Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill

Hon HARRY DUYNHOVEN (Minister for Transport Safety) Link to this

I move, That the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is a pleasure to speak on behalf of the Hon Trevor Mallard, the Minister of Labour. I intend to move that the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 22 July 2008 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on 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, despite Standing Orders 192 and 195(1)(b) and (c).

This bill amends the Holidays Act 2003 in relation to the transfer of public holidays for employees whose work shift crosses midnight. It will ensure that when a shift spans 2 days, at least one of which is a public holiday, an agreement can be reached by an employer and an employee so that the public holiday can be recognised on one whole shift.

This legislation is needed following a recent Supreme Court decision that found that an employer and employee cannot agree to transfer a public holiday from a day listed in the Holidays Act to another day. The Holidays Act was intended to give employers and employees the flexibility to agree to transfer a public holiday from a day listed in the Holidays Act. This could be for reasons of cultural or personal significance or for reasons of convenience.

The current situation of not being able to transfer public holidays is having a particularly disruptive effect on shift-based operations. In these businesses, many employees whose work shift crosses midnight are not able to enjoy a full shift as a public holiday. Many shift-based operations are experiencing increased production and payroll costs; for example, business compliance costs are increased where employees’ wages have to be calculated at differing rates for an entire shift when the shift crosses into a public holiday.

Currently, where a business chooses to close down on the public holiday, employees may be required to work up to midnight when the public holiday starts and to complete their shift from midnight at the end of the public holiday. Such arrangements are not reflective of the overall intent of the Holidays Act to promote balance between work and other aspects of employees’ lives.

This bill responds to the needs of businesses that operate over 24-hour periods, and to the needs of their employees, to ensure that employers will have the flexibility to transfer a public holiday in line with their business needs and that employees working shifts that span 2 days are able to enjoy the application of a public holiday to one whole shift. The bill provides that where an employee’s shift spans 2 calendar days and one of those days is a public holiday, an employer and employee can enter into a genuine agreement to transfer the public holiday to a 24-hour period that begins or ends on the public holiday if the employee is due to work a shift in that 24-hour period.

The bill also provides for situations where an employee’s shift spans 2 public holidays; for example, an employee who starts work on Christmas Day and finishes on Boxing Day. In this situation an employer and employee can agree that two separate periods of 24 hours are to be treated as public holidays if each period starts or finishes during those public holidays. These provisions reflect the intent behind allowing transfer while also maintaining a connection to the actual public holidays.

The bill requires that agreements concerning the transfer of public holidays be in writing. This will ensure that employers and employees are clear about their public holiday arrangements. The bill also clarifies that the period agreed to be treated as a public holiday will be a public holiday whether or not the employee actually works during that period. The provisions of the Holidays Act that apply to public holidays will apply to that period. Employees who do not work in the period that has been agreed as the public holiday are able to enjoy a full shift off as a paid public holiday. Employees who work in the period will receive time and a half for the entire shift and an alternative holiday. This ensures that agreements to transfer public holidays do not lead to a reduction in the number of paid public holidays that would otherwise be available to the employee.

The bill makes consequential amendments to the Holidays Act in respect of the definition of a public holiday and the provisions that were intended to allow for transfer of public holidays. The bill amends the definition of a public holiday in the Holidays Act, to clarify that a public holiday is a day listed in the Holidays Act and that if there is a transfer agreement, a public holiday will include the period agreed to be treated as a public holiday. As this bill applies only to employees whose work period crosses midnight, the bill clarifies that a transfer of public holidays can occur only in these limited circumstances.

This bill responds to the needs of employers and employees. For this reason it has the support of both Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. It reflects the Labour-led Government’s policy to provide holiday and leave entitlements that are appropriate to accommodate increased diversity in working patterns. It also responds to the diverse work-life circumstances that are common in New Zealand, while balancing the needs of employers and employees. I commend this bill to the House.

KATE WILKINSON (National) Link to this

I rise to support the first reading of the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill. This amendment to the Holidays Act 2003 is required following a recent Supreme Court decision that found that an employer and an employee could not agree to transfer a public holiday from a day listed in the Act to another day.

This is a very narrow bill; the issue is limited. It is not a wide-ranging bill by any means. As the Minister has stated, it amends the definition of public holiday to include, by agreement, a period of 24 hours agreed to be treated as a public holiday but to exclude part of a day agreed to be treated as not being part of a public holiday. Then it gives the example of an employee who is to work from 10 p.m. on 24 April to 6 a.m. on Anzac Day, and from 10 p.m. on Anzac Day to 6 a.m. on 26 April. The employee and the employer can agree to treat the time from 10 p.m. to midnight on Anzac Day as not being part of a public holiday in exchange for treating a period of 24 hours that finishes on Anzac Day as a public holiday. So the bill allows parties to treat one entire shift that is split over 2 days, where one day is not a public holiday, as if that shift were entirely worked on a public holiday. Under this amendment the employee and the employer can sit down and reach an agreement, and we trust them to do that.

Just by way of background, I tell members that the regulatory impact and compliance costs statement to the original Holidays Bill, before it was dramatically altered at the select committee, stated in 2003: “The Holidays Act 1981 does not reflect current working patterns or social and economic developments since its enactment. The Act has attracted criticism from the public, and employer and employee groups over recent years for being complicated and difficult to understand and apply.” It stated further: “During the year to 30 September 2002, 59,393 (26%) enquiries to the Employment Relations Service infoline related to holidays.” That was 5 years ago. In fact, the select committee report stated: “By majority we recommend substantial redrafting of the bill to make it explicit in what circumstances the public holiday entitlements would arise, and to clarify the intent of the bill.”

The general policy statement overview at that time explicitly stated: “The Holidays Bill implements Government policy by providing entitlements that are easy to understand and easy to apply.” Well, that did not work, because it is back here again for more clarifying amendments. In fact, at the time of the 2003 bill the Minister actually admitted “the current Holidays Act is an extremely difficult piece of legislation to apply and to interpret. Areas previously left to the courts to interpret and develop have been dealt with in the bill. That will mean that users will not have to refer to the numerous judicial decisions that supplement the current legislation.”

The Minister back then heralded the original legislation as providing “certainty, clarity, and consistency”. All I can say to that is “Yeah, right!”, because here we are again, a few years later, back before Parliament with amendments to improve that very same legislation in order to provide certainty, clarity, and consistency. Let us hope that it works this time—third time lucky.

A few years back Minister Cosgrove himself vowed solemnly in this House that the bill provided clarity, but here we are again years later, after a Supreme Court decision saying that there is no clarity, and the legislation is trying to fix it. I have to say that I prefer the judgment and the wisdom of the three Supreme Court judges.

With a background like that, one would reasonably expect a better, less complicated bill, and one that is easier to understand. But, no, what we got was arguably much worse. We got a bill that had to go to the highest court in our land, the Supreme Court, which made statements such as “Parliament can hardly have intended to create this potential for confusion and disputes.”, but it did. This Parliament, under this Labour-led Government, has created such confusing, difficult, complex legislation that no one seems to be able to understand it, and now it is introducing a bill to fix one part of that original complex, difficult legislation.

As Business New Zealand stated, clearly the Holidays Act is not up to the job. This case has now been through multiple courts. With two split decisions and another court ruling to come, and with the latest ruling by the Supreme Court, at 49 pages long, it shows how defective the Holidays Act is. “Employers want the flexibility to meet business needs and employees want to be compensated for their part in achieving that. Employees also want the flexibility to choose the holiday arrangements they want. The Holidays Act should make it straightforward and simple for them to come to agreements that suit them both.”

But this is not the first time that this holidays legislation has had to be amended because of unintended consequences. The Holidays Act originally came into force on 1 April 2004. Less than 6 months later—that very same year—there was an amendment, the 2004 amendment, to correct some unintended consequences. I have to ask whatever happened to “do it once, do it right”. If we read the debate back in 2004, we see that even New Zealand First agreed, and stated: “We went through this in 2003 and got it wrong by quite some. It was far worse than we in New Zealand First estimated, and I think it was far worse than many of the submitters who were concerned by the 2003 legislation thought. Now, this 2004 bill has tidied up two fairly minor parts of the legislation, but we should be dealing with the whole thing. Let us do it once and do it right.” That was what New Zealand First members stated. They also stated: “The holidays legislation in this country is in a mess. It is absolutely in a mess. Employers do not understand it, employees do not understand it.” I would have to say that they were right, and that after all this time—4 to 5 years later—nothing seems to have changed.

In that debate it was said that the Holidays Act that had been passed by the Labour Government in that last year was such a shambles that in the following week it was before the Employment Court to try to get a ruling on how to deal with the Act, and we are here again. It is not before just the Employment Court. This case had gone right up to the Supreme Court before this Labour Government realised that it was just plain wrong. It got the bill wrong, it had the chance to fix it once, it did not, and now it is trying yet another piecemeal fix to one part of the Act, because of unintended consequences due to sloppy drafting and because of one case.

But this is not the only problem caused by the complexity of the holidays legislation. Why does the Government not fix the rest of it? As one employment specialist stated in May last year: “Rather than simplify the law relating to holidays, the Holidays Act has resulted in an increase in litigation as employers, employees and unions all endeavour to come to terms with interpretation of differing sections of the Act.” Nothing seems to have changed. Will this bill actually make much difference? Hopefully, it will fix one of the problems, as highlighted in the Supreme Court case, but there are other problems that it does not even mention. We are back in Parliament again, 4 or 5 years later, trying to fix something that has gone wrong, when we should be debating other legislation in this House. We are trying to right yet another unintended consequence that has been foisted upon us by this Labour-led Government.

National will be supporting this bill going to a select committee for scrutiny. We hope that it will get proper scrutiny. We hope even that there may be some opportunity for change—some opportunity to further clarify what is most complex and confusing legislation. Employers and employees alike need and deserve legislation that has certainty. They need to know what the legislation says. They should not have to resort to legal processes all the way up to the Supreme Court for an interpretation of what the legislation says and means. Labour has got it wrong. Is it able to get it right, third time lucky? Let us hope so. National will be supporting this bill at its first reading.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) Link to this

I listened to the previous speech with amazement, really, because this is pretty simple legislation. We have the two major organisations in New Zealand that represent employees and employers, Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, both saying that they support this bill. We have National members saying that they will vote for it, but the member Kate Wilkinson then proceeded to spend the next 9½ minutes saying how terrible the Holidays Act really was, what a mess it was, and that nobody could understand it. But there was not a single word about what is wrong with giving people 4 weeks’ annual leave, or with giving them public holidays with some payment, which they have to be paid if they work on a public holiday. This simple bill, the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill, deals with a situation that has been around for as long as I can remember, since the days when we had awards and we had the Holidays Act—way back in the 1980s, when I started out as a practitioner in industrial relations.

There has always been a little bit of confusion around shift work, what it means, and what the entitlements were, but in the good old days, when we had awards and national agreements, that confusion just was not there. It has come about as a result of the fragmentation of the labour market. A number of people in New Zealand do not have any confusion, because they work under collective agreements and it is spelt out there pretty clearly. What becomes difficult is when we have about 80 percent of people working on individual agreements. There is no guidance for those people, so all sorts of arguments can occur. The National Party is saying that we should have even more confusion and more flexibility for people to sell off their holidays for dollars and cents. That is the National Party’s policy. Why did that member not state it? Are those members ashamed of it? But that is what they are on the record as saying.

I think that Dr Wayne Mapp was sitting on the select committee when this legislation was put through, so he will be able to elaborate in his speech about all the suggestions he made in this particular area to have it changed. He will be able to elaborate on the National Party’s minority report from that legislation when it came out of the select committee. Was there one? I doubt it. I doubt whether anybody on the select committee at that stage from either of the two main parties or from any other party would have thought that this would have caused any sort of confusion. But sometimes we have lawyers, companies, and people out there that want to take it to court, and that is what happens. Then we have the Supreme Court come up with a decision that says: “Sorry, you need to clarify the law.” We are doing that. It is simple, and it will be done in the select committee in a simple and straightforward manner. We have had employers and employees agree that this is the way to fix it, so I do not think that there should be any fuss whatsoever on that select committee in resolving this matter.

I am keen to hear, and I am sure that many workers are also keen to hear it, what the National Party actually means when it says that the Holidays Act is a mess, that it is confusing, and that it is difficult to understand. What will National members do in terms of their policy to supposedly fix it? I am looking forward to hearing about that, as I am sure many other people are, because we know what they actually mean. They want to be able to have employers and employees negotiating all sorts of weird and wonderful arrangements that, in the end, are about selling holidays for cash. Selling holidays for cash would mean that people would have to work even longer and harder in New Zealand, but they would get only a few dollars. That is the National Party’s policy on holidays. Let us hear it up front and in a speech in the House from National, instead of the waffle we just heard from its so-called spokesperson who just sat down.

PAULA BENNETT (National) Link to this

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill 2008. As has been stated previously, this bill is needed to try to amend the Act, because the Act has been unclear for the courts once it was taken there by Air New Zealand in relation to how the company could transfer the Act’s provisions. As my colleague Kate Wilkinson clearly stated, we are supporting that because it is simply just an anomaly that needs to be fixed and needs to be clearer.

But I find it incredibly ironic that we are passing a bill to allow employees and employers to speak to each other. We are passing an amendment to the Act that will allow them to speak to each other. The Act that was passed in 2003 meant that employees and employers could not sit down to have a conversation and sort this out themselves. That is the fact. That is what the courts have declared; they have said that employees and employers cannot sit down together. By all means, if it makes it simpler for members on the other side, I can quote from the Bills Digest. It states quite clearly in the background to this bill that under its provisions employees and employers can sit down and discuss what will work best for them, and make a decision that works for both employees and employers as far as transferring hours over and within a 24-hour period.

Because the Government got it wrong in 2003, this House has to go through this rigmarole now. In the last 5 years there have been nine amendments to the Employment Relations Act and to the Holidays Act. On nine occasions we have tried to fix this legislation, and on nine occasions this House has had to go through changes to try to fix mistakes that were made originally. We have sat in this House on nine occasions and gone through this process—and we will not even go into the costs incurred and the time taken in this House—so I ask why we do not fix it, once and for all. Why do we not actually do something that will fix this legislation, once and for all? We are constantly hearing about the problems that we have with relevant daily pay. How senseless it is that we now have to pass legislation that will go some way towards solving some of the mess that was put through in 2003, but that will not solve it altogether. This bill is simply about the fact that we need to look at relevant daily pay and what that means for employers and employees.

Why do we not fix this Holidays Act properly and do something? We could start naming the organisations that have been talking about that. We can look at the increase in sickness and in the sick leave that people have had to take. There is absolutely no question that in many cases, particularly for those businesses that work 24/7 or that do not work between the hours of nine and five, it is often better for an employee to be off sick on a particular day than to be at work. Because of relevant daily pay, there is a good chance they will get more money. The meat industry has certainly mentioned it, and the Hospitality Association, the Motor Trade Association, and the health sector have been struggling under these provisions, as have manufacturing plants and meat-processing industries. It really is something that needs to be sorted out. This House could have taken the opportunity to do that, but the legislation has been completely ignored—much to its detriment.

Let us talk about including incentive-based payments that are a regular part of an employee’s pay. Why not include those incentive-based payments? They should be included. Those incentive-based payments, which are a regular part of an employee’s pay, should absolutely be included in that relevant daily pay. But those payments that are not regular—that are sporadic—should not be included. We are hearing from people that it is too complex and too difficult to work out what an actual relevant daily pay is, and there is a simple reason for that. Why do we not exclude payments for overtime that are not a regular part of the employee’s pay, and exclude any one-off payments that are exceptional? If we did that, we might see a simple calculation so that everyone would know exactly where they stood and what they were able to do. The key to why relevant daily pay is not working is that it differs substantially from day to day, in many circumstances. The relevant daily pay is not consistent and it differs substantially. That is an important point for us to get across, and certainly one that employers and employees are struggling with—what it means for a certain day when they may get incentive payments or they may not. I think it is quite simple and this House could have sorted it out as far as this amendment is concerned. But, again, we are not taking the opportunity to do it right. This is the ninth time the Act has been amended, and I suppose we will be back again to try to sort out this mess.

Under this mess costs have gone up considerably, with no corresponding productivity lift. I think that is what is of most concern to our economy at the moment and in the questions we need to be asking. So far, it has been all talk by this Government. Certainly, employers are reporting an increase in absenteeism, and some employers are reducing incentive payments. I think it is an absolute crime that those employees who are perhaps in most need are seeing a reduction in incentive payments and bonuses because of a relevant daily pay component. We are also hearing from some employers that employees are not getting the same opportunities for overtime, because the provisions are confusing and add complexity to that relevant daily payment. So let us be clear: the Act leaves employees with an incentive to take a sickie on the day that they would earn the most money—the day on which the relevant daily pay would be the most.

That is of some concern when we talk about the economy and what this country needs in order to turn around. We can see the hope that we can raise our productivity and get ourselves to a situation where 79,000 people a year are not leaving New Zealand and moving to Australia for better conditions. We are constantly asked—certainly on this side of the House—why they get paid more there, and we have to sit down and explain productivity and what that means to people. In my opinion, here we have a classic example that is certainly not helping and that is certainly not working towards productivity in this country; it is actually working against it. There is an opportunity right now for this House to fix it. This is an opportunity for the Government to listen, and maybe we can discuss it in the select committee because it is something that is vitally important to this country at the moment, particularly when we are talking about that sort of level of productivity and what that means.

This amendment has been supported across sectors. It is not just one or two rowdy people who are saying “Oh, a few of my employees are taking sickies.” This is occurring across industries, across sectors, and across the country. It is affecting plants down at the bottom of the South Island, and it is going right past Auckland and up into Northland as well. The health sector has been quite detrimentally affected by this. Who knows—we might have been able to pay our junior doctors more if we had seen not quite such a mess with this sort of legislation, which is confused and complex, and which has made everything else complex.

The Act’s requirement to pay bonuses earned, had employees not been sick—and this includes a productivity bonus that can amount to an extra $10 an hour in some plants—has been a reality for some people. Do we support the bill to give that sort of example? Certainly there is the example in the bill, for anyone who may be having to listen to this—perhaps it is some form of punishment to have to listen to the House tonight but they may be interested in the sorts of examples used—of employees working from 10 p.m. on 24 April to 6 a.m. on Anzac Day, and from 10 p.m. on Anzac Day. So it refers to those who are doing shift work, obviously. It means that the employer and the employee can sit down and agree that they will make the public holiday that 24-hour period from, say, 10 p.m. the night before the public holiday through until 10 p.m. the following night. The shift workers get their 8 hours, or their 8 hours plus overtime, if it comes to it. They agree on that day being it, and that saves having to cut pays in half for those who do perhaps only 6 hours on the actual day. So it is a little bit complex.

It is not that sexy, quite frankly, but it is something that we need to fix up, because it was not done in 2003. We have already wasted the courts’ time on it. We have seen the courts having to go through it. We have seen the major shareholder for Air New Zealand having to put money into it, and to get lawyers so that it can go through it, and now of course the House has to go through it. We have to go through it in the select committee. It is a bit of a waste of time. It is absolutely ridiculous. I do not think we will be back here doing another amendment to this Act, because I do not think we will have to worry about that. Labour will not be there to do yet another one of its things. No, there will not be any abolishing and there will not be any of the scary talk and everything, such as “You can throw around vulnerable workers all you like.” It will not be true. So we will not get into the debate on how utterly ridiculous some of the comments have been from the other side; we will just settle with that. It is a shame that we are not fixing everything, it is a shame that we are back here for the ninth time, having to look at the Employment Relations Act and the Holidays Act, but let us hope that with National’s support we do get it right.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this

I listened to that speech with some degree of interest, but I cannot work out what the hell the member, Paula Bennett, was on about. Maybe I am a bit slow today, but she was going on about relevant daily pay—clearly she wants to cut it back; clearly she wants to reduce it. Then she asks why people go to Australia. The answer is because they get paid more.

I listened to the National Party at the time of the Holidays Act 2003. The Act incorporated 4 weeks of holiday pay. At the time National members told this House and the select committee that if the legislation were passed, the world would end. They said that if New Zealanders were given 4 weeks’ annual holiday, the world would end. Australians have had this law for umpteen years, I think. How many years?

SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this

The Green Party will be supporting this bill right through the process, despite its being yet more piecemeal employment relations reform from the Government. Although there is no doubt that the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill will be a worthy and welcome change for a number of workers, we in the Greens think it is high time that the Government worked on a full review of the Employment Relations Act and the Holidays Act, which could encompass all these small amendments as well as bringing in some much needed major changes.

Most workers would agree that the recent New Zealand Air Line Pilots’ Association Union of Workers Inc. v Air New Zealand Ltd Supreme Court decision, which found that an employer and an employee cannot agree to transfer a public holiday from a day listed in the Holidays Act to another day, was not a good outcome for workers. The bill before us this afternoon will resolve the very specific problem that employees whose shifts span 2 days where one of those days is a public holiday cannot currently transfer the public holiday to a 24-hour period that begins or ends on the public holiday.

However, the bill before us this afternoon will not, of course, resolve some larger public holiday issues that many workers face in New Zealand. It will not, for example, deal with the fact that New Zealand’s total of 11 public holidays is a whole week less than Italy’s 16. Germany and Spain have 3 more days than us to spend with their friends, families, and communities. Those extra days no doubt help them through the equivalent of that long, and for some people depressing, stretch that we have in this country between Queen’s Birthday weekend and Labour Day, when for months we enter a public holiday drought. I note with interest that among Japan’s grand total of 18 public holidays are Coming of Age Day, Greenery Day, Children’s Day, and Respect for the Aged Day, the latter of which fulfils a traditional veneration for the elderly that we once possessed but have mostly lost.

Nor will this bill do anything for the many workers who do not have a shift that spans across 2 calendar days, but whose shift is not the traditional Monday to Friday. These workers lose many public holidays that the rest of us take for granted and include, for example, the many back-office processing workers in banks who work Tuesday to Saturday, and therefore miss out on holidays that fall on Mondays. In 2006 seven of our 11 public holidays fell on Mondays. This year those workers like the ones I just mentioned are relatively lucky—only four public holidays fall on Monday, so they lose only a third of their holidays rather than the two-thirds lost in 2006.

No, the bill will not fix any of these problems, but it was never meant to do so, of course. Like so much of the Government’s industrial relations legislation at present, the bill aims to deal with only one small problem at a time. Nor will this bill sort some other issues that hundreds of workers and union members around the country tell me are major difficulties they face at present.

For example, there is no clear vision that I know of in the Government’s agenda about how to deal effectively with the problem of freeloading, where employers play off union members and non-union members against each other, easily nurturing a culture in which staff feel just fine about bludging off the union fees paid by some for the ultimate benefit of many. This bill will not resolve the real struggle many employees are having as they attempt to bargain standard industry-wide conditions of employment or create industry multi-employer collective agreements. The bill will not help us to sign up to the core International Labour Organization conventions—convention 87 on freedom of association and protection of the right to organise, or convention 130, on the minimum working age, which outline basic internationally agreed minimum working rights for all workers. The bill will not do any of these things, because, as happens all too often, the Government at times does not seem to know who it wants its friends to be—working people and their families or large multinationals that threaten to flee every time something is proposed that they do not like.

The Green Party supports the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill that is before us today, as we will support all the other bits and pieces that the Government puts forward that we see as being in the interests of ordinary workers and their families. But we also think it is time that the Government put a holistic approach to industrial relations on the agenda—a plan that addresses the long and often uncertain hours Kiwis work, the struggles they have in bargaining with employers that are increasingly adept at using foreign human resource strategies of splitting and dividing their partially unionised work forces, and a plan that supports the efforts many workers are making to reintroduce into our national consciousness the concept of a basic set of pay and conditions that allows all workers to bring up a family and participate in their community. We think it is time the Government put aside its concerns about scaring the horses and put on the table a full agenda for working people, rather than these small, piecemeal, band-aid solutions to isolated problems.

In commenting on this particular band-aid, though, I think it is important to note that an overriding principle needs to be an assurance that any transfers of public holidays that occur should take place only when it is genuinely in the best interests of the employees to move their public holiday from the day that everyone has off. It is not in their interests to have it moved as a right that they have bargained away due to a disparity of bargaining power between themselves and the employer. In most cases it is undoubtedly in the interests of both workers and employers that someone whose shift spans 2 days should not have to down tools halfway through their shift on the stroke of midnight and then return to complete their shift when midnight rolls around a second time, just to take a public holiday. They should be able to agree to transfer it.

However, there is an important principle as to why we all share public holidays on the same day, rather than employers being able to dictate when workers can take their holidays. Public holidays are more than just a day off. They are a shared time and an opportunity for families to come together. They are a time for festivals, for sporting and cultural events to take place, and for us to join in many different ways to spend time together as well as having that important time to rest. The purpose and value of public holidays is undermined if everyone has a different day off. We need to work consistently as politicians to protect the right of ordinary working people to spend a legal public holiday with their children, their families, their friends, and their communities. Leaving an issue like the one in front of us today to be resolved on its own is not enough given the natural tendency for some of those who hold a disparity of bargaining power to offer only “take it or leave it”, failing to lift their eyes above the balance sheet.

I look forward to voting for this bill, because although it is piecemeal and small it is also a tiny but critical component of the Green Party’s much bigger vision of a better life for working New Zealanders and their families.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) Link to this

I want to take a very brief call in this first reading debate in support of the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill. As has been mentioned by previous speakers, the bill is narrowly focused. It is an attempt to tidy up an approach to ensure that those who work on irregular days or who work irregular hours are able to negotiate successfully with their employers some way of retaining their public holidays by way transferring them to a more suitable opportunity. I think it is a little disingenuous of the National Party to criticise the need for an amendment bill. One would think that there is no public record of Acts put in place by a National Government that did not need further adjustment.

One thing I do agree with a National speaker on is that one of the ongoing challenges facing us is the issue of improving productivity within New Zealand. United Future believes that if we are serious about improving productivity rates, we need to address that in a working environment where conditions are fair and employment relations are constructive. We do, thankfully, live in a time when unions and employers are enjoying a more collaborative approach to industrial relations, and it seems to United Future that this is an ideal time to look creatively at ways in which we can improve productivity in a way that is fair to everybody involved.

We do have fewer public holidays now than we had historically. I agree with the Green member who talked about the fact that we need to be careful that we do not move into a situation where we have a number of days listed as public holidays but really have very little that is “public” about them. People are working such disjointed hours that people are allocated days off in a way that does not reflect the intention of a public holiday, which is that families can get together and people can spend quality time with each other. I think we should make sure, as we aim towards improved productivity, that the exceptions this bill seeks to address remain just that—exceptions—and that we still enjoy public holidays that retain the meaning they always historically had.

United Future is happy to support the first reading of this bill, and we look forward to hearing back from the select committee.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) Link to this

National, as has been stated previously, supports the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill. Of course, it is obviously sensible to fix up technical errors, but we cannot help but reflect on the fact that there are much deeper problems with the Holidays Act than the Government is willing to admit. Government members will say that the National Party is against 4 weeks’ holiday. That is not true. We support 4 weeks’ holiday, and I want to put that specifically and directly on the record. Indeed, we have done so for quite a number of years, going back to 2004-05.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Tourism) Link to this

I move, That the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 22 July 2008 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 192 and 195(1)(b) and (c).