Dyson Ruth: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Dyson Ruth: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:386] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I will record quite a rare moment in the history of this Parliament by agreeing—briefly though it will be—with something Chris Tremain said. This is unheard of and is unlikely to occur again in the future. I too am proud of the values and the commitment shown by those who have given their maiden speeches over the last couple of days. Obviously I have a bias towards the Labour members as I am sure Chris Tremain has a bias towards the others. What is really interesting is that everyone who has made a speech from whichever perspective has come here believing they have a contribution to make. They have come here to contribute in a way that is indicative of the public service values we have in New Zealand.  
I was reflecting on that after we heard the Green Party member Kevin Hague’s speech. I was thinking that if I were the Minister of Labour now and had just introduced this bill and someone had asked me what I had contributed in Parliament how proud would I feel to say that my first bill as the Minister of Labour—my significant contribution my commitment to improving the quality of life for ordinary New Zealanders—would take away employment rights from 700000 New Zealanders every year? I feel for Kate Wilkinson because I am sure that when she became a member of this House she did not make that commitment in her maiden speech; it was not what she aspired to do. I regret that she is not able to give something to the more vulnerable people in our communities but instead has chosen to use her time as Minister to take something away.  
According to the speeches and rhetoric of National members this bill purports to open job opportunities. The challenge that employers up and down the country face and have faced for several years—it will diminish over the next little while but not a lot—is to find skilled staff to fill their job vacancies. That is the challenge that every employer talks about. That is why Labour put so much emphasis on ensuring that that skills match was connected—that the people who were out of work were connected with the labour market. More fundamentally we ensured that when employees went into a job they were working in an environment where their contribution was respected and valued where they were encouraged to make a stronger contribution in the future where they were part of the business and where they could contribute to and make better opportunities for their own families and other workers.  
Kate Wilkinson said in her opening comments during the first reading debate tonight that this bill is not about taking away rights but that was exactly the opposite of the truth. This bill is only about taking away rights. In fact it even refers to section 67 of the Employment Relations Act which has provision in it for a probationary period. It is referred to as a trial period so in order to make this amendment look less foolish than it actually is—and by crikey that was a bit of a challenge—they have to take the word “trial” out of section 67 because otherwise it will be blindingly obvious even to the National backbench that we will have two trial periods in the same Act. As well as inserting the National Government’s term “trial period” they have to take the existing words “trial period” out of section 67 and then remove the rights that go with that current probationary period or trial period. It is even referred to as a trial period in section 67.  
We on this side of the House understand the issues that some people face in getting a job. We understand the issues that employers face when recruiting particularly for small businesses. They may not have the expertise or the additional resources required to go through a rigorous recruitment process. That is why section 67 is in the Act. That is why there is specific legislative provision for a probationary period where a person’s rights in the case of an unjustified dismissal are enshrined in legislation. But employees are clearly on trial during that probationary period. If employers do not know about it—and clearly the National backbench did not know about it—then the Minister of Labour now has it within her mandate to promote section 67 to ensure that it is used to give the solutions that she says are so apparent which no one else in the employer work force seems to be aware of. 
Taking away a worker’s rights particularly in this time of financial stress and insecurity is not just unnecessary but a cruel thing to do. There is no need to take away a worker’s employment rights when he or she is unjustifiably dismissed which is exactly when their employment rights go. So it appears that unjustified dismissal is OK if it is within the first 3 months of someone’s job. That is just ludicrous.  
I want to refer briefly to something one of the ACT contributors said and I regret deeply that I am not able to recall his name just at the moment. He mentioned that this side of the House was pretty negative about employers. I want to put on record a correction about that misunderstanding of our view. This is not about bad employers actually. This is about bad law that a small number of employers may be able to take advantage of. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of employers in New Zealand would like to recruit well would like to recruit the best person for the job and be able to do that within their resources and that the person turns out perfectly—but some do not despite everyone’s best efforts.  
I know that the overwhelming majority of employers not only want to but do treat their workforce more than fairly—in fact very well—in all sorts of areas that are outside their legislative requirements. But what this bill does is say that we are prepared to have bad law in our country. We are lowering the standard of fairness that we currently expect in our workplace. That is what the law requires at the moment. It requires a dismissal to be fair and this proposed amendment to the Employment Relations Act lowers the threshold to the point where it can be unjustified. In this bill an explanation for a dismissal does not even have to be given by the employer to the employee. One cannot get more discourteous than that. What does that do to a young worker—when he or she is sacked and does not even know why? How does that make a young Pacific worker from Maungakiekie feel about his or her future role in New Zealand society? I ask the member Sam Lotu-liga how his constituents would feel if that happened to them. That is what the law says.  
The law says that not only can they be unjustifiably dismissed but they do not even have to be given an explanation. But the Minister says that is OK because they agreed to it. It has to be an agreement between an employer and an employee. The choice for some workers is the choice between taking it or leaving it. If this is the law then those unscrupulous employers know that the law says it is all right for them to behave in that way. We are often criticised in this House for our standards of behaviour. I agree with the criticism on many occasions and I have been party to low standards of behaviour in this House as I am sure every single member—except the newbies who soon will—has been in the past. But we should not take that bad behaviour as an opportunity to pass bad law whereby unscrupulous employers—and there will be only a few—can say: “But Parliament said it is all right. Parliament said that this is acceptable practice.”  
I conclude by asking the Minister of Labour whether this bill is really what she wants on her record as being the first piece of legislation bearing her name as the Minister of Labour. I cannot imagine that any member would say in his or her their maiden speech: “I would be proud to have in my name legislation to remove the employment rights of 700000 workers for the first 3 months they are in their jobs.” Added to the list of broken promises and the shambles of the House of the last few days is $730 million over 5 years that low-paid workers have been jilted on and now they get to lose their employment rights. This will be a hard Christmas for many New Zealanders.