Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora e te whānau o ngā ringa tōtā. I move, That the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is a privilege to introduce the first reading of this bill, and at the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.

In the last year 60,000 workers have lost their jobs. For each of those workers, that is a personal tragedy. Every one of them has faced the awful impact and humiliation that redundancy has had on them and their families. How they have coped will have differed. Those who are union members, by and large, will be better off, because most of them are likely to have had some kind of redundancy protection in their agreements. But thousands of others—like the warehouse supervisor Rob Highsted, who had worked for his company for 20 years until he was made redundant this week—will have gone out of their jobs with absolutely nothing.

An estimated 80 percent of working New Zealanders have no redundancy protections written into their employment agreements. For these New Zealanders, losing their jobs can mean that they have no way to pay their mortgages, or support themselves and their families, while they search for other jobs. That is because there are no requirements in New Zealand law for minimum redundancy notice and compensation. The need for a fair system for redundancy protection has become more urgent over the past 18 months, as more people have lost their jobs and replacement jobs have been harder to find. I have been hearing from laid-off workers who have had no redundancy notice and pay. That has left them struggling to pay their mortgages and support their families. I have no doubt that other members in this House have heard the same stories.

This bill would provide all working New Zealanders with basic redundancy protection to help tide them over between jobs. It is based on recommendations from the 2008 report of the Public Advisory Group to the Minister of Labour on Restructuring and Redundancy, which advised the then Government to consider introducing minimum redundancy protections for all workers. That group was established by Labour in 2007 to examine the adequacy of redundancy laws and provisions in New Zealand workplaces. The group was an independent body established to provide advice to the Government, and it included representatives from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand.

The advisory group recommended options for addressing the gaps in, and issues with, the existing law and policy provisions. The first recommendation of the advisory group was that the Government should consider the introduction of a statutory requirement for redundancy compensation, and other entitlements that incorporated the following features: notice of redundancy termination for the affected worker, compensation based on length of service, a maximum level of statutory compensation and provision of redundancy support, and active labour market mechanisms for affected workers and organisations. Unfortunately, the National Government’s Minister of Labour allowed this very extensive and well-researched report to languish on her desk for 12 months, and then she threw it in the rubbish bin.

This bill amends the Employment Relations Act by inserting a new Part 6E, “Statutory minimum redundancy entitlements”, under clause 4. The minimum entitlements for employees in this new part would apply to an employee who had been in a continuous employment relationship with an employer for more than one calendar year. Within 12 months, the Minister of Labour would be required to conduct a public education campaign to inform employers and employees of the minimum entitlements conferred by this legislation, and to report to the House of Representatives within 6 months of the conclusion of the campaign as to its details, including an independent evaluation of its effectiveness. The minimum entitlements under the bill that employers would receive as a result of new section 69ZL(1), inserted under clause 4, would be: “(a) notice of dismissal”—due to redundancy—“of no less than 4 weeks; and (b) compensation for redundancy … of 4 weeks’ remuneration for the first full year of the employee’s continuous employment with the employer; and (c) further compensation for redundancy in the amount of 2 weeks’ remuneration for each subsequent full or partial year of the employee’s continuous employment with the employer, up to a maximum entitlement of 26 weeks’ remuneration.”

New Zealand workers are among the cheapest and easiest in the world to sack. We are nearly alone in the developed world—apart from the USA—in having no redundancy notice in compensation. Last year, the Australian Federal Government introduced generous redundancy entitlements, because it is serious about protecting working families through the recession. We keep talking about wanting to catch up with Australia, but the Government seems unwilling to take notice of any of its good ideas—and have we not heard some of them today! We can take the example of the hundreds of skilled New Zealand engineers who were dumped from their jobs with Australasian company Transfield Services, with no redundancy pay. Transfield said that it did not have to give them any redundancy pay, because there was nothing in law and nothing in the agreement for it to do so. Funnily enough, if those workers had been in Australia, Transfield would have been required by law to pay at least the compensation proposed in my bill. It just does not make sense to me that a company can treat its workers one way in its home country and differently in another country. But, unfortunately, they do.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

The Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill goes to the heart of what Labour stands for and what it tries to do to New Zealanders when it has any ability to set direction over somebody’s life, or even a country, and the way it dictates employment relations. In the previous speech made by Darien Fenton, we heard the classic Labour mentality: the fear tactics, the inability of workers to determine their own future, and how workers need Labour to give them direction. That is the Labour mentality. Labour does not trust its own people. It cannot bet on people making their own decisions and setting their own directions in life. That is the heart of Labour. It wants to keep everybody down. It wants to be in control and keep the same rules so it can dictate what those people can achieve and their direction.

I think it is sad that Labour still does that in this House to New Zealanders. Labour does it to the people from whom it has tried to get support in past years. Labour uses the jealousy technique when talking about Telecom chief executive officers. It uses the fear tactics on ordinary Kiwis out there who want to get jobs and want to work hard. It is about time that Labour woke up and backed New Zealanders. The heart of that mentality was mentioned by the previous speaker, because she wants to make everybody a union member. That is Labour’s purpose for this bill. Labour says that people in a union will get a redundancy payment. This is the heart of what Labour is doing in this legislation. It is not about workers’ rights, it is not about helping workers, and it is not about providing for them in their time of need; it is about providing more union members. This is what it is about: Labour wants to make everybody a union member. Labour needs to look at its heart and soul and at the reality of what it is saying, instead of the rhetoric it brings to the House.

I would like to see Labour stand up and deliver. It had 9 years in Government, but did it bring this legislation forward? No. Where was it? I ask where it came from, because Labour did not bring this legislation forward when it had the chance. Now that Labour is in Opposition, it says this bill is the best thing since sliced bread. Why is that? Labour knows the reality of this legislation. It is not good for New Zealanders and it is not good for Kiwis. That is why Labour did not bring this legislation to the House when it had the chance. Now Labour puts the blame on us. That is Labour’s fear tactics. It says that National is the big, bad wolf that will not pass this bill. Labour had the chance, but it never passed the bill and it will never get that chance again because the public does not trust it. Labour—

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

If the speech from the member who has just resumed his seat, David Bennett, were made outside the House, I think it could be described fairly as hypocritical. I know we cannot say that in here, but if it were, it would be. That member, after being here for 18 months, has an entitlement to a redundancy worth over $32,000. That member, after a very short period of time in this House, has a personal entitlement to well over $32,000 worth of redundancy, whether or not he runs at the next election. He could even retire at the next election, which would be a logical thing to do, and he would still get his redundancy money. He said that the most vulnerable people in New Zealand should not be allowed a pittance.

I think, frankly, if there can be criticism of Darien Fenton’s Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill, it is that it does not go far enough. The Public Advisory Group to the Minister of Labour on Restructuring and Redundancy came out with a unanimous recommendation supported by Business New Zealand. Business New Zealand consulted widely with its members and decided that the Government should consider the introduction of a statutory requirement for redundancy compensation and other entitlements incorporating the following features.

Those features are notice, compensation based on length of service, and a maximum level of statutory compensation—this is what this does. It is doing what the employers asked for 2 years ago. Why did they ask for it? They know that having stability and loyalty from their workers is an important part of the employment arrangement. They know that having some stickiness in the labour market, having people wanting to stay with an employer, and having some sort of security if they stay there, with the likelihood of a job going forward and being less likely to be fired if there is a redundancy arrangement, are things that are good. It means that the incentives are on the employers to train people properly, to provide them with decent equipment, and to make them productive, rather than making them redundant as is far too often the case.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am very pleased to speak to the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill. I will make some initial comments about the Government’s priorities for creating jobs. Creating jobs is a top priority for this Government. We are committed to a sustainable economic recovery and to creating more jobs for New Zealanders. The Government’s economic policy during the global recession has been focused on this commitment.

The Government has taken steps to keep people in employment and to assist them when they lose their jobs. We have put in place policies that encourage economic growth, and those policies are built on exports and investment rather than on Government spending or consumer spending. Last year the Government’s small-business relief package was designed to help lighten the load of small and medium sized business, which employ many New Zealanders. That plan was about improving the environment for business, and, therefore, jobs and growth.

A number of members’ bills on employment law have been brought to the House. Some have passed into law, others have not. Suffice it to say that National believes employment law must expand job opportunities and treat all parties fairly, protecting both employees and employers. The purpose of this bill is to insert a new part into the Employment Relations Act, providing for minimum statutory redundancy entitlements.

Currently, if an employee is made redundant, the employee’s entitlements are governed by his or her employment agreement. If there is nothing about redundancy in a person’s employment agreement, the default position is that there is no requirement to pay redundancy compensation. Employers and employees are free to agree to redundancy provisions in their employment agreements. As well, the law also provides that redundancy occurs only when a position has become genuinely redundant. Employers are not able to make a worker redundant on a whim.

Specifically, this bill outlines that all employees who have worked for more than 12 months are entitled to redundancy compensation, and the bill outlines some requirements around that particular point. National will be opposing this bill. We are concerned that statutory redundancy provisions act as a barrier to employers taking on new staff. That would work against the Government’s commitment to creating jobs and fostering economic growth.

The Government acknowledges that during the recession, redundancies have been of real concern. In late 2008 the Government launched its ReStart package, which provided for workers made redundant, helping them back into work. This was set up quickly to help provide breathing space for those hardest hit by redundancy.

The issue of statutory redundancy was assessed in the last term of Parliament, in great detail, in the report of the Public Advisory Group to the Minister of Labour on Restructuring and Redundancy. Interestingly, 14 of the 22 submitters supported the status quo. There are negatives, which were noted by the report, and they are concerning and numerous. Members of the group were concerned that there would be disincentives to hire more staff and that wages could be reduced. They envisaged that there would be more temporary and contract workers. Importantly, they were concerned that by putting greater pressure on businesses, jobs would be lost and business viability could be jeopardised.

Clearly, the previous Government was concerned by these findings, because it did not go ahead and implement a statutory requirement for redundancy. The previous Government had 9 years to do so, and it did not. That is very, very revealing. It had its opportunity when it introduced the Employment Relations Act 2000. It failed to do so, and that speaks volumes.

The Government, like the public advisory group, is concerned that mandatory redundancy provisions will destroy jobs and stop employers from hiring new staff. That would be totally counter to its commitment to create jobs. The Government is also concerned about the significant cost to business, which is not insignificant. We consider that this proposal would make redundancy unaffordable for most businesses, and there would be a real risk of businesses closing as a result. We will be opposing this bill.

KEITH LOCKE (Green) Link to this

The Green Party will be strongly supporting the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill. If it is passed—and I hope it is—it will correct a major injustice for workers in this country: being laid off without any redundancy. I think that David Bennett conceded there was a problem, but he said that under this legislation employers would stick to the minimum rather than giving more than that to workers in redundancy. However, the current problem is not that employers may stick to a legislative minimum, which does not exist; the problem is that they do not give any redundancy at all in many cases.

We have a recent statement from the National Distribution Union, referring to a dozen workers who were laid off by T A Macalister Ltd without any redundancy at all, because of a downturn in business. Warehouse supervisor Rob Highsted who was laid off said: “I feel bitter,”. “The warehouse in this company has been my baby - I was proud at how well I made it work, then they just say ‘piss off.’ Its 20 years of my life down the toilet.” Mr Highsted said another couple with 40 years’ service between them had also been shown the door, without so much as a thankyou from the company.

That is the problem that we face, and that is why it is important to have a minimum of 4 weeks’ notice, 4 weeks’ remuneration after 1 year, and 2 weeks’ additional remuneration for each subsequent year of continuous employment, up to a maximum entitlement of 26 weeks’ remuneration. That is consistent both with longstanding Green Party policy and, as has been pointed out, with the report of the Public Advisory Group to the Minister of Labour on Restructuring and Redundancy.

I will tell members why we have redundancy. One point is that it is a recognition by the employer, who has benefited from the labour of workers—often over many years, as in the case I mentioned—of the value of that work. It says “Here, have something, because, unfortunately, we have to make you redundant.” Secondly, it is to reduce the suffering that workers face when they are laid off. The unemployment benefit is not in itself sufficient, and there is a qualifying period for it, as well. That is particularly important now, when couples who work are mortgaged up to the hilt. If one person in the relationship loses his or her job, they cannot afford to pay the mortgage, the house goes down the tube—all kinds of things happen. There is huge suffering if people do not have any continuity of income while they look for another job. The third point is that it gives a breathing space to find another job—not just another job, but a job in one’s specialist area, if at all possible. It gives someone the time to look around to find an appropriate job. Often the problem is that workers are very highly specialised. They are geared to one job, and it takes a while either to train for something else or to look around for something that is the equivalent of what they were doing.

I myself was made redundant when I was working at the Gear meatworks in 1981 and it closed down. We got some redundancy pay, but I know that it was very difficult for many of the workers there who were highly specialised knife hands, and who had spent decades working as knife hands. Many of them became very depressed, and their families became depressed, because they did not have other work in their specialist area.

That relates to another issue raised in the public advisory group’s report: the need to give plenty of notice of the termination of employment. In this bill 4 weeks’ notice of redundancy is required, but there is also the need to look a bit further out. If something is happening to an industry, if a change is going on and there might be redundancies, there is a need to have a whole transition to new employment. That is why it is important to have adult education and not to cut night classes, which are often a way for people to make the transition to a new job. Unfortunately, this Government has cut night classes.

We want to be able to ratify ILO Convention 158, and it is important that we pass measures like this so that we can do that. We do not want to be in breach of international conventions.

The question is not that somehow workers will suffer through redundancy payments undermining full-time employment, as David Bennett claims. In fact, I think redundancy provisions are a deterrent against employers laying people off; it adds a bit of restraint, which is good. The idea that redundancy provisions somehow stop employers from employing people is a bit silly, too. How many employers think that in 3 years they might have to lay off employees and pay them 8 weeks’ redundancy, so therefore they will not employ them? That is not the way things would play out.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) Link to this

Kia ora tātou katoa e te Whare. I was checking out the website hardtimes.org.nz the other day. This website is pushing for a fair deal in hard times. It calls for people to sign a petition, hold a workplace meeting, or just to read the real-life stories of people who have copped a bad deal in redundancy. It sets out pretty much all the reasons why any decent citizen should support a minimum level of redundancy protection for all workers. What is being proposed here ain’t nothing flash: 4 weeks’ notice; and 4 weeks’ redundancy for the first year, and 2 weeks after that, up to 26 weeks. But the key focus of the bill is that a redundancy agreement should be part of every employment contract; that if we are really committed to a fair deal in hard times, then everyone should be entitled to basic redundancy protection to help them get by between jobs.

I do not know whether I buy into the exact details of the bill. I can recall a couple of years ago, when we were pushing for a minimum wage, being rudely reminded by my wife that if I was going to talk about a minimum wage, then I had to make sure that my kura, Te Rangiāniwaniwa, and the local iwi radio stations operating under Te Hiku Media, were actually paying according to the standards that I was preaching. So I had to have a sit-down with the bosses and go through the numbers. I found out that, in both cases, we were paying better than most other local businesses, but that we were not actually paying the minimum wage in certain cases. However, after a review of finances, some careful consideration, and some creative thinking, both Te Rangiāniwaniwa and Te Hiku Media were able to make some readjustments to ensure that everyone was being paid at least the minimum wage. I can tell members that that is no mean feat in a town that lies in the heart of the country’s highest Māori unemployment zone.

That is the challenge I have with this bill; I have not yet had a chance to get the folks at Te Rangiāniwaniwa or Te Hiku Media to run the numbers on this redundancy proposal, to see whether we can actually operate on the basis found in this bill. But certainly the principle of workers having redundancy protection to tide them over between jobs is a sound one, and one that both I and the Māori Party are more than happy to support. We support the Employment Relations Act 2000, we support amendments to make it more worker-friendly, and we support pay and employment equity legislation. So we certainly support the intention of this bill to provide all workers with the redundancy support to tide them over the tough times. Kia ora tātou.

Hon TAU HENARE (National) Link to this

I know that we all seem to look alike.

JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) Link to this

This is an impassioned debate. We have just heard an impassioned speech from the Hon Tau Henare, and earlier this afternoon we heard from David Bennett. This is an economic debate. It is a debate about employment. It is a debate about redundancy and redundancy provisions, and those things are very, very important. I think Mr Bennett impressed us all this afternoon with his knowledge of economic theory—who could not be impressed. I was very impressed.

Mr Bennett said to us that this measure would be a huge cost on business and that businesses would be reluctant to take on workers. Mr Bennett asked why we would want to make it harder for people to get a job, which is a very good question to ask. Mr Bennett said that this bill imposes costs on employers and that it would make them reluctant to take on new employees. Mr Bennett asked a very reasonable question: why would Labour members want to make it hard for Kiwis to get a job? It was a very reasonable question.

Why would National want to make it hard for Kiwis to get a job? If National members believe that imposing a compulsory redundancy provision on workers would have a negative impact on employment, why do they believe that imposing the costs of an emissions trading scheme and artificially increasing the price of electricity will not have the same impact on jobs? Mr Bennett asked who would want to place additional stress on business. Clearly, it is the National Government, because it is prepared to impose extra costs on businesses and exporters, and it wants to do that at a time when all our major trading partners are backing away from an emissions trading scheme.

Just last Tuesday the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, announced that Australia would be delaying the introduction of an emissions trading scheme until 2013. The United States does not have an emissions trading scheme, China does not have an emissions trading scheme. But what does National do? It continues to perpetuate the myth that our farmers and exporters will not be affected. The Minister of Agriculture, the Hon David Carter, has been telling farmers at field days that agriculture will not come into the emissions trading scheme until 2015. I call on Mr Carter, the Minister of Agriculture, to tell the truth to farmers. He knows that Meat and Wool New Zealand has said that the cost of the emissions trading scheme to dairy farmers will be about $10,200. There will be redundancies in the farming industry.

Meat and Wool New Zealand is telling farmers that under the emissions trading scheme they will have to start paying extra for electricity, petrol, and the emission costs of their dairy factories, but National is in denial. The Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill is an economic bill. It is about redundancies. We should be asking how we can stop redundancies, how we can recover from the recession, and how we can reduce our unemployment rate of 7.5 percent. The answer is to put in place economic policies that will create employment. We should ask ourselves why there is a need for Darien Fenton’s bill. How do we avoid that need? Do we have economic policies that make it easier for businesses to employ people and for us to trade our way out of recession?

I will leave the last word to the Hon John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Just 3 weeks before the last general election he said we should not be a world leader because that would come at the expense of our economy. He was obviously thinking of Darien Fenton’s bill and about the consequences of unemployment. He went on to say that he could see no sense in New Zealand exporting emissions and jobs to another part of the world. In the face of overwhelming change in the environment for emissions trading legislation and costs, and when all our major trading partners have pulled away from an emissions trading scheme—just last Tuesday Australia announced it was delaying its emissions trading scheme by 4 years—the National Government is charging ahead with it. National has its head in the sand. The Hon David Carter, the Minister of Agriculture, told farmers in Waikato this morning that we will proceed with the scheme. How stupid is that! I can understand why Darien Fenton thinks we need a bill of this nature.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) Link to this

I will start my short contribution today by congratulating Darien Fenton on the success she has had in getting her bill out of the ballot, and on the effort she has gone to in doing something through this bill that if the House were to pass it, would represent us as doing the right thing. The bill implements the recommendations of the Public Advisory Group to the Minister of Labour on Restructuring and Redundancy, which reported back in 2008. That group recommended that it was time to put in place a modest entitlement, on a universal basis, for qualifying employees.

I practised in the area of employment law for many years before I came into this House, and not only is this bill a decent thing to do; it is a smart thing to do from the point of view of making the law certain. I will take the House through some of the developments that have been seen in the law in this area to explain what I mean by that. There has never been a statutory obligation in this country to pay redundancy compensation to an employee dismissed through redundancy, and that absence of a statutory obligation, at the time when we last went through major unemployment in this country back in the 1990s, caused major disruptions in employment law. It was not an issue during most of the term of the last Government, so it was interesting to hear Mr Henare’s contribution on that point. There was no need to legislate for redundancy in that area, because we had full employment. But, guess what, the House needs to remember that we are not in those times now. We are now in times where the rate of unemployment is over 7 percent, and this issue will have to be confronted by the courts again.

It is timely for the House to recall what the courts did in the absence of a statutory redundancy entitlement the last time we faced high and unlikely-to-decrease unemployment. I will describe some of the legal cases. First of all, from about the early 1980s onwards the courts looked at what used to be called the dispute of rights provisions in the labour law that prevailed at the time. There ended up being a number of cases over whether the dispute of rights provisions in the legislation could be used to confer a right on workers to redundancy compensation, when their employment contract, award, or agreement did not expressly call for that entitlement, or, if the contract did so, it did not specify how much redundancy compensation—or notice, even—they would be entitled to. Employers tied themselves up in knots trying to work out what the law should be in any particular case where an employment instrument mentioned redundancy but did not go further than that—it did not define an entitlement.

The courts did not give any clear guidance as to whether there was such an entitlement. In some cases, like the Wellington Hospital Board case in the early 1980s, the court indicated that, yes, there was such an entitlement. Then there was the Cornhill Insurance case, the Westland Catchment Board case, the Timbercraft case, and, finally, Westland again, this time in the Court of Appeal. All of these cases gave inconsistent results as to whether an employer had to pay redundancy.

Parliament took the matter in hand when it passed the Employment Contracts Act. Clause 34 of the Employment Contracts Bill, which became section 46 of the Act, did away with the ability to use the disputes process to get a redundancy compensation deal. But the courts were actually a step ahead of Parliament, because unemployment was still high and rising at that time, and 8 days before the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, the Labour Court, in a decision called G N Hale and Sons Ltd v Wellington Caretakers IUOW—and in its second judgment in that case, following the matter being remitted from the Court of Appeal—decided that the personal grievance jurisdiction in the relevant labour law could be used to give a redundancy entitlement. All those same problems that arose under the disputes law applied for a number of years. Although, yes, it was deemed fair by the courts to pay compensation, there was never any clear guidance as to how much and in what circumstances.

We have the same provisions that applied then in our labour law at the moment, as far as personal grievances are concerned. The test is whether it is fair in all the circumstances to dismiss somebody. If the courts decide to swing the pendulum again, and decide there is an entitlement in the common law that redundancy ought to be paid to dismissed workers in certain circumstances, we will be back in that same position. No doubt this Parliament will swing in under this mean-spirited Government and just abolish the entitlement, but would it not be better to do the right thing: to support Darien Fenton’s bill and provide a modest entitlement on redundancy to workers dismissed for that reason?

CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) Link to this

Let me start by acknowledging my colleague and friend Darien Fenton. As Mr Chauvel has said, Darien Fenton has done a lot of work on the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill, and for many years she has promoted the rights of workers in this country. I think that is worth putting on the record of the House.

I have been appalled at the contributions from members on the other side of the House. Mr Bennett went on about mandatory rules—mandatory this, mandatory that. He said the bill would undermine workers’ rights. I do not think there is an understanding of the importance of having in place strong minimum rights that provide guidance and the base on which we build. New Zealand has international obligations to provide a strong mandatory framework.

It has been fascinating to hear some members opposite trying to rewrite history. Mr Henare gave a very good analysis, except he forgot to mention what happened as a result of the Employment Contracts Act. He did not say that it ripped out the award system, which had provided quite significant redundancy coverage for workers in this country and left us in a situation where there was no statutory right and rights were limited to what people negotiated in individual or collective agreements. They negotiated their own rights. None of that was mentioned. Then we heard all that commentary about do-gooders but, frankly, if promoting workers’ rights and ensuring protections for workers in hard times is being a do-gooder, I am proud to be one; so are my colleagues.

This bill amends the Employment Relations Act to provide minimum statutory entitlements for employees in the event of dismissal for redundancy. I reiterate the point already made that this bill was a unanimous recommendation of the public advisory group on restructuring and redundancy. Employer representatives and union representatives understood the importance of having these protections, and at times of record job losses 80 percent of New Zealanders having no protection against redundancy is just plain wrong.

Members opposite still have the opportunity to do the right thing tonight for the 80 percent of workers in our country who do not have a right to redundancy protection. Redundancy entitlements will not replace a lost job but will certainly help workers, and their families, in the period until they have a new job.

I was interested today to hear the Minister of Finance say we are through the recession, but he should tell that to the 170,000 New Zealanders who are unemployed—7.3 percent compared with Australia’s 5 percent. Many more people are underemployed and are struggling to make ends meet. In the area of Auckland I work in, Maungakiekie, I talk to people who are struggling because they have lost their jobs, lost hours of work, or had little or no pay increases over recent times and are facing rising prices. We need to do something to send a message that this Parliament recognises that we are in hard times and that there should be minimum protections against redundancy.

This bill is particularly important at this time, but this Government has failed New Zealanders through hard economic times. It has failed in this recession to respond appropriately. Let us look at the rate of unemployment. It is not about just numbers; it is about people who are without jobs and are struggling to make ends meet.

There is a lack of empathy on the other side of the House, and there is certainly a lack of action. I compare that to just about every other country in the OECD, where active attention has been paid to job creation and the protection of workers’ rights—but not by this Government. This bill is about rebuilding a minimum code. This bill is about rebuilding after 9 years of a Labour Government where much was done.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

First of all, I want to thank the Green Party and the Māori Party, and, of course, my colleagues in the Labour Party, for their contributions and support. I appreciate very much their understanding that this is a situation of basic fairness; that the Kiwi way is to treat people fairly, particularly when they are vulnerable. I also put on record my thanks to the many people who have been in touch to tell me their stories or to offer their support. I acknowledge all of the unions and organisations that have backed the redundancy protection bill and who will continue to fight, alongside Labour, to ensure that this issue will be on the agenda at the next election. I mention them by name: the Council of Trade Unions, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, the National Distribution Union, my own union the Service and Food Workers Union, the Dairy Workers Union, the Unite union, the Rail and Maritime Transport Union, Finsec, the Maritime Union, the Public Service Association, the Nurses Organisation, the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa, and the Wellington People’s Centre. I want Government members to know that together these organisations represent 350,000 workers, plus their families. Today National and ACT have sent a strong message to all of those people that National and ACT do not care about them.

I also respond to the pathetic defence from members opposite who say that Labour had 9 years. I mentioned in my first speech on the bill that Labour actually did an awful lot about redundancy protection but it was not a priority, because people were not losing their jobs in the droves that they are now. For insolvency situations we made redundancy protection a priority. We also cut the tax rate on redundancy payments and we set up the advisory group, because we also want to do things based on good evidence. That is what the advisory group was about. Members opposite should not go on about Labour having 9 years, because we did a lot, there was a lot to do, and there will always be more to do. The fact is the Labour Party has more ideas and will take them to the next election.

This Government has failed working people again. It has failed to take the harsh edges off the recession as John Key promised it would. Wages are in decline, unemployment is skyrocketing, and workers cannot look forward to any support from this Government.

When this bill was drawn from the ballot last year I deliberately postponed its first reading. I wanted to make sure that the bill was not taken lightly by political parties, but unfortunately the speech made by David Bennett shows that the Government has utter contempt for the issues facing workers today. I wanted to make sure the bill was not taken lightly; I wanted to give National and ACT, and other parties, a real chance to show that they were prepared to listen to working people and their families when they say that not enough is being done for workers facing redundancy. Actually, I do not think they bothered, even though more than 120,000 of these postcards that I am holding up went to John Key’s office. I know they would have gone in the rubbish bin, but what about the cost to workers? We can talk about the cost to business but what about the cost to workers and the cost to their families?

Redundancy entitlements are about recognising that the loss of a job is not the fault of workers; they provided their labour in good faith to an employer and they have a risk of not finding a comparable job. We have had examples in the debate today. It also recognises the impact generally on the earning capacity of the worker. Redundancy entitlements can also act as a deterrent; I think some of my colleagues have referred to this. An employer might otherwise make a worker redundant without due consideration. For example, I am aware that many of the employers in the 9-day working fortnight programme—

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

I seek leave to table a redundancy notice to the Hon John Key saying that he will receive no notice and no redundancy pay because the law says he is not entitled.