Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10637] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 On the day between the beginning of the first reading of this bill and today it was International Workers Memorial Day. That is a day when we remember all of the workers who have been killed or injured on the job in New Zealand and throughout the world. It was interesting that the Minister of Labour who introduced the Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill—and it is an important bill because it is an important health and safety requirement that we have breaks on the job—said that it was a sober reminder that New Zealand continues to lose more than one person each week in fatal workplace accidents. She noted that serious accident statistics show that there are around 6000 injuries or accidents in the workplace every year. She went on to say that there was a lot of room for improvement and the Government would continue to work with businesses and unions to foster a strong workplace safety culture. I find those statements incredibly ironic when that Minister is putting forward a bill that will take away the rights of workers to have a break on the job for rest to carry out personal business or for refreshment. 
That Minister was part of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that heard the submissions on Labour’s bill the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill which this bill completely undermines and undoes. 
Chris Hipkins 
: How did they vote for that? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Actually National voted in favour of it but here they are undoing all that good work. She heard one particular story that I would like to relay to the House. James Joseph was an Indian immigrant worker who came to New Zealand 11 years ago and worked in a Wellington ethnic restaurant. It took him some time to figure out that although he was not getting any rest breaks lunch breaks or anything else other workers were getting breaks so he started to ask questions. He insisted to his employer that he should have a short break. He was working from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. or later. He wanted to have a short break every 3 hours but he was called a troublemaker and was sacked by his employer. After 6 months he got another job and he raised the work break issue with his new employer. He thought he would be on safer ground because he had a written employment agreement—something that had not been given to him in his previous job. It even had a rest breaks clause. It said: “The employer can arrange rest and meal breaks so they do not cause disruptions to clients customers or production.” To me that sounds incredibly like this bill as it says that the power is in the hands of employers to arrange breaks when it suits them. Poor old James went see his employer as he thought he could talk about meals and rest breaks since he had that clause in his contract. He was told by his employer that it was impossible to have a break because the restaurant was just too busy. So it was just tough; he could not have a break. After arguing with the employer James was told that he was being insubordinate and he got the sack again. 
It was for workers like James that Labour introduced the rest and meal breaks legislation. It will be workers like James—the vulnerable the unorganised and the un-unionised—who will suffer because this Government is determined to take away their rights. The whole point of the law was to ensure that we had minimum requirements for rest for workers to be able to carry out their personal business or pay attention to their personal needs and to get refreshments at an appropriate time. The provisions in the current Act are extremely sensible. They provide for two 10-minute tea breaks and a half-hour unpaid lunch break for the average normal-length day. The problem with what the Minister is proposing is that it will enable employers to decide whether a worker should have a break in the first place and if they do how long that break is and when it should occur. It will also allow employers to require workers to work in an unpaid break. Apart from the fact that they might not get one if they give them one it is unpaid. They could put restrictions on what they are required to do. 
It is very interesting. There are a whole lot of questions around this particular bill. There are a whole lot of things in it and it provides so much uncertainty. In all my years dealing with employers I know that they want certainty about what is required. One question I have that will come up in the select committee is how long a break has to be. The 10-minute requirement and the half-hour requirement are taken away so an employer could meet the requirements of this legislation by allowing a 1-minute break or a 5-minute break. The employer gets to decide that. Then there is the test of reasonableness. It is a very hard test to meet. Nobody knows what that means. I would have thought that with this Minister having lectured us at length when she was in Opposition about flawed and reckless legislation we could have expected a whole lot better. 
I think that this legislation will make things worse. It provides many excuses for employers not to give breaks at all. It provides them with an excuse to say that they are sorry but they are too busy so there will be no breaks today. It creates another health and safety risk. We have one worker a week dying on the job in this country. This bill should not proceed.