Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Bill

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) Link to this

I move, That the Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Bill be now read a third time. I would like to thank members for their contribution to the second reading debate and their support of the bill in the Committee stage, and I acknowledge the generosity and the goodwill of spirit not only on behalf of the unions but also on behalf of the employers who are also making a contribution to the back-pay here. I also thank the officials from the Ministry of Health and the Department of Labour, who worked very speedily and swiftly in order to get the good piece of legislation before the Parliament very quickly. With the passing of this legislation, we will then be able to process those claims and be in a position to ensure that people’s rights under this legislation are realised as soon as they can be. Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you very much and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and other members all the very best for the next 7 weeks.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

I start by thanking the officials and the Health Committee for their very speedy work, and also those involved in the negotiations and in the drafting of the Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Bill. I am thankful for the way in which the process was conducted. I know, of course, that the unions were involved and were very pleased, and checked off any changes that the select committee made or suggested as well. So I think it was a good process, even if it was very short. I appreciate the hard work that went into this.

This bill is about respect. It is about respecting the work that is done in this very, very difficult sector—a sector that is very, very hard to work in. It is also about respecting the people who are being cared for in the community, who we all say should stay there and should be able to live as normal a life as possible. It is about respecting, as my colleague Grant Robertson said, the role of unions and the absolutely wonderful and constructive role they played in reaching this settlement. As I said before, they have made a significant concession. They have not taken this to the wire. It could have gone to the Supreme Court, as was being proposed, and wasted more time and money. They have made a concession. They have been very pragmatic, and, as they said, their interest now is to see things in the sector move forward. They want to see proper competencies required, proper training, proper skills, and proper pay. Even though the settlement has been reached for minimum wage for sleepovers, it is still a low-paid sector. There are still issues to be resolved.

This bill is about respecting the roles, but if we are to give the workers and the people cared for proper respect, there are other issues we will have to deal with in the next Parliament. I hope that we are able to do that in the spirit in which consideration of this bill has been conducted.

Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish you a very interesting time over the next 6 weeks. I say to all members of the House, those returning and those who are not, that we will see you on the campaign trail. Thank you.

DAVID CLENDON (Green) Link to this

Kia ora koutou. It is a pleasure to take a brief call on the Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Bill, which rights a wrong. We have supported this bill throughout its passage, and are pleased to continue to do that. It feels much more wholesome to be involved in supporting a bill that implements a Court of Appeal decision, rather than earlier this afternoon, when we saw a bill overturning a Supreme Court decision.

My colleague Catherine Delahunty, who sat in on the select committee on this matter, observed that she was very pleased to experience a sense of unity and common purpose amongst the Government, the unions, and the key employer, IDEA Services, in this case. She reflected that, other than for the matter of some minor technical changes, the goodwill towards this legislation passing in a timely fashion was reflected in the sense that there was a sense of realism and an emergent sense of mutual respect, in place of the rather unfortunate denial that was evident in earlier sessions, when some question was posed as to whether the night-shift work was actually work at all. Of course, we know that it is work, and these people are absolutely entitled to at least the minimum wage and, in fact, probably considerably more than that.

It is true, of course, that the money—the cash—is important to these workers, but equally important to them is the question of training, setting some core competencies, developing mandatory competencies, and for that to be an ongoing process. This is not unskilled work. This is important; it is about looking after the needs of people who are vulnerable, people who are in need of care on a 24-hour basis, and it is very desirable that that should go ahead.

It has been noted that not only will the union members who fought so hard benefit from this, but also it is to be hoped that it will perhaps be a lesson, and perhaps will reveal to those workers who are not yet members of the appropriate union that there is real value in joining the unions. There was a single gentleman, a Mr Phillip Dickson, and to his great credit he initiated this process, but clearly it was a matter of collective bargaining. It was the power of the collective, represented by the Service and Food Workers Union and the Public Service Association, that actually brought this to fruition. Again that clearly represents the importance of unionising, particularly in workplaces that are low-paid, where individuals have very little power, and where the power of the collective has been a very important phenomenon to ensure that they get justice in this case.

Clearly, as I have said, the issue does not simply reflect that these people will finally be acknowledged for the skills and the compassion that they bring to this task. The amount of money per hour that these people have been paid is an amount of money that in this day and age the average 10-year-old would be underwhelmed by, if offered that amount to do a simple household task. Bringing this into line over time with the minimum wage—and a minimum wage that we would sincerely hope and advocate will be raised to a more appropriate level; ultimately two-thirds of the average wage—will be a much more satisfactory outcome.

With those brief words I will simply close by saying that we are pleased that this is being completed in a timely fashion. We wish all the best to those people who are continuing to do this very difficult and demanding work, and we wish them well. Kia ora koutou.

Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) Link to this

In this debate on the Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Bill I want to make two brief points. The first one is that in this debate over sleepovers, one of the key points that I think has been overlooked is that these people who are asleep at night carry responsibility. There are lots of people in this world, in New Zealand, who get paid fabulous salaries, not because of the work they do, but because of the responsibility they carry. The people who are in charge of these rest homes and these homes at night carry the responsibility for all of the people who are in them. If we think about responsibility, and the responsibility for the care of those people, and having to carry that responsibility, the amount of money they are paid is inadequate.

The second point I make is that this is historical. This House has to look in the future at legislation and support mechanisms that pay people in this sort of category of work a wage that is appropriate. A wage of $13.50 an hour is simply inadequate recompense for the amount of work these people do. The personal care, the personal chores they have to do for people in their homes and in these particular establishments, is incredibly personal and very direct. I do not think there would be anybody in this House who would want to have to clean up the sorts of messes and take care of the responsibility for the things that these people do at all, no matter how much they were paid. We expect these people in our community to do this for a measly $13.57 an hour. I think that is wrong. I have never agreed with it, this House should never agree with it, and we should put in place mechanisms to ensure that these people are paid appropriately and funded. So the challenge for this Parliament is to do right by these people in the future. We should tidy up the past, but we need to do things for these people in the future.

My last point is, on my behalf, to say thank you to the Speaker and all those who have supported this House through the last 3 years. Thank you.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this

I am really pleased to stand to speak on the Sleepover Wages (Settlement) Bill this afternoon. This afternoon in the House has been a game of two halves. The first half involved legislation that we were appalled to see passed under urgency and lacking the due consideration it required for the public to engage with it and understand the full implications of the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill. But the second half—this bill—is a completely different story.

This bill signals the successful resolution of a longstanding claim concerning about 5,700 of the country’s lowest-paid workers. It is a story about counting the value of the dedicated commitment so many of these workers have made to making life just that much easier for the people they are supporting. The bill enacts the commitment of Cabinet to raise sleepover rates for disability support workers from the current IHC rates of $34 a night to the minimum wage of $13 an hour over the next 15 months. The Māori Party is proud of our Minister Tariana Turia for the work she has done, alongside the Minister of Health, to get this deal through.

In many ways, this has been described as a landmark deal—a $100 million opportunity to pay these unsung heroes the minimum wage for overnight sleepover shifts from Christmas next year. The deal includes back pay, from July 2005, of half the difference between what workers were paid and the minimum wage applying at the time—up to $70,000 in some cases for some workers. It is a wonderful early Christmas present, and I am proud to be part of a Parliament that will enable this legislation to pass.

I have a personal association with the sleepover issue. One of my sons spent 5 years supporting young people with intellectual disabilities in a respite home. He would take on the night shifts over the weekend, and he and one other worker would base themselves at the residence and prepare for come what may. Often, those nights with the rangatahi were challenging, to say the least. It was not at all uncommon for the inhabitants to somehow escape the house, in various states of undress, and embark on a long walk to town along the nearby railway tracks. When my son finally caught up with the absconders, inevitably it was something of an ordeal to persuade them to come back home, and to stay home for the rest of the night.

The other thing of note from this time was that often once the residents were fed, showered, toileted, and put to bed for the night, the real work would actually begin. Soiled clothes and linen would be washed, bathrooms would be scrubbed, the house would be brought back to a semblance of order, and paperwork would be done. This was not just a one-off occurrence; working with young people with intellectual disabilities was a challenge. Often there would be an incident that would require the workers to be intensively involved in providing supervision, support, management, and quality of care.

Yet here is the rub: between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. my son and his co-workers would receive the princely sum of about $34 as the sleepover rate. That equates to about $3.80 an hour, which is barely the price of a bottle of milk. Such a pitiful payment fails to reflect the importance of appropriate and responsible care being available for some of our most vulnerable citizens. It also fails to take into account the fact that the work that is undertaken during the time when presumably one is meant to be asleep is arduous, back-breaking work. It is physical work. Workers were not allowed to leave the premises in that time; they were to stay on site and be available for any eventuality. It is not simply a matter of curling up on the bed for a good sleep and hoping that everyone else will do the same—far from it.

Frequently it requires a level of compassion, understanding, and sensitivity that will ensure the appropriate and respectful care of the people the workers are responsible for looking after. As my son put it, it requires a heart. He also told me that the management and the staff he worked with were wonderful people. They were committed, they were kind, and they were dedicated to meeting the needs of those in the residence. But when it came down to it, $34 is a pittance for the work, the skill, and the humanity required to exercise these roles. I wanted to tell that story today because sometimes I think we speak to legislation with generic terms like “employer”, “employee”, “the health and disability sector”, and “minimum wage”, and we forget about the human dimension to the situation.

I congratulate IDEA Services Ltd, Tīmata Hou Services, and the Service and Food Workers Union for their perseverance in doing what they can to improve the conditions for those providing such vital services for vulnerable people overnight. I acknowledge too the submissions made to the Health Committee by the Service and Food Workers Union—Ngā Ringa Tōtā—the Public Service Association, and IDEA Services Ltd. I recognise the effort of Business New Zealand and the employers chambers of commerce in taking up the opportunity to present a submission, even under such dire circumstances and time frame. But at the end of the day, although the Government, the unions, and the providers have come to the party, our greatest accolades must be reserved for those who work sleepovers—