Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm very pleased to rise to take a call in the third reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill.I think it's important to call this bill for what it is—and Paul Goldsmith mentioned it many many times in his many contributions over the nine or ten hours we debated this bill in the committee stage—the compulsory union deal bill; this—as my colleague Scott Simpson mentioned—fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that we are not supporting and that we will repeal at the very first opportunity that we get.I think it's worth going through the parts of the bill that are so egregious and I think the first point to mention in the bill that we have as presented back from the committee stage is a bill that forces employees and employers to the table with only 10 percent—or 1000 workers—of a workforce. The important thing to note here is that the 1000 workers may not even be 1 percent. For particularly large sectors where you've got hundreds of thousands of workers this could actually only represent 1 percent of the workers. The other minimum they said is 10 percent.The bar is so low you would be forgiven for thinking that people wouldn't want to be part of this deal given that they set the bar so low. You would be forgiven for thinking by listening to the speeches—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Don't bring the Speaker into the debate.ERICA STANFORD: Sorry. You would be forgiven—sorry you" yes I understand. Members would be forgiven—thank you Madam Speaker for setting me right there.Members would be forgiven Madam Speaker for thinking after listening to the speeches from the other side today so far that employees would be clamouring to be part of a fair pay agreement. Yet they set the bar so very low that it may actually only be half of 1 percent of employees in that sector that sign up to start the bargaining.In fact they've snuck something else in that means not a single worker needs to sign up to start a fair pay agreement negotiation. The public interest test which has snuck into this bill means that no one needs to sign up. A union—Hon Michael Wood: Snuck in! Snuck in in broad daylight through the House of Parliament!ERICA STANFORD: I say "snuck in" because they don't like talking about it very much because what it means is that no one wants to be a part of this bill and yet the unions can go and claim that there is a public interest to start a fair pay agreement (FPA).There's no choice for employers there's no choice for employees. They are forced into it whether they like it or not. And there is no ability to stop this process reverse it or ever get rid of it—an FPA—once it's started. Once an FPA is started that's it: there will be a deal there is no exceptions there's nothing in the bill to stop the process ever reverse it or in fact get rid of an FPA once it's been negotiated. An FPA can be varied it can be renewed but it can never ever end. It can never be taken out.Now my colleague Scott Simpson talked about the ability of our employers to be nimble and flexible. And what we are getting at the end of today I expect will be an Act that replaces this flexibility and this nimbleness with an overly complex piece of legislation—11 parts of it.An example of that overly complex nature of this bill—and this was discussed at select committee and again at the committee of the whole House stage and what we ended up with—is that if only 25 percent of your job is covered by the work of an FPA you will be included. Sorry not you Madam Speaker. The person—the worker—will be included.So you can imagine the labour inspectorate going around businesses checking to see the employees who for example might be working in hospitality—working on the front desk one day changing sheets the next maybe in the bar the next—checking to see whether or not 25 percent of their work that's being done meets the fair pay agreement that's been negotiated.An interesting point to note in this bill is about the information—the private information—that will now be held by unions. Not of their members but of every single employee that is subject to this FPA.Interestingly in the bill the unions are able to use that private information—not just of their members but also of everyone else—in order to sell their union membership. They are allowed under this bill to use that personal information to contact employees who are not their members and say to them "If you join our union we will negotiate so that the—"; we will join our union; there was no "you" in there. Pretty sure of that. "If you join our union we will negotiate through the FPA process that the fees that you pay will be repaid to you." So basically it's free union membership. They're able to use that.Now in clause 16 it clearly says the unions are not able to entice people using this information into their union apart from the ability of course to write to them all to communicate with them all to say to those non-union members "If you join the union the fees that you pay will be paid back to you so therefore it's for free; come and join us." But of course if an employer does anything like that—at all any enticement at all—there's a $20000 fine immediately. One of the things that the Minister was never able to answer—either in select committee or at committee of the whole House—was what's going to happen with migrant workers? Because migrant workers for the most part are required to be paid the median wage—$29.66 come February. How will that affect negotiations? I asked the Minister so many times to clarify that and he was never able to do so.The fact of the matter is if people are in a negotiation they're able to say "Well I'm a Kiwi worker and I'm paid $24 $25. Now the migrant worker standing next to me is paid nearly $30 an hour." Now how will that affect the negotiation? Will that automatically ratchet up every fair pay agreement to what the migrant worker is paid standing next to that Kiwi worker? Now the Minister was never able to answer that and it's important because he's in charge of both systems; he's put one in place for migrant workers and is unable to explain how that will impact on the negotiations.What this fair pay agreement legislation will mean and we've traversed this a number of times is that the small business that we've mentioned—well the one we made up—the business in Haast with two employees will be required to pay the same base floor as an Auckland business who employs 10000 employees regardless of any of their circumstances or costs.Now one of the things that was never addressed again—in any of the discussions—was the unequal bargaining power of the large employers and the very very small employers because you can imagine—sorry this House could imagine—the ability of large employers to get together to negotiate for terms and conditions and rates that are not favourable to small employers and thereby putting them at a significant disadvantage.I want to finish by talking about productivity because the Minister spent a lot of time today talking about productivity and his view—and it's the same in the immigration space as well—is that if one was to simply just pay more there would be improved productivity like those two things just are equal. If one was to pay more then there will be more productivity automatically.Hon Scott Simpson: Fantasy land.ERICA STANFORD: Fantasy land as my colleague says. It's interesting because the Minister then goes on to say "Well the employers are getting undercut and therefore they need these fair pay agreements." But by his own logic if they just paid more they would get more productivity and would be better off. But those two things don't sit well together but I'll leave that to members opposite to explain. And I look forward to voting against this bill."