a full day’s work or a partial day’s pay for a partial day’s work. This particular piece of legislation means that even if you do a full day’s work, you can receive only 90 percent of your usual earnings, even if you do every single thing in your employment agreement. So that is totally wrong, Mr McCallum, and I think you’re aware of the fact that it’s not as straightforward as it seems, this particular bill.

This particular bill, as colleagues have said, has come after a myriad of anti-worker legislation that has been passed by this House. It feels a little bit like Groundhog Day. We’re here again, we’re nearing 10 p.m., we’re under urgency, and we are discussing backward legislation that only takes workers and employers backward in New Zealand.

This particular bill that we’re discussing tonight has absolutely zero evidence that it will work. I’ve read all the documents, I’ve read the departmental disclosure statement, I’ve read the regulatory impact statement, I’ve read the departmental report, and there’s absolutely nothing in there that says that this legislation will do anything other than inconvenience New Zealanders more and take pay away from hard-working Kiwis. That is all that we know, as a result of the select committee process and as a result of the evidence provided to us by officials, this bill will allow you to do 1 percent less work and receive 10 percent less pay.

This bill will mean that if you wear a badge or a T-shirt with a political message and still do all your work, your employer can deduct 10 percent of your wages, and those wages can be deducted by up to 10 percent even if you’re on the minimum wage. So this bill allows New Zealanders to be paid less than the minimum wage. The minimum standard we have for remuneration for adults in this country will be taken backwards, will be cut during a cost of living crisis at a time where things are tough for New Zealanders, when it’s difficult to even get a job. This Government is making those jobs worth even less for New Zealanders. It is a shameful act that they have done this.

You may say—

Arena Williams: Did anyone think this was a good idea?

CAMILLA BELICH: —and it’s a good question that my colleague raises: did anyone think that this was a good idea? Well, I went and I checked the departmental report, and I looked at the submissions that we received, and I can tell you that 97 percent of submissions received by this Parliament on this bill oppose this bill.

Arena Williams: That’s 606!

CAMILLA BELICH: So 606 submissions in opposition to this bill. Basically, no one supported this bill. It was not called on by anyone. It was brought into place by a Government that simply wanted to attack workers and give employers tools that they didn’t want, to hurt their employees more. It is totally retrospective. The Minister herself said that we’re going back in time, and we are. This is a backward step for workers, and it will result—and this is what we heard at select committee: we heard that it’s much more likely to result in a full removal of labour.

When we talk about the inconveniences of strike action—and strikes are meant to be inconvenient, that is the entire purpose of them. But when we look at what’s more inconvenient, a partial strike that people do because they know that they can do that and they can make their point and their wages won’t be touched, or a full withdrawal of labour, I know which one’s going to be more inconvenient when you’re talking about accessing medical services. I know which one’s going to be more inconvenient when I’m a parent wanting to drop my child off at school. This bill takes us backwards. It does absolutely nothing.

Before I end, I think it’s important that we recognise how retrograde this particular bill is by looking at the actual advice provided by officials on this. The officials themselves said that this bill will result in a disproportionate use in relation to low-level strike action. This was why the last Government repealed this legislation: “disproportionate use for low-level strike action”. This Government’s bringing it back. It will bring back unfairness and it will take workers’ wages down.

Restoring pay deduction provisions supports the Government’s commitment to improving public services and maintaining service quality during industrial action, so I commend this bill to the House.

I’d like to give you a different example from one that I’ve used with the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety at the start of my speech. It, again, comes from my background in employment law. One of my many clients was the midwives union. They had a situation with midwives where you know that we don’t have very many of them—there’s not enough. We’ve had issues with safe staffing levels of midwives. So we had a situation where those midwives were in a position where they couldn’t strike in the ordinary way of withdrawing labour, because they could not actually leave their post, because they had an obligation to staff safely.

What this legislation means, from what I can see, is that if those midwives want to take an action which is much more moderate than that—they want to wear a badge or they want to do some part of the job where they think, “This isn’t going to affect safety and so I can put that part aside and that can be my strike action”—they will have their pay deducted 10 percent. Midwives are people who work incredibly hard—we have enormous amounts of burnout. It’s a very stressful job. They have just been subject to the changes that the Government’s made in terms of pay equity—so we have compounded the problem of low pay in this area—and they have just had another way that they might be able to show their concern taken away from them.

We have strikes as part of an order of business. It’s not something that just comes out of the blue; it’s a built-up structure where we have strikes and we have lockouts and we have bargaining that happens within a certain time frame. So we have a time when you can strike and a time when you can’t. And because we are organised in the way we are organised, the whole population buys into something that would otherwise not work for us.

We’ve moved from a situation where there used to be random strikes and there used to be suits against people and businesses. We’ve moved from that situation to a well-organised situation where people give up certain rights at certain times so they can have those rights in bargaining; they can organise around it. What is happening here is that we are playing with fire.

If you take away the levers from people, what do you get? Well, the first thing that you get is that all the moderate actions that people want to take—and there’s a lot of us who would be hesitant to strike—they tend to be the people who have got less confidence. Your very confident, stroppy workers might strike; but your, often, female workers, low-paid workers, are less likely to. So you’re taking the power away from that very group that is the one you want to be able to progress a claim.

Now, I did talk about my bus driver case. I talked about these bus drivers—

Grant McCallum: Repetition!

HELEN WHITE: —who were—and it’s not fiction. It absolutely happened, sir.

I talked about those bus drivers because those bus drivers were actually being treated in a way I was shocked by. They already had split shifts. That meant that in the morning they worked because we all needed to get to work. They sat around for four hours in the middle of the day not being paid—and they got no money at that time and they were stranded in town for four hours because it wasn’t enough time to go home and come back in—and then they worked this shift after that, taking people home again. They were not being paid very much. At that time, my recall was it was about $18 an hour. That was what they were doing, and they weren’t taking their toilet breaks because this inconvenienced the New Zealand public because there was nowhere for them to stop. If they did that, it was going to delay the bus service and people weren’t going to get to work on time. That’s what they were doing.

They are the kinds of workers I want to protect. I want them to have ways to express themselves which actually engage with the public in their terms and conditions in making them understand. When we wrote the strike notice and they had to do that because any action—any action; that’s not a non-strike action, that’s an action—to say that you’re going to take your toilet breaks. So we wrote the strike notice about that. As a result of that, those workers were locked out. As a result of an inquiry by the New Zealand Herald, the New Zealand Herald understood that that was not fair on those workers and wrote an editorial which said it was not fair. As a result of that single action, the public understood these drivers needed to be paid more. That’s what happened as a result of a partial strike.

Now, tell me that that is not in the interests of the New Zealand public. It was so much better than a situation where the workers struck, had no money, the company blamed them completely for what had gone on, they ended up on the other side of things—and those workers would never have won that dispute in that way. They were smart, but they were also fair. They took the least possible action to inconvenience people for the maximum benefit. That’s smart and I’m proud of them for doing it, and it was one of those disputes that got sorted out and changed people’s lives. Actually, that’s what puts food on the table.

We hear from this coalition Government over and over again how they believe in giving people a hand up and people helping themselves. They don’t want charity. Isn’t that exactly why we need strong labour relations where people can take actions like this in this sort of situation? Because nobody wants charity in that way. They want to earn a decent living, and they need to be able to do it by using this tool in the tool box. This tool is a good tool in the tool box. What is going to happen now is that this Government—because it’s fanatical about unions and it’s got no sense of the actual value of workers—is going to stop this happening, and there’s going to be an unintended consequence. The unintended consequence is that people will have no other option but to strike in a complete way.

The other unintended consequence is that people will lose faith in Government. They will totally lose faith.

And the third unintended consequence is that people will get poorer. People at the bottom end—who haven’t got much power, who are hesitant to strike fully—those are our low-income workers; those are our people without a lot of confidence. They will be the ones who become poorer. In this country, we have a problem. We have a problem of poverty. It’s going to be an unintended consequence that affects our children.

We already have a report out in conjunction with our Budget which says the levels of child poverty are going up in this country, not down, under this Government. We already had that happening and, on top of it, we lay another law—another law to crush anybody who wants to wear a badge or a T-shirt or express their view or take their toilet break or put a button on because they’re a midwife who is already under the pump.

None of those things is allowed anymore because this Government, which said it was going to help people in a cost of living crisis, has other priorities. It wants to ignore the reality of people’s lives and pretend it’s all part of a beautiful trickle-down situation. I wish I could say that I had any faith in that view; that it’s all going to come down to people, but it’s not. Our job is to make sure that we do our job; that we help people from our seat. And this abandons people to poverty.

I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Employment Relations (Pay Deductions for Partial Strikes) Amendment Bill, and what a disgraceful bill this is.

Dana Kirkpatrick: Point of order, Mr Speaker. This was a split call from the previous round—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): This is a split call for—

Dana Kirkpatrick: —so it should be a five-minute call, not a 10-minute—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): A five-minute call—a split call. That will be why it’s saying it’s five minutes up there.

Dana Kirkpatrick: Thank you.

ARENA WILLIAMS: I seek leave for an extra five minutes, for a 10-minute call.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Leave is sought for that. Is there any objection?

Hon Members: Yes.

ARENA WILLIAMS: Guys—guys.

Well, more disgraceful behaviour from this Government, which doesn’t even want to listen to the views of anyone who opposes them, not even the workers who are trying to raise legitimate issues in their workplace. They will have to pay for that now. Like me being denied the ability to speak for another five minutes, the young people in businesses around this country will not be able to raise their concerns. In fact, they will have to pay for it—pay 10 percent of their wages—if they want to have a say.

This is ACT Party ideology at its worst, and it’s a race to the bottom. This is a Government that says it’s going for growth. Does it call growth the suppression of the wages of young people and vulnerable workers? Because that is exactly what this bill does.

Young people will bear the brunt of this because the minimum wage is the de facto wage for young people in any advanced economy. The minimum wage is what young people make when they are in their first job, and this minimum wage will be further cut. It will be cut from the minimum legal wage for adults and young adults if they are trying to raise their concerns.

I want to tell you a story, a story about my best mate, Melissa Cosgrove, who—

Grant McCallum: Is it an exciting story?

ARENA WILLIAMS: She was a Timaru meatworker in her first job—you’ll like this one, Grant McCallum. She worked at a meatworks close to the heart of many a community in the mid-Canterbury region. She didn’t have the worst job in the factory, because her dad was also a meatworker—and that’s how it works in the industry. You’ve got to stick with your line of work in the families, and the Cosgroves from Timaru are a meatworkers’ family. They’re a well-unionised family, as well.

She wasn’t on the slaughterboard or on the chains, Mr McCallum, but she was in the offal room, which was considered a good job, and much better than the yard. So she was lucky to get that job, and she worked really hard. For two summers, she had that job, as a teenaged young woman, and it was pretty hard in those jobs. There aren’t many young women who work in them. But of those who get into the job because their family are in that line of work—and it pays pretty well, especially when you’ve been doing it for a bit. Especially if you’re a young person in a training opportunity, or you’re going to university and trying to put a bit of money away in your summer that you can then cover your costs, this is a good line to be in if you’re a young person.

But the thing was that, for her, over two successive summers, in the job that she was working in with the other young women in that factory, the line that she was working on with those young women—because they were separated from the other workers—was really, really far from the women’s changing rooms. You can imagine that when you’re working in the offal room, you’ve got your big gloves on, you’ve got your white boots on, you’ve got your apron, you’ve got your covering over the top—a little apron over your shoulders—and then you’re using your hands all day.

It’s physical work and it’s back-breaking work because you’re standing on your feet all day, so when your tea break comes up, you are thrilled. As a 19-year-old, you are going to race back to your locker way down the other end of the room, and you are going to get out your little Snap Lock bag with your bickies and your hot flask and you are going to have such a good break.

But for these young women, they were up the other end. Their changing room was way down one side because there were not many women working there at all, so in their 15-minute break, they would make their way from the chains. The bells would go, and they would make their way down the other side. It took about three minutes to get there in their gumboots. They’d take off their gumboots, take off the gloves, take off the top, and leave the apron on, even though you’re covered in muck—you’re covered in absolute, literal muck from the offal line, and I won’t repeat what was actually on it. Melissa would like to have a shandy and tell us all about it, but I won’t tell you tonight because it would gross some people out.

But she’d make her way down there, get her kit off, and by the time she’d gotten her kit off, it was about eight minutes—that was as fast as she could possibly do it, and this was by moving really quickly. She would then go into her bag, bring out her lunch, eat it as quickly as she possibly could, and then go to the bathroom, and the problem was that these young women had absolutely no time to go to the toilet. If they were menstruating, they had no time to deal with that situation for themselves in the only break that they had.

So, for about a week, every time she would go back to the line, she would take an extra five minutes, and her boss told her—this 19-year-old woman, who had fought really hard for this job that is better than being in the yard and is better than what her dad had for seven years when he worked at that meatworks—that she was striking. She was 19 years old and she was doing her best, and she had a boss that was taking advantage of her because she was a vulnerable worker. This bill would mean that her pay was cut, too.

This bill is a race to the bottom for young people who don’t know that they’re being abused by their crap bosses. It’s about people who are just trying to get ahead to put a bit of money away for their university degrees. The National Party should not be standing for a race to the bottom on wages for young people.