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 second time.

The purpose of this bill is to minimise disruptive impacts on the public, who often lose out, who are caught in the middle, when these partial strikes occur. I believe changes are needed to the strike provisions to help improve collective bargaining settings. The current strike provisions do not appropriately balance the rights and consequences in situations where there is not a total withdrawal of labour.

That is why, to achieve the bill’s purpose and to provide a far more effective and efficient bargaining environment where rights and consequences are better balanced, this coalition Government is restoring employers’ ability to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes, a mechanism that was in place between 2015 and 2018 and worked well.

A partial strike is a type of strike that is less than a full withdrawal of labour. This bill gives employers an additional tool to respond to partial strikes. It will help incentivise parties engaged in industrial action to return sooner to the bargaining table and reach agreement.

The previous Government took this tool away in 2018. This means that if an employee engages in a partial strike, the employer’s main options are to either take no action or accept the partial strike action and the output loss, or to suspend or lock out the employees for the duration of the strike. Doing this would obviously escalate the dispute and, when it falls to the public sector, likely increase the level of service disruption on the public. In this way, employers lack options to respond to partial strike action in a measured and proportionate way.

Since 2018, we have seen partial strikes disrupting services where patients face delays in receiving medical scans and treatments due to prolonged waiting lists, kids missing out on education, parents missing out on work, and train passengers left waiting at platforms.

I want to share some recent examples of how disruptive partial strikes can be. In August 2024, patients faced delays in getting medical scans and treatments because hospital-based MRI and nuclear medicine technologists undertook partial strike action, including limits on the number of scans completed each day. This resulted in a reduction of around 50 percent of scans, delays in early cancer treatment, longer waiting lists, increased outsourcing costs, and required additional front-line staff to cover the striking workers’ radiology work.

In 2023, students’ education was impacted when teachers undertook partial strike action which included refusing to teach certain year groups on particular days, disrupting both the students’ learning and their parents’ ability to work.

In 2024, the New Zealand Defence Force Public Service Association members took work-to-rule action, took coordinated breaks, and stopped working at heights or off site. In response, the Minister of Defence authorised uniformed personnel to cover civilian work in some selected areas.

I fully appreciate that employees can strike in support of their collective bargaining goals, but the disruption to the public and customer services that can often result from partial strikes should not continue without consequence. Restoring an employer’s ability to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes will help promote an early return to bargaining and reduce impact on third parties.

I’d like to take a moment to explain how the current law isn’t working and how my bill will improve it. There are no provisions to allow a more nuanced or proportionate response for employers to respond to a partial strike. Employers can either take no action and accept the partial strike action and the output loss, with a big impact on them and their customers, or suspend or lock out the employees for the duration of the strike, with a disproportionate impact on the workers.

This amendment will enable employers to make a specified pay deduction in response to a partial strike by either reducing employees’ pay by a proportionate amount, by using a specified calculation, or by deducting a fixed percentage of 10 percent of their pay. I believe it is important that the partial strike provisions are workable for employers, especially for those with large workforces.

Employers would be free to decide whether to deduct pay or not. If an employer decides to do so, before any deductions are made and for greater transparency for employees the bill does require that the employer provides written notification about the deduction to employees within specific time frames. I believe it’s important that employees are made aware of the financial impact of the partial strike action reasonably promptly. If an employee or a group of employees consider that the employer has incorrectly applied or calculated a specific pay deduction, the bill allows unions to challenge the application or calculation by requesting information relied on to calculate the pay deduction, and employers must respond to the written request as soon as reasonably practicable.

The Education and Workforce Committee considered a wide range of suggested amendments to the draft bill but concluded most were not needed. This is not surprising, because the legislation, like I said, was working quite well from 2015 to 2018. The committee did decide to express more precisely what different sections of the bill meant. These included, for example, ensuring that the union specifies in their strike notice whether employees will continue to do some work and clarify how to find an employee’s usual hours. I support these suggestions, and I believe the new legislation will be more effective as a result. I want to thank the committee for their work and all the members of the public who took the time to submit. I understand that some of the changes that the select committee took arose from good suggestions from those submitters.

I understand, also, that some submitters argue that the legislation would somehow undermine workers’ right to strike, weakening their collective bargaining power, or entrench poor working conditions. I don’t agree with this. Employees will have the same rights to strike as they do now; there will just be consequences for doing so.

My intention with this bill is very clear. Disruption to public and customer services that has resulted from partial strikes should not continue without consequences. I want to provide for a far more effective and efficient bargaining environment where the rights and consequences are more balanced. Restoring employers’ ability to make pay deductions for partial strikes will help minimise potential disruption to services and incentivise both parties to return to the bargaining table and reach agreement in good faith sooner.

This change to collective bargaining is consistent with the Government’s Going for Growth direction to reduce the compliance burden for employers and ensure settings are proportionate. I’m confident that this bill will promote more harmonious industrial relations across New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think this is, once again, a piece of legislation that shows that this Government has no regard for workers in this country whatsoever. I’m surprised that the second reading is being held at a time when we have had such an attack over the last couple of weeks on our workers, particularly our women workers in this country.

I sat on the Education and Workforce Committee and heard the submissions. I just want to put on record here how many submitters there were. The committee received 620 written submissions on the bill. In support of the bill, out of those 620, there were four—I’ll just say that again: four in support of this bill.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Four, is that all?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Four, that’s all. Opposing the bill were 606; unclear on whether supporting or opposed was three; and overall view was unclear as submissions focused on potential changes to bill was seven.

The—

Simon Court: The party of victim-waiving narcissists disagrees.

Hon JAN TINETTI: Oh, did I just hear somebody over there talking about victim waiving? Yeah, it just shows what they think about workers in this country—absolutely shows what they think about workers.

Simon Court: What we think about you—what we think about you.

Hon JAN TINETTI: Yeah, Simon Court, that’s right—just for the record, so that we can get that on there too.

The rationale provided for opposing this bill—and there were six main reasons why people actually oppose the bill, and I want to go through those reasons that people gave during the select committee process. The first was that the changes will diminish workers’ rights to strike, or their rights generally. I heard that the Minister said that that is not the case. That is not what the people who were submitting on this bill were telling us throughout the select committee process. They’ve been in these positions before. They know between 2015 and 2018, they’ve had experience of this. They know that these changes will diminish their rights or their right to strike, and their rights in general.

The most common concern raised by submitters was the concern that the ability for employers to make pay deductions in response to partial strikes will have a negative impact on the right of workers to strike. That was from just over half of those submissions. They opposed this part of the bill for that reason.

The one that I really want to talk about, though, is actually the second main reason that was given as to why people were absolutely opposed to this particular bill. That was that deductions in pay in response to partial strikes are unfair, particularly when they are in response to work-to-rule industrial action. So what this could mean, Madam Speaker, is that you or an employer could employ somebody with the conditions of employment laid out so they have their hours of work laid out and they have their tasks laid out in their employment agreement, and then they, out of the goodness of their heart, volunteer to do extra work.

So let’s take the case of a teacher, as an example. In their employment agreement—the collective employment agreement which informs the individual employment agreements as well—hours of work are laid out in that collective agreement. Now, not many people know that but it is laid out in the collective agreement. Many of our teachers go over and above that. We know that. We know that sports teams happen, for example, when teachers spend their after-school time or before-school time coaching sports teams and, often, are really busy either in evening sports events or weekend sports events; arts and culture; rock quest—we had that here in the Legislative Chamber recently. Many teachers go over and above what they are employed to do, to be able to enable those young people to share their creativity with the world. They will go on trips and camps with them. But if they’re in the middle of industrial bargaining and negotiations and they decide to do a work-to-rule, this is what this bill enables to happen: they decide that they’re only going to work the hours that they are employed for, and there can be a pay deduction. Now, those extra hours are not in the collective agreement; they are doing that out of the goodness of their heart. But this bill will enable the employer—who will be, usually, the Ministry of Education in this point, because they are responsible for paying the teachers—to make a partial deduction.

Now, I thought, well, that can’t be true. I thought that maybe—because you’re employed for what you’re employed for, and I thought that can’t be true. So I specifically asked this question of officials at the Education and Workforce Committee, and the select committee said, “Well, yes, it does.” It can do that, and it is case by case, but it absolutely enables that clause, that work-to-rule to overstep the employment agreement and for there to be pay deductions that can be made. It says that in the departmental report, in case anyone wants to check that out and look that up. I have to say, it’s a very good departmental report that has been made on this, because it lays it out very, very clearly, but also all of those objections that were made to it.

Another theme that came through was that people were opposed because the changes will further exacerbate the current imbalance of power between employees and employers, and weaken employees’ positions in the collective bargaining. Now, something that has been noted in this House many, many, many times is the inherent imbalance in the bargaining process. We know that employers have the power of balance—the balance of power, I should say. We absolutely know that that is the case; it is well documented. But, unfortunately, the whole idea—and I’ve got colleagues in the House that can say this really eloquently because they’ve worked in this area for so long; that’s you, Helen White. They know that in any of these negotiations, the employee has only got that right to be able to strike in the industrial bargaining process to restore balance, and this is being minimised and taken away from them in this piece of legislation. That was something that people talked about.

They talked about the changes being inconsistent with New Zealand’s domestic and international obligations. That is a real concern, particularly in the international—well, mostly in the international obligations part of this. You know, we can look at the New Zealand part, and I encourage people to go and read the departmental report, but the international obligations—

Simon Court: The ILO doesn’t care about people who don’t get their scans though, do they?

Hon JAN TINETTI: —and I hear the member over there once again talking about the International Labour Organization. I’m talking about trade agreements, actually, Simon Court. So you should actually, Simon Court, do your homework on this and not just make your ideological judgments around this, because I think that that’s a very ill-informed interjection that you have made from over on that side of the House.

The last area that people talked about was that the changes will increase strike action and incentivise workers to fully withdraw their labour. This is something that is a reality when disincentives like this come in, to those partial strikes. The Minister talked about a specific example where a partial strike had happened. I’ve already had people say, “Well, if that’s going to happen and pay is going to be taken, we may as well go off full time.” That’s what this is trying to stop—to still give people that right to strike, but to ensure that productivity is maintained and not completely withdrawn.

I want to finish up by just quoting a press release that came out from Rachel Mackintosh, who at the time was the acting secretary of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. She says, “Industrial action is supposed to help level the power imbalances in employment relationships that favour employers. This change undermines that and tips the balance of power even further in favour of employers by introducing a punitive response to legitimate industrial action. … The only winners of this Bill will be the lawyers. This legislation will lead to increased litigation, and prolonging bargaining and industrial action at the expense of both workers and employers.” Labour will not be supporting this bill.

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 20 May 2025.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.55 p.m.