Peck Mark: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Peck Mark: Status of Redundancy Payments Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11564] 
MARK PECK (Labour—Invercargill) 
: 
 Part 2 amends the Insolvency Act in a number of ways. Essentially it deals with issues in the Insolvency Act providing for no lien over a bankrupt’s books. It deals with priorities and makes some consequential appeals as a result of the amendments that are made as well. The importance of this is to establish redundancy as part of the priority for employee entitlements. Prior to that employee entitlements were basically wages holiday pay and other incidentals that might have been accrued during the time of employment. But as has been discussed in the currency of this debate many employees in the process of negotiating their redundancy deals trade away things to obtain that little bit of security at the time that a company might be going through hard times and subsequently folding up. 
Rick Barker talked a lot about Tomoana Freezing Works and I have talked about Ocean Beach freezing works. There are a myriad of freezing works in this country that have been affected. I thank Phillip Field for raising the issue of Patea. Having come from Taranaki myself I know that the Patea community was absolutely rent asunder when that particular freezing works closed. Nobody wishes that on anybody or on any community and nobody wishes redundancy on anybody either. Nobody wants to see a firm fail and go under but that is the cut-throat nature of business and as I mentioned earlier in a contribution in my electorate there is talk about building another freezing works. I have to say that that concerns the Alliance freezing company quite seriously. It has been through major reorganisation and having had to cut chains to close Ocean Beach Freezing Works and to bring in double shifts to be able to process the stock now faces the establishment of new chains. I do not know—other speakers might want to elaborate—when a new chain has been built in New Zealand in the freezing industry for quite some period of time. These are the pressures that go on businesses as they face their normal business. So including the redundancy settlement as part of the employee priorities simply means that that part of the wage and salary package is protected to a maximum of $15000. 
Let us go back to the situation at Tomoana Freezing Works. We are talking about $35 million across 2000 workers. That is a heck of a lot more than $15000. That is a dead loss to those employees. Those particular workers were totally unable to do anything about looking after their mortgages and their families. I am sure Rick Barker can tell the Committee some of the stories. Workers are very reluctant to come forward to tell us the difficulties that they face when they are trying to look after their families on no income. It is highly personal and highly embarrassing to them and a little bit of decency about protecting those particular matters is important. 
The other thing that this particular part of the bill does is ensure that there are periodic adjustments and it provides the mechanism for the periodic adjustment to occur. That will mean that the House will not have to revisit this matter again once this particular legislation has been passed. It will mean as a result of cost-of-living increases that in time these amounts will be reviewed against that and increased by Order in Council. That will mean that this will not diminish over time and will not devalue as a result of inflation. Those workers who subsequently find themselves in a position later on in their working lives to lose income are able to pick up their redundancy payments at a rate more appropriate than perhaps the $15000 rate. Again I thank the select committee for the work it did and I thank the submissioners who submitted on this part of the bill. I say to the Committee that this legislation is moving this part of our industrial law into the 21st century.