Bradford Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5023] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is pleased to see the Employment Relations Amendment Bill return to the House for its second reading. At the time it was introduced we said that we supported the bill and that we hoped it would work its way quickly through the processes of this House and pass into legislation. I am glad that is what has happened for the sake of all those who are affected. The Green Party does not have membership on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee so I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members involved for their work in considering this legislation. I know that it was particularly difficult because it deals with complex and technical issues. The Green Party endorses the report of the select committee including its amendments and also the two Supplementary Order Papers that Mr Brown has just referred to. 
During the first reading debate on this bill I stated that its intention was not new. Parliament had already agreed to it in the passing of the amendments to the Employment Relations Act in 2004. It was an unintentional error that gave rise to the need for this amendment to the legislation. It is useful to quickly traverse the background that led to the need for this bill. Parliament has ended up having to take a second cut or in fact a third cut if one counts the original Employment Relations Act in 2000 at the issue of transfer of undertakings because the Employment Court decided in  
Gibbs and others  
v  
Crest Commercial Cleaning Ltd  
that the law as currently written did not apply to that situation. The matter then went to the Employment Court and that was around the issue of workers who had been cleaning premises belonging to the Dunedin Kindergarten Association. The cleaning contract was re-tendered and the previous employer Southern Cleaning Services lost the contract to another firm Crest Commercial. 
As soon as Crest Commercial won the contract it gave notice that it did not intend to employ any of the current cleaners but was going to subcontract to what it called independent franchisees. There is no doubt in my mind that those workers were in the kind of vulnerable situation that we were talking about and trying to deal with in 2004. Their circumstances were similar to those described by many of the submitters to the select committee that heard evidence on that earlier Employment Relations Amendment Bill. I was part of that committee at the time and I believe there was no doubt in the minds of the Labour and the Green Party members present that we thought we had produced a bill that supported vulnerable workers in exactly the situation that applied to those cleaners in Dunedin. This new amending legislation simply reinforces what we thought we were doing when we passed that Act in 2004. 
In the first reading debate on the bill before us tonight I made the observation that the Employment Court case that gave rise to this bill also raised some other issues that had to be addressed. One of those issues was the claim by the new contractor Crest Commercial that it was not going to be employing staff but was going to engage those independent franchisees. I said then that I was concerned about the growing use of these so-called independent subcontractors—a total nonsense—and the way in which corporations and larger employers use them to reduce their costs as Mr Gosche referred to so graphically earlier on tonight. I am therefore pleased to see that since the introduction of this bill the issue is being given further attention through Darien Fenton’s Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill which was introduced last week. 
So back to the bill in front of us today. I note that the bill as reported contains some amendments as a result of the consideration of the select committee. The Green Party supports these amendments and believes that they clarify and improve the original bill. It is good that new sections 69C and 69D in clause 4 clarify the definition of a new employer to include a person who does not have or does not intend to have employees. This will ensure that a further loophole is not created this time around so that firms or individuals not currently employing workers or in the case of the Employment Court case that gave rise to this bill a firm claiming to be subcontracting to independent franchisees is still covered by this legislation. We support the amendment in clause 4 that clarifies that the Employment Relations Authority may impose the penalty referred to in new section 69G(4). The amendment to the wording on the date of transfer—section 69I(4)—is sensible and will provide more certainty for both employer and employee. 
The Green Party also supports the intention of section 69J which provides for the service of a worker to be treated as continuous for the purposes of determining leave and parental leave entitlements. We have no problems with the amendments in this section that make it clear as to when the responsibilities of the new employer begin and that the new employer will not be liable for parental leave complaints against the old employer. We endorse as well the widening of the redundancy bargaining provisions in sections 69A and 69N to give workers the right to bargain for redundancy entitlements if they are made redundant because of any situation arising from their transfer. Finally we have no problems either with the technical changes to the transitional provisions. 
Turning to the two Supplementary Order Papers referred to by Mr Brown and the Minister earlier on I reiterate that both of them are supported by the Green Party. We fully back the Supplementary Order Paper that requires in a restructuring situation the disclosure of information on labour costs of employees affected by a restructuring by the current employer to a potential employer at their request. We note that this will be disclosed in an aggregated format and will protect the privacy of individuals. We also support this measure because it will reduce the downward pressure on the terms and conditions of the vulnerable employees that may be caused by an underestimation of the costs a new employer would have to take on following a successful tender. This can only be good for the vulnerable workers concerned. Finally the Green Party will also be voting for the Supplementary Order Paper that provides for a review of how Part 6A of the Act is working 3 years after commencement. This makes for good policy and the Green Party has no problem with that. 
We campaigned to keep the transfer of undertakings provisions of the original Employment Relations Act in 2000 and were sorry that we lost that battle which Mr Power referred to earlier tonight way back then. We supported the inclusion of Part 6A in the amending Act in 2004. Today we continue to stand by the clarification of that legislation so that it achieves what we wanted to do all along from 2000 onwards—that is to provide a whole lot more protection for some of the most vulnerable workers in this country.