Lees-Galloway IainEMPLOYMENT RELATIONS AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments relating to collective bargaining and unionsHon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill deals with the collective bargaining framework and union rights in the workplace. Before I start my comments on Part 1 I refer members to the object of the Employment Relations Act which is to build productive employment relationships through the promotion of good faith in all aspects of the employment environment and of the employment relationship"—in a number of ways but including—"(i) by recognising that employment relationships must be built not only on the implied mutual obligations of trust and confidence but also on a legislative requirement for good faith behaviour; and (ii) by acknowledging and addressing the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships; and (iii) by promoting collective bargaining; and (iv) by protecting the integrity of individual choice;".Part 1 of this amendment bill certainly helps to promote a number of those aspects of the object of the original legislation and it does so by strengthening the collective bargaining framework and strengthening the rights of working people to participate in effective union representation. Part 1 includes new requirements around information about the role and functions of unions. That is important so that new people entering a workplace or indeed entering the workforce for the first time are able to make a genuine choice about whether or not they want to join a union. That should be a choice—absolutely. New Zealand has long upheld the principle of freedom of association. It should be a choice that people have but it should be a genuine and informed choice and the provisions in Part 1 ensure that people have access to information that is relevant that is accurate and I thank the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for ensuring that those provisions are as tidy and as employer-friendly as they can be.Part 1 also reinstates the so-called 30-day rule. This is the rule that requires new employees to go on essentially the same terms and conditions as any collective agreement that is in place. That gives those new employees an opportunity to experience the terms and conditions of the collective agreement. It's also the period in which they can provide information back to the union about their decision—about whether they want to join the union or not. Again this supports the idea of an informed and genuine choice. Of course at the end of the 30-day rule if a worker wishes to go on to an individual employment agreement of different terms and conditions from those outlined in the collective employment agreement that is absolutely their choice—a choice that this Government supports and one that is upheld in Part 1 of this bill.Part 1 also deals with the duty of good faith to conclude bargaining. I want to be clear to the House about how this operates. The duty to conclude bargaining is not a compulsion to conclude bargaining. It is a duty to stay at the table to deal with all the issues that are a matter of bargaining and parties at the table ought to do everything they can to conclude a collective agreement but if there are reasonable grounds on which an employer—or for that matter the union—wants to walk away from bargaining then that is still supported by the duty of good faith. It's certainly important that New Zealand upholds its International Labour Organization obligations to promote and support good-faith bargaining to promote and support collective bargaining and to do all it can to encourage and support parties to remain at the table and to conclude a collective agreement. Again there is absolutely no compulsion element to the changes that Part 1 makes.Multi-employer collective agreement opt-outs are also addressed in Part 1 and I want to address the changes that are included in Supplementary Order Paper 153 in my name. So what that Supplementary Order Paper essentially does is it brings what has long been regarded in case law into the legislation and that is that the duty to conclude bargaining does not apply to multi-employer collective agreements and that employers who wish to step away from multi-employer collective bargaining—again on reasonable grounds but that can include opposition to concluding a multi-employee collective agreement—can do so. What this bill does is it requires people to come to the table. We think it is important in a collaborative industrial relations framework to bring people to the table and get them to stay at the table for as long as possible. However it has always been clear in case law that the duty to conclude bargaining does not apply to multi-employer collective agreements. That was a cause for some uncertainty for a number of employers who submitted on the bill. I am very pleased that through the Supplementary Order Paper we were able to create that certainty by making it clear in the law what has been in place in case law for some time. The bill also makes it a requirement that rates of pay be included in collective bargaining and collective agreements. It is one of the most fundamental purposes of collective bargaining for workers to come together as a collective and bargain their rates of pay. It therefore ought to be absolutely fundamental and included in our legislation that rates of pay ought to be included in collective bargaining. One of the other matters addressed in Part 1 is the removal of pay deductions for partial strikes. It is the view of the Government that people taking low-level industrial action such as working to rule or wearing a campaign T-shirt to work should not be a cause for them to have their pay deducted. In fact this has potentially caused people to step immediately to full industrial action full strike action rather than taking lower-level action when there was a penalty involved in taking that lower-level action. Again it is the view of the Government that this will encourage people to take lower-level action rather than going immediately to full strike action. This part also restores the ability of unions to initiate collective bargaining ahead of employers. That restores some order to the initiation of collective bargaining. There have been instances of sort of duelling initiations—people seeing if they can get their initiation by one second past midnight rather than 20 seconds past midnight to be the first to initiate bargaining. This restores some order to the process and again acknowledges the inherent imbalance in the employer-employee relationship by putting the employee first in that process. This part also deals with union delegates and their representatives and union access to the workplace. Again I'm very pleased to be making some amendments to that through the Supplementary Order Paper in my name whereby where a collective agreement is already in place union officials will have the right to access the workplace under the current conditions which is that they must access the workplace in a reasonable way at a reasonable time not impacting on the normal business of the workplace and they must make themselves known to the employer—all the usual reasonable expectations of a union official accessing a workplace. Where a collective agreement is already in place or one is being bargained then the officials will have that right to access. Where there is not one in place—and that generally means that there is not a lot of union presence in the workplace as it stands—then union officials will have to seek the consent of the employer to be able to access that workplace. Again this addresses some concerns that were raised by employers and I think it has been roundly seen by both Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions as an elegant solution to the concerns that were raised. I'm very proud of Part 1. It enhances people's rights to bargain collectively it supports union activity to promote the well-being of workers in the workplace and it helps to address that inherent imbalance in the employer-employee relationship which is recognised in section 3 of the Employment Relations Act. I acknowledge that there are a number of Supplementary Order Papers on the Table and I appreciate that members from the Opposition will want to debate those and consider those. I look forward to their contributions and I look forward to responding to them."