Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10520] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak against the Employment Relations (Rest Breaks and Meal Breaks) Amendment Bill and I hope to address some of the points of the bill unlike the previous speaker Tau Henare. Unashamedly I stand here to say that I support workers’ rights at work. I support their rights to have a fair rate of pay to be safe and healthy to work a reasonable number of hours to have a holiday from time to time and to have—yes—breaks during the working day. 
Meal and refreshment breaks are a right and most New Zealanders would consider them a right. That has been the case for a long time. People will say that the law provides for them to have a rest break a lunch break or whatever and currently it does—that is right. But for a significant period of time after the National Government’s Employment Contracts Act dismantled our awards system workers had no legal right to meal and rest breaks other than what was negotiated in contracts and what was provided for in health and safety provisions. Despite the fact that New Zealanders think we all have the right to a morning tea break a lunch break and an afternoon tea break or whatever—which we have thanks to the previous Labour Government—there was a period when people did not have that right and we are heading back there right now. 
I think that the bill is very short-sighted. I have seen no evidence provided for the need for it. As Trevor Mallard indicated the Minister of Labour introduced it as a matter of great urgency then left it languishing. There has been no consultation with anybody since and no examples have been provided as to why we need it. But this bill will mean that certain workers—the most vulnerable workers certainly—will miss out on having breaks when they need them. 
Who is at risk? It is the young workers migrant workers and workers for whom English is a second language for starters. The Service and Food Workers Union said that one of the most common queries it received leading up to this legislation was about workers’ rights to have a break to have a cup of tea to have something to eat. Anywhere in any of the service industries there is that tension—whether it be a service station a retail outlet a cafe or a restaurant. Certainly in my experience in the retail industry that was the case. People were pressured not to have breaks. People worked through the day and did not have breaks. 
I remind members across the House that they voted for the Employment Relations (Breaks Infant Feeding and Other Matters) Amendment Act which this bill amends—they supported it. I do not know what has happened in the meantime. Trevor Mallard quoted the Minister of Labour. She said that it was important for workers to have breaks for health and safety reasons and for socialising between employees which produces happy and productive workplaces—for all of those good reasons. Well those reasons still exist. I will reiterate them. 
Sue Moroney quite rightly pointed out a fundamental reason which is health and safety. But there are other reasons. The breaks are there so that workers can refresh themselves and so that they can balance some of their other responsibilities. Most people need to be able to ring the kids pop out to the shops or post some letters—things like that. That is the nature of working life nowadays with often two adults in the family working. 
The current provisions are flexible. I do not think anybody across the House has even looked at the Act from the sound of the contributions so far. It is an absolute disgrace that this bill was introduced less than a year after the Act came into force without any real analysis of how it was working. What is the reason? Is it another example of what the Prime Minister said in his speech at the opening of this year’s session about looking at the costs that labour rights were imposing on employers? He meant that as a result of those costs jobs were not being created. If we have the flexibility not to have any rights at work will that create more jobs and impose fewer costs? In modern productive employment relations people’s rights at work need to be protected. This Government has already taken quite a substantial list of rights off people. 
I note that in times of high unemployment something which this country is currently facing the right to negotiate one’s meal breaks on this level playing field—this magical level playing field—is even more difficult. When someone is part of a group that has rates of unemployment of up to 30 percent like young Maori men and that person finally gets a job is he going to feel that he has the right to negotiate with the boss on the breaks that he wants? Frankly I think he will be taking the job on the employer’s terms. 
Some of the language and the concepts in this bill are very vague. Timing is to be at the discretion of the employer subject to the requirement of reasonableness; I would like somebody across the House to tell me what that might mean. Or how about the compensatory measures? There is no objective manner of measuring their adequacy in particular cases which will lead to the opportunity for greater disagreement between employers and employees. Again that will not be particularly productive and productivity is something that supposedly this Government is very much committed to although we have not seen a lot of evidence of that. 
What really annoys me about this bill is that it is quite sneaky. The language dresses it up to say that the Government is maintaining workers’ rights to have rest breaks and meal breaks—it will retain them—but essentially all of the rights are put in the hands of the employer. All of it ultimately is at the discretion of the employer. The Minister can shake her head but she might want to refresh herself about what the bill actually says. With this magical level playing field if there is actually negotiation and an agreement cannot be reached who ultimately gets to decide? The employer gets to decide. The employer sets any requirements as to the length of the break or how the break is actually taken. All of that is in the bill. So ultimately the right will lie with the employer. That is what the Government is proposing here. I think that will lead to greater uncertainty and to greater disputation in some workplaces. But most worrying I think it will revert us to the situation prior to the current Act coming to this House when the reality for many workers was that they did not get a break. Maybe they got a break sometimes but often they did not. They did not get the breaks that people felt were the normal breaks that New Zealand workers were entitled to by law. The reality was quite different to the law. 
That is what I think is very sad about what is being proposed in this bill. For some reason that has not been clearly articulated we are potentially destroying legislation that had been in place for less than 12 months when the Minister of Labour in great urgency put this bill into the House only to leave it languishing there for a number of months and doing nothing further on it. I ask members opposite to think about what they are trying to achieve with this bill. Again I want the Minister to stand up to take a call and tell us about what the explanatory note refers to as “a reasonable opportunity for rest and refreshment”. Who will decide that? Who will decide what restrictions are reasonable and necessary? Who will say what these compensatory measures will look like? Will it be acceptable for someone to agree that he or she will not have any breaks for a period of 3 weeks and then will have a whole day off? Is that a fair measure? How good is that for health and safety? 
Let me finish by giving an example of the health and safety issues that Sue Moroney raised earlier. This example was raised in a submission on the bill that became the current Act. It was a quite substantial submission from the Council of Trade Unions. It talked about rest breaks being recognised as having a role in ensuring worker productivity. Research undertaken in a car plant in Swansea over a 3-year period found that the risk of accidents during the last half-hour of a 2-hour period was double that for the first half-hour. The suggestion was that more frequent breaks could reduce accidents. It was concluded that increasing the frequency of rest breaks for workers who operate machinery could substantially reduce industrial accidents and that frequent work breaks—it gave the example of 10 minutes every hour—could actually improve work performance. If the Government had looked at some of the research instead of bringing into the House the hasty response that is this bill we might be in a different place. Thank you.