Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2)

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

That is all right, thank you, Mr Bennett. We are concerned about the way that employees are treated when they enter the workplace and start the first 90 days of their work. The Department of Labour’s survey revealed that the workers it interviewed felt vulnerable and were concerned about job security, and that nearly a quarter of workers were sacked within that 90-day period. If anyone in New Zealand thinks that a quarter of the people in the workplace are not worthy of retaining their job, I think that is an appalling indictment. That is what the National Government obviously thinks, because it has given employers free rein to sack people—and often they are young people—without any reason whatsoever. Maybe an employer does not like the employee’s hairstyle or the employee wears an earring. Employers do not have to give people a reason for sacking them.

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

That is right; they could put too much sauce on the food. That is absolutely appalling.

If my memory serves me correctly, I am pretty sure that someone from the Government benches said the survey findings meant that 75 percent of employees kept their jobs. Well, whoop-de-doo! If we think that a 75 percent retention rate after 90 days for new employees is acceptable, that is a real indictment on this Government’s thinking—if it is thinking.

Also, while I am on the subject of employment rights, I point out that if workers do manage to get through the first 90 days and then subsequently take a personal grievance for wrongful dismissal, reinstatement is the primary remedy under the current Act if it is found that they were wrongfully dismissed. I think that is a very good thing; so does my colleague Darien Fenton. Why? Because it states that retention of employment, particularly in this environment, is the most important thing, so if an employer has unjustifiably dismissed a worker, then reinstatement should be the primary remedy. We all know that if the employer is an absolute bully, or if there are irreconcilable differences between the employer and employee, then of course the employment will not continue, but that should be the primary remedy. This bill removes reinstatement as the primary remedy, so even if a worker is dismissed unjustifiably—that is, it is deemed by the Employment Court or by the whole proceedings that the worker is not at fault—the person still does not get the job back. That person will join the thousands and thousands of people in the unemployment queue, because this Government is not creating jobs. Apart from the fact that this is grossly unfair, it is offensive and is just plain dumb.

This legislation is not about creating jobs, and it is not about retaining people in work. It is just about tripping back to the 1990s under a Government that simply cannot get out of that mode. Although under the previous Labour Government we had finally put ourselves in a position where New Zealanders could hold our heads high internationally because we had labour relations that stacked up, this back-to-the-future lot is taking us back to the 1990s. We are being taken back to a time of shame, back to a time of people being fearful of losing their jobs, back to a time when workers’ conditions were slashed—

LYNNE PILLAY Link to this

“Oh, come on!”, says Mr Bennett, the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. This Government is bad enough, but the chair and the Government members on that committee did not listen to the vast majority of the submitters, who opposed this bill. That chair made a mockery of the select committee process. I congratulate the Labour and Green members on their minority report, because what the chair and the Government members did on the committee was absolutely shocking.

I thank Mr Assistant Speaker Roy for letting me know that it is time for me to close this speech. I look forward to the Committee stage on this bill. Thank you.

ALLAN PEACHEY Link to this

I will pass just one observation, which is that it is interesting to note just how sensitive that crowd over there are to the truth about the real nature of trade unionism in New Zealand, and to what that party now represents. Thank you.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

After that, Mr Assistant Speaker wants me to narrow my speech. He is intervening on those members’ side, but not on ours. That is interesting—[ Interruption] There was a point of order earlier. It is not that I am referring to it, because that would be inappropriate, but the member—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

I note the wide debate that Allan Peachey was allowed by the Assistant Speaker. I will now focus on this Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) and look at how this legislation fits very well with the attempt being made by John Key and his Government to drive down the conditions of wage earners and salary earners all around the country and, in particular, in the Mana electorate.

This bill is focused on poor people. It is designed to drive out the gap between the rich and the poor, between the Aussies and the New Zealanders. This is a bill designed by John Key to make sure that his mates do not have to pay decent wages to people who are wage earners and salary earners. These amendments are unfair; they are absolutely unbalanced. In fact, they are about as balanced as Allan Peachey’s previous speech. The amendments are unnecessary, because our system is working pretty well already. The amendments are ideological. We can tell from where they were announced that ideology, not logic, was involved. The amendments were announced at the National Party conference. They were hauled out of the blue, with promises of consultation that were broken by John Key.

It is interesting to see how often, now, John Key is being caught breaking his word. One thing that Kiwis think is important is truthfulness in their leaders. This is a good example of how John Key has been caught being untruthful and not being loyal to his word. He made a commitment on this legislation to go back to people and to talk about it, before it was announced, and he broke his word. He did that deliberately.

We have a Prime Minister whose word cannot be relied on—a Prime Minister who, time and time again, makes a commitment and breaks it. One of the things that Kiwis value in their leaders is that they are people who tell the truth, people who are reliable, and people who do not break their word. Kiwis also like loyalty from those people. What do we have now? We have hundreds of photos of John Key and Pansy Wong, smiling and waving—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

I will focus on Pansy Wong and the changes in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) that apply to her. This is a four-pronged approach in an attack on job security. A loyal employer, someone who was a good manager, would not weaken the processes in the way that they are being weakened here, and were weakened for Pansy Wong. Arm in arm with Pansy Wong was the Prime Minister going around the ethnic communities, until there was a problem, and where was his loyalty then? It was a case of “smile and walk away”. The amendments extend the range—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

Speaking to the point of order, I say the bill has a lot to do with job security, processes for dismissal, rights to appeal, and rights to reinstatement. All of those apply to Pansy Wong.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

This bill makes it easier to dismiss people and harder for them to be reinstated. It is absolutely clear that that is part of the purpose of this legislation. We now have a classic case under the existing legislation where Phil Heatley jumped and was reinstated, and under this legislation Pansy Wong will go and will not have a hope of being reinstated. Why? Because there is no loyalty on the other side of the House, and members opposite do not care about processes as we go forward.

John Key tried to sell this bill as part of a plan to grow the economy, but we all know what the evidence is in this area. In New Zealand we have people who will not change jobs for fear of this legislation. We have what is known internationally as a sticky labour market. We used to have a pretty flexible labour market. In fact, I have had debates with some of my colleagues in the past about how our labour market was perhaps too flexible. But people could go from job to job, to where they would be valued, to where they would be paid more, and to the opportunities, and that was good for our economy. But this bill says to people that if they are on $100,000, it might be worth going to a job paying $110,000, but that will be no damned good if they will lose the job in the first 90 days. What sort of security for one’s family is that? It is about the same sort of security that Pansy Wong had, and about the same sort of loyalty that Pansy Wong was shown.

It is clear that there has been no attempt on the part of the Government to close the wage gap with Australia, because this legislation is designed to drive down conditions for wage earners and salary earners in New Zealand. It is the intention of this Government to drive down conditions in order to make wage earners and salary earners earn less, so that the Government’s mates can make bigger profits. That is a very short-term approach, because all the international evidence now shows that when workplaces are working well together—where workers are valued, where they are trained, where their skills are better, where there is a two-way commitment, and where workers know their employer will not do the “smile and wave” goodbye or take the “smile and walk away” approach towards them—workplaces become more and more productive. Profits go up and everyone is better off: the owners, the managers, and the wage earners and salary earners.

New Zealand already has amongst the most flexible labour laws in the developed world. I think it is fair to say that during the time of Margaret Wilson and when I was the Minister of Labour, a pretty deliberate decision was made not to go back to the rules of the 1980s, to take a more progressive approach, to attempt to get something that New Zealanders could unite behind, and to have some consistency in labour relations legislation over a period of time. We had an indication from the National Party, even before the election, that it also thought that was the case. But what we clearly have now is an approach from National that it wants to drive down the conditions of people around New Zealand.

It shows gross incompetence on National’s part that it is choosing to progress this legislation, and progress other legislation later that takes away peoples’ holidays, as it goes into the Mana by-election. People in Mana are among the most disadvantaged, and they will be affected the most by this legislation. I do not know whether Gerry Brownlee hates Hekia Parata, or whether he is just incompetent—it might be both. It could be both, but debating this bill under urgency while going into the Mana by-election is probably the biggest case of incompetence I have seen for a long time.

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

I was not there. I do not know what he said, but I know he does not have to go cap in hand to Ms Kelly every time he wants to make changes to employment legislation.

I want to drill into some of the matters that came up during the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee’s consideration of the bill, and in particular the 90-day probation period. Again, I thank Lynne Pillay for providing an excellent example of how the 90-day probation period will work. She quoted a fellow who lost his job because, he claimed, he put too much aioli sauce in the pasta. Here is what she did not say. The 90-day probation period will not apply in a situation like that. That case may be before the courts, so I will not talk about it specifically, but a person who does not sign an employment agreement cannot be subject to the 90-day probation period. So yet again the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has scored an own goal. This is an example of the process working, not of the process not working. No one who does not sign an employment agreement can have the protection of the 90-day legislation, which has been in place for a couple of years now. The Department of Labour has done some very good research into how effectively the law is working.

Members on the other side can take a “glass three-quarters empty” approach to what is going on. But I point out that a great number of those people who were taken on by small businesses under the 90-day provision would not have been employed were it not for that opportunity. It is just too hard otherwise.

It is also really interesting that of all of the small and medium sized enterprises that were able to use that legislation, only half of them did so—only half of the organisations. They did not all rush out and slap on 90-day probation periods. They thought very carefully about when that would be appropriate and when it was OK to take a chance on employees who might be marginalised—they might be coming back from a long period of unemployment or might be new migrants to this country—and give them a chance. But of the half only of the employers that used that provision, they did not even use it for all their staff. They used it for only just over half of those staff. So for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, only just over a quarter of the people who could have been employed under a 90-day probation period were. The rest were employed permanently. And here is the good news: nearly 80 percent of them still have their jobs. Nearly 80 percent of them are still employed. For those who are not, they were not all sacked. Some of them left of their own volition; for some it simply did not work out. That is one of the consequences—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

Enough to make the survey scientific. Nobody is questioning the validity. I understand that members on the other side are worried that those conducting the survey did not speak to employees, but it is not employees who are doing the 90-day probation period employing. It is employers. When we are talking to the employers—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

I did not say that. Nobody is putting words in my mouth. Of course they count—that is why we are doing this. I have absolute confidence that when this measure is extended, we will see similar discernment from other employers. We had the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists—the junior doctors—come in and say that they would all be put on 90-day probation periods. Well, that is nonsense, because employers are much more discerning than that.

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

Because I have been one and I know what they are like. As Lynne Pillay said, and I will quote from her second reading speech, there are many, many good employers, just as there are many, many good employees. But what she did not say is what Labour members really think but do not say out loud, which is that they have no problems with there being a few errant employees. They ask why on earth we would want to wrap law up around controlling errant employees, but when it comes to errant employers, they say we should lock them down. They say we should put all the red tape around them that we can, and all the good employers can suffer the consequences of having to put up with that—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE Link to this

Exactly; she has admitted it. Why would she not? It is what she believes. Labour members believe that all employers are errant, so we should lock them up in red tape. Well, I do not think so. I think employers deserve to be given much more confidence in their ability to grow this economy, to employ staff, and to have the flexibility that this bill will give them, and I support it.