Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2)

Hon KATE WILKINSON Link to this

At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, that the committee report finally to the House on or before 5 November 2010, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during questions for oral answer, and during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and to meet outside the Wellington region during a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 187, 189(a), and 190(1)(b) and (c).

The employment reforms contained in this bill are designed to assist New Zealand and New Zealanders as we grow out of the recession. This Government is focused on growing a stronger economy and creating more jobs. This bill is about creating opportunities. The changes being debated today are thoughtful, pragmatic, sensible, and, above all, fair. They will help New Zealand’s overall productivity and will give businesses of all sizes the confidence to seek new opportunities to invest and to take on new workers.

Shortly after the 2008 election, trial periods for businesses with fewer than 20 employees were introduced. Employers with small and medium sized businesses gained the confidence to hire new employees without the fear of facing a personal grievance claim if the relationship did not work. That initiative has been successful. An evaluation of the operation of trial periods revealed that 40 percent of employers who used it said that they would not have, or were unlikely to have, hired a person without a trial period. Aside from that report, I have received and read positive feedback on this policy. One employer thanked us for introducing the trial period, as it allowed that employer to hire three new farm workers, all of whom were unemployed and two of whom had criminal records. Without the trial period, those three New Zealanders could still be sitting in the dole queue. Furthermore, a brief survey by the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce found that 30 new jobs could be directly attributed to the introduction of the trial period. Examples like those can be found all over the country. Because of this policy, New Zealanders are being given opportunities that they might not otherwise get. By extending access to trial periods, we are giving all businesses the increased confidence to hire new employees and giving many more people the chance to prove themselves in the job market.

I am proud to stand here and tell New Zealanders that this Government backs them. We want them to be successful in life. We want them to increase their standard of living and that of their families. We want businesses to flourish and invest in their communities, and not to be too scared to hire someone out of fear that it will derail their business. The trial period has been a success and will continue to be a success.

The bill also brings us more in line with overseas jurisdictions. If we compare how the same discussion was handled in Australia, we see that its Labor Government introduced a system of qualifying periods under the Fair Work Act, where employees cannot take an unfair dismissal claim in the first 12 months if they work for a small business, and in the first 6 months for all other businesses. That is different from the situation in New Zealand, as it applies to everyone, whereas our trial period occurs only with the agreement of both parties, it must be included in a written employment contract, and it is only for the first 90 days. The Australian Council of Trade Unions put in a submission supporting a 3-month, or a 90-day, qualifying period.

On one side of the Tasman, we have a Labor Government and a union movement that support having compulsory grievance-free periods because they know that it is a policy of opportunity—a policy that encourages employers to invest and to take on more staff. Yet, here in New Zealand, we have a Labour Party and a union movement so blinded by ideology that they cannot see the positive opportunities. They try only to exaggerate the perceived negatives. Fortunately, New Zealanders recognise the positive opportunities that this policy offers. They understand that the employment reform we are progressing is all about providing more opportunities and flexibility. Trial periods in various forms have been utilised successfully all over the world, and I am confident that we will continue to see employers using this policy to take on new staff and offer more opportunities to those who need them. I am also confident that sufficient safeguards have been built into the policy and the legislation to prevent the exploitation of employees.

This Government has always had an express commitment to improve labour laws in this country to make them fairer for employers and employees. Fixing the personal grievance system is a prime example of a targeted change. Earlier this year I invited submissions on the personal grievance system. There was an overwhelming response. A large number of submissions highlighted the point that the test of justification in the current legislation is confusing, and we are fixing that. We want employers to be assured that minor and technical procedural defects in their processes will not mean that a fundamentally justified decision can be deemed wrong.

We will also be making a number of other changes to make the system fairer, more consistent, and efficient. Reinstatement will no longer be the primary remedy in settling personal grievance cases, but it remains as an option where practicable and reasonable. When a relationship has broken down, for whatever reason, in some situations reinstatement is simply not suitable. Furthermore, the Employment Relations Authority will now be able to filter out vexatious and frivolous claims early on. We are focusing on the importance of early resolution by encouraging the use of mediation as the primary instrument to address grievance. To encourage parties to attend mediation first, the authority will be giving priority to cases where parties have first attempted a mediated resolution. Both employers and employees need certainty in the process, and neither need nor want that process to be drawn out. That is not justice for either party.

This Government was elected on a manifesto that included a commitment to make changes to union access provisions. We will be progressing that election promise. Employers have the right to manage access to their workplace in a reasonable manner. Unions retain the right to access their members, as an employer cannot unreasonably withhold consent. The majority of union members will see little or no difference. Where some union representatives have abused the current, very relaxed, law, they will no longer be able to. As I have said previously, this is not a widespread problem, but where abuse does occur, it has the potential to cause significant disruption and to have an impact on the productivity of a business. Protections for union members are retained by ensuring that consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. Where an employer denies consent but does not provide a written explanation of the grounds for refusal, the employer would then be subject to a penalty action.

This bill also addresses other issues relating to communication during collective bargaining, and it strengthens the enforcement powers of labour inspectors in order to improve compliance. Employment agreements are the cornerstone of employment relationships. All employers will be required to have a written employment agreement. Labour inspectors will be able to seek a penalty action for not having employment agreements, reinforcing the importance of having written employment agreements.

The bill also increases the maximum penalty to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for companies and other bodies corporate. This will send the strong message that deliberate or persistent non-compliance will not be tolerated. Collectively, the changes in this bill provide more flexibility and greater choice, and they will ensure a better balance of fairness for employees and employers.

This bill provides for more speedy resolution of employment problems, improves the overall efficiency and operations of the Employment Relations Authority, and discourages poor employment practices by parties. It will reduce costs, improve overall confidence in our employment law, and lay the foundation for higher economic growth and better times ahead. However, it will not condone exploitation of employees; nor will it allow ideologically driven principles to hamper or restrict economic growth. Good businesses need good employees, and good employees need good employers. It is as simple as that. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

I tell that member to look at any wage and salary figures in a time of high employment, and he will see that when low-income people get jobs, averages do not go up as quickly. Average wages tend to go up in times of high unemployment because low-income workers lose their jobs. If those members are too thick to understand that, there is no hope for them, at all.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

The member thinks it is a compliment to be called thick, and I agree with him. It is not fair on thick people to put Paul Quinn into that category.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

Paul Quinn cannot handle it, at all; I agree with Tau Henare.

This is a four-pronged attack on job security. There is an attempt to weaken the process, to extend the range of reasons for dismissal—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

These changes are unfair, unbalanced, unnecessary, and ideologically driven, rather than being driven by people with any real knowledge of how wage and salary earners live in New Zealand these days. The provisions attack job security, they weaken the processes, they extend the range of reasons for dismissal, they restrict the right to appeal, and they restrict the right to reinstatement. What an outrageous Government that tips away the balance. When someone wins his or her case, the Government says that the balance should not be towards that person getting his or her job back again. That is the sort of approach we are seeing from the National Government here today.

This is part of National’s attempt to drive down wages, and it proves that before the election, lies were told about the wish to close the gap with Australia. What we have seen under legislation—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

Those members should all look in the mirror occasionally! This bill makes a lie of the commitment to closing the wage gap with Australia. It allows people to be sacked without a reason, and that is just not fair. New Zealanders do not like that; New Zealanders are for fairness. New Zealanders accept trials and they accept probationary periods, but they say that if someone is not going to be employed at the end of a probationary period, he or she should have a reason. That is pretty fair and reasonable. No reasonable person would disagree with that. No one is saying that someone has to keep a job, but if that person is not keeping a job then a reason should be given.

The Prime Minister made a promise to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions as to the processes about access provisions. He said that that was not a priority for the Government. Business New Zealand said that it was not a priority for that organisation. The Prime Minister said that he would discuss the matter again before he made any public announcements on it, but he has now been shown not to be telling the truth on that issue. I think that one of the things we used to see quite a lot of around here—and in recent years, and I include the latter period of the Hon Jim Bolger—was a high emphasis put on people keeping their word and being honest. But that has been abandoned by the Prime Minister in this legislation.

On the question of access, I think it is a pretty simple issue that if workers have an immediate problem, if there is a grievance issue—subject to provisions like safety and normal working arrangements, which are the sort of things that have been there—they should be allowed to ask someone from the union to visit them on site in order to try to sort out the issue. That is not an unreasonable thing. Again, it is a matter of the pretty basic fairness that Kiwis believe in—that is, that if there is a problem or an issue in the workplace, then someone from the member’s union should be allowed to come in and talk to that person about it, and that that action should be pretty immediate, and not put off until the next day or the day after by an employer who may well be attempting to mislead people as to what is actually going on. Even Kate Wilkinson—I want to quote the Minister—said just over a year ago that “There does not appear to be widespread evidence of union representatives exercising their current rights to enter workplaces in an inappropriate way, resulting in disruption for business operations or adversely impacting on the employment relationship between employer and unions members.”

I agree with Kate Wilkinson. In a year as Minister of Labour I do not think I had a single complaint come to me about that issue. I do not know of any complaints that came to the department. Certainly, no complaints about that were reported to me. I think that we are trying to solve a problem here that does not exist, and in doing so we are taking away a fair entitlement for workers, which allowed them to get on the phone and ask their union representative to come along and try to help them sort out problems they had. That is not an unreasonable thing for workers to be able to do, and I think that most Kiwis think that that is fair enough.

I have referred to the 90-day trial period before, and the issue is relatively simple: it goes to whether someone is entitled to a reason when they get the sack. They are not asking for even a good reason, just a reason, and whether or not they are entitled to a reason. We have been seeing some parallels on that particular issue in these buildings over the last couple of days. The issue has been very well set out by Heather Roy when she said, talking about someone who was the leader of her party: “As previously arranged, Rodney Hide came to my office to view the defence document. He took it away from me and turned to leave. I explained that he could not take it away but could read it in my office, and explained again the security classification that he holds. He refused to leave it here. He turned to leave my office. Short of standing up in the doorway or coming from behind my desk and taking the document from him, I could not stop him from taking it from the office.” There we have a very clear case of someone who is effectively an employer. He is a leader of a party, which is pretty close to being an employer for these purposes, and which was certainly enough to get Heather Roy sacked. She could not intervene in that way, so we have a situation where one of her former fellow Ministers is saying that she thinks it is all right, and that she thinks it is something that can be extended to other people.

I tell this House that this legislation is designed to tell ordinary wage and salary earners that the Government wants them to have fewer rights, and that it does not want their wages to go up. It says to wage and salary earners that the Government is happy with the gap opening up with Australia, that it does not want union representatives to come in when workers call them, and that it does not want workers to be given a reason when they get the sack. That is the sort of legislation that I would have expected from a 1960s National Government. Even Sir Robert Muldoon would have believed in people being given a reason when they were getting the sack. Bill Birch certainly would have believed in people being given a reason when they were getting the sack. But with John Key and Kate Wilkinson, we have legislation here that does not do that.

DARIEN FENTON Link to this

Another one, and if the member would like to seek leave for me to talk for the rest of the day, I will cite numerous cases.

Yesterday the Minister talked about a hairdresser. She said the hairdresser was a bit rough, but she was taken on and was grateful to have a job, and it has all turned out lovely—it is all sweetness and light. I want to tell the story of another hairdresser whom I talked to yesterday. She got a job as a stylist, via the Internet. It is funny about the Internet, actually. What do we see on the Internet? We see job advertisements on TradeMe that state that the provisions of the 90-day legislation will apply. I thought that it was voluntary, not compulsory. I go back to the hair stylist. Two days after she started work, she was called into the office and given an individual agreement with a trial period in it, and she was asked to sign it. A few weeks later, before the 90 days were up, she was called into work and fired. No reason was given, no notice was given, and no support was offered. Let me tell members about that woman. She is 58 years of age, and was delighted to have a job. She had been struggling to find a job for a long time. She has never been sacked in her life, and this dismissal hit her like a bombshell. Her confidence has gone down the gurgler.

This is just one of many stories that we have been hearing. The Council of Trade Unions helpline has been inundated with calls from parents who are concerned about their children.

Labour is totally opposed to the extension of the 90-day trial period. The Minister’s own evaluation showed that there is widespread abuse of the 90-day trial period. One in five workers were sacked. The report on the trial period was very unbalanced: 3,500-odd employers were asked, and just 13 workers got to give their point of view. Yet the Prime Minister paraded that report at the National Party conference as a sign of the success of the trial period. It was a very, very unbalanced report. I am confused about the 90-day trial period in the current law, let alone what it may mean in future law. I cannot understand whether it is voluntary. If it is voluntary, what is voluntary? Is what is voluntary that the worker does not have to accept a job with a 90-day trial period? It seems to me that the only thing that is voluntary about this provision is that the employer gets to decide whether to voluntarily impose a trial period. There is no choice for many workers. If they want to have a job, they simply have to accept this provision.

I want to spend just a couple of minutes on access. There are so many things in this bill that I could talk all day, but I know that Mr Assistant Speaker will not let me do that. The problem with the access provisions in the bill is that, first of all, there is no demand for change, and that has been referred to today. No one asked for this change, and no one wants it. There is no problem; the Minister’s own officials have told her that. But the Minister is proposing that an employer must consent to access by a union representative, and that that consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. There is a reference to unreasonableness again, which the Minister is removing from the Holidays Act with the amending legislation that we will be debating next week around sick leave, because she says it is open to interpretation. Well, yes, it sure is. I predict that we will see big tussles as a result of this provision, I say to the Minister. We do not have to look too far back in history to see what life was like when employers had to give consent to workers having access to their union. There are practical considerations, as well. If there is an accident at a worksite, does a union really have to give 2 days’ notice in order to go along and support the workers? There are a whole lot of things that make it completely impracticable.

Finally, I want to comment very quickly on the issue of process. Once again, this bill seems to be going through a rushed process. The bill has to be reported back by 7 November. That is a very, very short time frame—and we will have the amendments to the Holidays Act, as well—for the biggest change to employment law that we have seen in a decade. That is a disgrace, and Labour will be opposing this bill.

Dr JACKIE BLUE Link to this

Absolutely. The other changes to this bill include union access to workplaces. It also clarifies communication with employees during collective bargaining and the personal grievance process. This bill is all about giving choice, it is about giving flexibility, and it ensures balance and fairness to both employers and employees. I commend this bill to the House.

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

It was National, and what did it do? The first thing it did when it was in Government then was to scrap the pay equity legislation.

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

It was the very first thing, and it has done exactly the same thing again. What else did National do? It passed the Employment Contracts Act, which in those days was recognised as an attack, an assault, on workers—

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

Never mind the member chipping in—this Government is doing exactly the same thing again. It has scrapped the apprenticeship legislation, which is another way of not creating jobs. That is what the previous National Government did, and it had dear old Max Bradford wanting to buy the extra week’s holiday—surprise, surprise.

David Bennett, who is sitting there, is looking forward to chairing this bill when it comes before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, but I tell members in this House that it is an absolute insult to workers. For the Minister to stand there and talk about fairness and balance is utterly and completely ridiculous.

This bill is unfair, it is unbalanced, but, most important, it is unnecessary. We heard Jackie Blue turning round the figures. She said that because of this bill 75 percent of the few people who managed to get a job in New Zealand managed to keep their job.

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

I can see the Minister nodding over there, but what it actually means is that 25 percent of workers in New Zealand were dumped in the first 3 months. That was just in a select group of workplaces, but this Government is now saying “Oh gosh, we are not doing it tough enough. We will extend that to every workplace in New Zealand.” It is absolutely shocking stuff.

We heard a Māori Party member say that there is no job creation under this Government; it is actually preventing employment. We know that. It is pretty rich, when we look around this House, that anyone can be sacked from a job during the first 90 days for any reason whatsoever and that reason does not have to be given. It might be that an employer does not like the clothes an employee wears. It might be that an employer does not like the employee’s haircut. No reason needs to be given. I say to this House that if a young person’s first experiment, I mean experience—or experiment, because it is an experiment—of work is to be sacked with no cause and no reason given, how does that set up that young person for the future? This is a Government that is supposed to care.

But the other thing, again in line with a Government that does not think about creating or keeping jobs, is reinstatement. If, as a result of a personal grievance, a worker loses a job and it is deemed to be unfair, surely it is right that that worker should have the right to get back that job. Is that not fair? If an employer has sacked a worker and that worker is lucky enough to have access to personal grievance proceedings because he or she has been working for that employer for more than 3 months, and if it is deemed that the employer botched up, why in the middle of a recession with no recovery happening would a Government remove reinstatement as the primary remedy? Why would it do that? It is a mean-spirited and mean-willed action from a mean Government.

This Government is doing this despite all the rhetoric about caring, and I think that is what we on this side of the House find so offensive. It is saying that it cares, so it is going to make it easier for workers to be sacked. It is saying that it cares, so it says that if workers are unjustifiably sacked, then reinstatement is not a primary remedy. I would like the Minister or someone in National to take a call to explain to this House why a worker who has been dismissed without cause and without justification cannot have his or her job back. I urge someone in National—perhaps Tau Henare would be able to—

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

He is a reasonable person and he has had experience of representing workers—not in a very good way, I will accept, but he has had experience none the less.

This is a sad day for workers in New Zealand. The fact that this bill will be hurried through the select committee process, in order to be reported back to the House in November, will be a nice Christmas present for workers in New Zealand.

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

Here we go again. We know who will be the worst affected by this bill. Who will it be? We have seen an example of workplace bullying with poor Heather Roy, and we all have a lot of sympathy for Heather Roy in terms of the workplace bullying that we have seen today. I can see Sir Roger nodding his head there and thinking it is not on. But Heather Roy still has a job. We are looking at young workers, vulnerable workers, who will not have an opportunity to stay in their job—a job that they may have worked really, really hard to get. This Government is removing that right.

I also want to draw attention to what we have seen in the short time that this Government has been in power. We still have languishing on the Order Paper victims’ rights legislation that would give real support to victims of domestic violence in New Zealand. But the Minister says that legislation will be introduced when the Government can afford it. The legislation is languishing on the Order Paper until the Government can afford it, and, instead, this Government is racing through legislation that once again is dealing to workers.

I would have more respect for Government members if they said that they launched it at the National Party conference because they know their constituency likes dealing to workers. They like it; that is part of what National is about. If they said that, we would at least respect them for a degree of honesty. But they say “We’re from the National Party, and we are here to help workers.” Well, I do not think anyone, certainly no one on this side of the House, believes that. I know that in their heart of hearts National members do not believe that either. It is just like their welfare reforms. They are there to help people into work. What do we say? Find the jobs. Invest in people, invest in the economy, create the jobs, and then people will work and they will be able to keep their jobs. Do not take away their right to get a job. As Ken Douglas said, his grandad said to him that when one gets a job, look after it, because someone worked very hard—

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

That is rich, coming from that member. That is a doozy, coming from that member. Calling people dinosaurs; that is a real doozy.

This bill is an insult to workers in New Zealand, it is an insult to families in New Zealand, and it is something that should not happen. I am really pleased that members on this side of the House, along with the Green Party and the Māori Party, are vehemently opposed to this bill. I say to the Government that there will be many submissions before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee telling this Government what a lousy job it is doing in industrial relations and what a bad Minister of Labour it has.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS Link to this

No, I was not going to speak but the member got me so excited.

ACT supports the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). In particular, I want to talk about just one provision, and that is the extension of the 90-day provision. What we have on the other side of the House—it is really interesting to listen to the Labour Party—are the unionists advocating protection for existing workers and locking out the disadvantaged. That is essentially what the Labour members’ argument is. They wrap it up, but essentially they want to support and extend the privilege of existing workers, and they want to limit any possible competition from disadvantaged people. They want to lock out young Māori people, and they want to lock out our Pacific Island people from getting one foot on the ladder.

We know, from the provisions that have already been passed, that 40 percent of the people who got a job would not have got a job otherwise. In other words, those people got a start; they got a step up on the rung. Labour and the unions want to lock out the most vulnerable people in society so that they cannot get a step up on the ladder. They do not want to allow them to get a start.

We know what they said about youth rates. Labour members were not in favour of youth rates. They are not in favour of a young Māori boy being able to work for $300 a week. No, those members say, in the name of so-called justice—

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS Link to this

I was enjoying the interjections. I certainly was not worried. What Labour members say in terms of those young people is that they are not happy for them to work.

Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS Link to this

I am making the point that their objections are similar in terms of this bill. They are saying to that young Māori boy that he is not allowed to work for $300 a week but that they will be very generous to him and give him $160 a week so he can stay home. Labour is saying that if those people want supplementary income they should join a gang, or, if they are female, have a child.

The simple point is that this bill aims to allow the disadvantaged, the most vulnerable people in our society, to get a step up on the ladder. When they get that step up, they can go anywhere. They can climb. That is what Labour wants to deny. Labour wants to protect existing workers at the expense of the unemployed and the disadvantaged. So when Labour members come in here and cry crocodile tears, we should not take any notice of them, at all.

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

There is another statement. We are hearing that everyone will use the provision, and that when we extend it out to firms with more than 20 people, absolutely all employers will use it. But I say that that is absolutely not the case. Fewer than half of the firms eligible to use this provision did so—fewer than half—and only about half of the people employed by that half of employers were taken on under the probation period. So of all the people who could have been employed under a probation period, by my maths probably only about a quarter of them were.

But what is really interesting is why those people were taken on. Nearly a quarter of employers said that they were not sure whether work was available for employees, or that they had given a job to someone who might not otherwise have got it; they were not sure whether the person could do the job. To be opposed to that sort of thing, and to prevent even one job from being created in the face of uncertainty, is to have no understanding of how to run a business during a recovery from a recession, a recovery that is uncertain and fragile. If one has a small business—if one is a landscape gardener, or a plumber, with five or six staff—taking on an extra staff member is a huge risk, an absolutely huge risk, in the face of that uncertainty. To give a little bit more flexibility—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

It is a fragile recovery and it is uncertain, particularly from the point of view of employers. That is what the surveys are showing, and they show that because people cannot see into the future.

I take up the point made by Mr Harawira about this measure being bad for young people. But 43 percent of the people taken on under these provisions were aged under 25. Nearly half of the people given a chance under this measure were young people so I think this is good legislation. It is fair, it is flexible, and I support it.

CLARE CURRAN Link to this

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I want to talk a bit about what this Government is. My colleague Darren Hughes today quite accurately described it as a mirage because, ultimately, it does not mean what it says. This Government does a thing called Orwellian language. Orwellian language means an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past. The Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, stood in the House at question time today, and again during her first reading speech, and described this Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) as fair and reasonable. Let me tell the House what fair and reasonable means according to this Government. It means unfair and unreasonable. Every time this Government says certain words, we know that it means something else—the opposite. The Minister said that the bill was not major and that it was only a little change. That means it is a big change. It is just like when Tony Ryall talks constantly about change in health—change that equals cuts. Bill English talks about change in the public sector and reprioritisation—words that mean cuts; cuts to people’s services and cuts to people’s jobs. The icing on the cake is “aspirational”, which means that the Government does not really mean it. We are aspirational about closing the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia. We are aspirational about creating 170,000 jobs—was it?

CLARE CURRAN Link to this

It was something like that.

Unfortunately the Government is not aspirational about this bill. It really means it, but it is not a small change that is fair and reasonable. It is a major shift towards fundamentally affecting the relationship between employers and employees in our New Zealand workplaces. It is taking us backwards as a country. It will affect the morale and the productivity of employees, of hard-working New Zealanders, of people who earn wages and salaries, and of people who are not liars and slackers. It will make workplaces harder to be in. It will entrench unfairness in our employment relations system and it will not do anything to address the fact that we do not have enough jobs in this country and we do not have an economic plan. If the Australian Labor Party wins the election on Saturday it will make Australia an even more attractive place to head for, with higher wages and more jobs in an environment that encourages and enables working people and does not make them feel bad.

Labour opposes this bill. I commend all my colleagues for their efforts to expose this bill for what it really is—an assault on workers’ rights, wages, and conditions. It demonstrates that the Government is implicitly saying at the outset: “We don’t care about fairness or treating employees as a valuable resource.” It is a continuation of National’s attack on workers’ rights, wages, and conditions. These amendments are unfair, unbalanced, and unnecessary. As I said, it is a backward step for New Zealand. It will undermine the ability of New Zealand employees to improve their wages and working conditions.

I will talk briefly about a couple of the measures: firstly, the 90-day trial period, which will let employers sack employees for no justifiable reason within 90 days of taking a new job. With an estimated 700,000 people changing jobs every year, and about 300,000 at any one time in their first 90 days, the legislation will have a grave effect on most workers. I know that one of my other colleagues called it sloppy and bad management practice. It will allow and encourage employers to substitute dismissal for sound appointment and induction, and good supervision and training, for new employees. It will lead to considerable abuse and bad practice; it will not increase employment, or work towards closing that gap with Australia. During the 1990s the Employment Contracts Act allowed many of these practices, so the legislation is going backwards; it is going back to the future. The result of that bad practice and the destruction of unions was low wages. In the 1990s after inflation, the average wage rose only 6 percent over the 10 years that the legislation was in force, and studies of this period show that exports were built on low wages and low skills rather than on high value. That was the period when most of the growth gap with Australia opened up, so I ask whether that is what we are heading for again.

I will give just a few examples of real people who have been affected by the existing 90-day law. A woman in Auckland worked at a bar, but got the sack, because—she thought—her employer wanted to hire younger people. There was nothing wrong with the quality of her work; it was just her age. But, as I was told, how could she prove it? She could not, and had to leave. That was not fair. A man in Wellington gave up a good job to go and work in a public relations company. He got to the new job and discovered that builders were doing renovations and he did not have an office. He did not have a job. A young worker at Burger Fuel was dismissed for asking for a tea break. That worker had no ability to defend himself; it was not fair. Twenty-two percent of people employed on the 90-day trial basis to date have lost their jobs, but if there was a problem with the quality of the work being done or with behaviour in the workplace, they could be dismissed fairly. Why should we make it legal to dismiss workers unfairly? It goes against the grain, it goes against the New Zealand psyche, and it goes against the essence of what it means to be a New Zealander. It legislates for bad employers and bad employment practices—bad law. I did not come into this place to see bad law being enacted.

I will also speak about restricting union access, which is an ideological and deliberate attack on the democratic right of workers to join unions and resolve workplace issues. There are campaigns nationwide, on the streets, in which workers and unions are protesting against this unjust and unfair legislation. The House has heard from Labour and Green members about this today; it is about fairness. This Government has at least now shown its true colours; it pretended to like the unions and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions for the first 19 months of its term. But all of a sudden this legislation has shown what Government members really think: keep unions out of workplaces. I heard Kate Wilkinson say at question time today that the legislation had just a small change that provided discretion to employers to be able to plan. But I ask: plan for what? It is a plan to be able to block union representatives from workplaces if there is any whiff of trouble—in other words to prevent employees from exercising their rights to be represented in their workplaces.

At the same time we know there is actually no need for the change. The regulatory impact statement noted that there did not appear to be widespread evidence of union representatives exercising their current rights to enter workplaces in an inappropriate way, resulting in disruption for business operations or in an adverse impact on the employment relationship between employer and union members. Having lived in Australia for a few years during the 1990s, I saw what happened when the Howard Government unfairly took on the unions and workers, interfered with that relationship between working people and their employers, and tried to skew it to the side of employers. Many thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people took to the streets over it, and the Prime Minister had to back down because it was fundamentally unfair. It is a short-sighted attack on workers, and it will have negative consequences, not only for working people but for the initiatives to change our workplaces into the productive—and it just appals me to hear Government members say exactly the opposite—well-rewarded places they need to be for real growth in the economy.

I will mention a few things about National’s past record on workers’ rights. Too many of the Ministers in the current Government are from National’s school of the 1990s, which taught that workers’ rights should be secondary to business profits. National has a shocking record on workers’ rights, but it tried to put on a smiley face at the last election and pretend that things would be different this time. But they are not, and they are clearly not. The first thing that National did in Government in the 1990s was to repeal the last thing that Labour had passed, the employment equity legislation, and in 1991 the National Government passed the Employment Contracts Act.

Hon TAU HENARE Link to this

This will be a bottler, all right. Back in 1966 there was the FIFA World Cup final between England and West Germany. For years later a battle raged over who actually won that game. The battle went on and on. Well, this debate is a bit like that, because Labour members are fighting the old battles that were won and lost a long, long time ago.

I heard the lady from west Auckland, Lynne Pillay, who talked about the Employment Contracts Act and how this bill, the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2), resembled that Act. But if that were the case, thousands upon thousands of down-trodden workers would be piled up outside. The last big protest that had thousands of people parked up outside this building was over the foreshore and seabed legislation. That is a telling little example. Who won that game? The Māori Party won that game—and England won the World Cup back in 1966. The Employment Contracts Act is so long ago that it does not bear even mentioning.

I will get up in this House and say a big thankyou to Sir Roger Douglas, because he has hit the nail on the head. Putting all the philosophy and the old rhetoric aside, this bill is about hope. It is about giving people a second chance. All we need to do is ask an ex-prisoner who is looking for a job—

Hon TAU HENARE Link to this

Absolutely! Oh no, I mean somebody who has actually been convicted—oh, but that is OK.

Hon TAU HENARE Link to this

Let us not go there.

This is about opportunity, this is about giving a chance, and this is about giving hope to the ex-prisoner who may want to get a job and get on the rung that Sir Roger Douglas talks about.

Where are all those thousands and thousands of union protests? They are nowhere. They are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the only place that they are seen is in the minds of the Opposition members. I tell members that my parting shot is this: they should go and look at the film Inception, because that is where the Opposition belongs—in dreamtime.