Beaumont Carol: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:15486] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I will speak about two particular clauses in Part 1: clause 13 “Requirements for alternative holiday” and clause 14 “Proof of sickness or injury”. When I spoke in the second reading I talked about this bill being unjustified unnecessary unbalanced and unfair. I will measure these two provisions against that. 
I mentioned earlier a very good submission—a very short but very good submission—made by a man called Dennis Hickey who is a bus driver for Howick and Eastern Buses in Auckland. Dennis obviously cares very strongly about his job and believes he is there to provide a service to the public. He recognises that if he is rostered to work on public holidays he works those days. He also knows that if the public holiday falls on an ordinary day on which he would normally work he will get what is commonly called a day in lieu and in this bill is referred to as an alternative holiday. He was telling us that the current system is fair. Basically if he works Christmas Day and he has done that in the past then he will get a day in lieu. He recognises that he is losing something by working on Christmas Day and that is the ability to spend time with his family and friends and enjoy a day off that most other New Zealanders have. However he accepts that his job is to provide that service and he does it. He gets another day off in lieu and that has always worked perfectly well for him. He has been able to choose a day that means that he his wife and his children can spend some quality time together. 
What is being changed here—let us be clear: we are not talking about whether people are flexible as the previous speaker said—is who gets to decide. As the law exists at the moment Dennis and his employer Howick and Eastern Buses can agree when he will take his day off in lieu and it sounds as though they do that in most cases. But if they did not agree ultimately Dennis as the person who has given up his Christmas Day and time with his family and friends would get to decide which day he would have as a day in lieu. This bill provides that it will be up to the employer. If there is no agreement the employer will decide. The example Dennis gave was somebody like him getting a Wednesday off in the middle of March for working on Christmas Day. His wife works on a Wednesday and his kids are at school on a Wednesday so that day off would have no value for him and would not be a good alternative holiday to the day he worked. That is the point. 
This is an incredibly mean-spirited change. There was no evidence of a need for change. The Department of Labour stated in the regulatory impact statement that it “considers that the issue of an employee choosing when an alternative holiday is taken is limited to a few employers (less than 10 submitters to the Group said that employees should not be allowed to choose when alternative holidays are taken).”—that is this is another solution to a problem that does not exist. We are getting a bit of that at the moment. This is just a ridiculous unnecessary provision. The department’s advice to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on this matter was that this change addresses—[ 
Interruption 
] We had submissions and the overwhelming majority of submitters were opposed to this change. There was very little evidence of a need for change. 
Michael Woodhouse gave an example before of somebody submitting on a real-life example. However most of them went like this: “Allowing employers to direct when alternative holiday must be taken: Business New Zealand supports the proposed amendment.” Well that is hardly compelling evidence is it? It is hardly evidence that there is a problem. However departmental officials came back to us and stated: “This [change] addresses concerns that the current arrangements can have a negative impact on business operations and productivity if employees choose to take an alternative holiday on a day that is not convenient for the operation of the employer’s business.” Well that is fine but equally one could say that it would not be very good and it would have quite a negative impact if Dennis was given a day off when his wife was working and his children were at school. 
This change has implications for the workers. After all the worker in that case gave up a day of national significance—a day that mattered to him and his family. I say to those opposite genuinely this legislation is mean-spirited but they can fix it.