Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I don't know where to start. First of all I would like to say on the second reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill that Jacqui Dean thanked the National Party I think two or three times for this what she called wonderful economy. I'd like to say Thank you working people of New Zealand. Thank you for this economy." It's not one party that makes an economy great. It's the working people and that is despite the employment legislation they have had to work under for years.Now this this bill actually tackles many of the undermining changes made by previous National Governments that made it much harder for working people to get ahead. And I know that the member for the Coromandel called this a 1970s piece of legislation. Other members have said "Get into the 21st century." and then they've described a very adversarial environment of companies and workers and unions and that just shows how out of touch they are with modern workplaces. They don't realise that in many instances the very well-performing companies of New Zealand like Fonterra Air New Zealand KiwiRail—they all work collaboratively with unions and in fact they promote and they encourage their workers to join the unions when they first start working for them.No mention has been made by the other party of the object of the Employment Relations Act which is to address and acknowledge the inherent imbalance in the power in the working relationship and over the years it has completely gone out of whack. This is what this bill is doing: it is the first step in righting a lot of these wrongs. Now the National Party has been going on about these earth-shattering changes to this bill but let's look at what they actually do. We are reinstalling the duty to conclude bargaining; that was removed in 2015. We are reintroducing the fact that employers cannot make pay deductions for a partial strike—2015. We are reinstating God forbid the requirements around rest breaks and meal breaks—2015. The 90-day trial was only instated in 2009 to 2010.Mr Goldsmith had something to say about the right to strike but the right to strike is actually an internationally recognised right. That is not just something that people want to do because they feel like it. This bill is about workplaces that will provide good jobs decent working conditions and fair pay and it's restoring some of the basic human rights of workers to be treated with fairness and dignity.The changes that I just referred to from 2015—many of the changes only go back a couple of years. They were actually made against the advice of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment; against advice from industrial relations practitioners and unions; and also they were contrary to New Zealand's international commitments. One of them for example is the removal of rights of new workers to be covered by the terms and conditions of an existing collective agreement for the first 30 days of membership.If I look at the then comment from the Minister of Labour he actually said that the changes will enable employers to offer individual terms and conditions that are less than those in collective agreements. So that was what all of those changes were meant to do: they were trying to prey on the more vulnerable drive down terms and conditions—all that for more flexibility or like we call it exploitation. There was another one: the 30-day rule. Advice was that it would disadvantage young people those exiting benefits for employment and also it would disadvantage other vulnerable workers but National—at the time the National Government—chose to ignore that advice and we know the effects of it.The member for the Coromandel says that under this bill nobody will be better off. Yet we've heard real stories as our member Jan Tinetti spoke about earlier from people that have been hurt by the last Government's attacks on their working rights on their lives and incomes. All that—what we heard from the other side—is to create record amounts of jobs. But what kind of jobs are they: insecure part-time. The member for Northcote said it: "Flexibility. You know who wants to be in a job for such a long time?" Well actually a lot of these people hold two or three jobs to make ends meet and that's pretty tough when you want to make sure that you provide for your family and perhaps also have a little bit of time to spend with them. It just shows us that the National Government at the time was absolutely out of touch with what working people needed and what collective bargaining does because collective bargaining lifts wages and conditions and it does so not just for union members; it actually does it across the board.So when people are saying "Those bad unions and there's only so few union members"—I think the member for Coromandel mentioned 18 percent. Well actually it's the people not the unions that are missing out. If you look at the collective agreements that are negotiated by unions there's only 1 percent of all those members that missed out on a pay increase. But if you look at people on an individual agreement 45 percent missed out on a pay increase. So it's sad for those not with unions because they are the ones that actually are missing out more than the others. We know it pays to be with a union because the collective bargaining strengthening of union rights in the workplace will ultimately benefit most workers. So fairness and balance in the workplace is what it seems the National Party is not agreeing on.Jan Tinetti mentioned the fact that a lot of good employers are not afraid of these changes because not only do they already respect and value the workforce they also know that what the current legislation enables bad employers to do is undermine them. When you are a good employer and you're trying to make a fair and decent work environment for your workers and there's someone around the corner who doesn't respect those rights for the same workers you're actually up against a very unfair competitive environment. Good businesses will also treat their employees right their union delegates right and they recognise that union delegates actually fulfil a really important role in the workplace. They help resolve workplace issues before they become larger problems and I guess the constant narrative from the other side about how bad unions or union delegates are shows that they actually have no idea about modern workplaces and how everybody can win when people work together. The unions in fact warned the National Government at the time back in 2010 and 2015 that those bills would be bad for workers as well as for employers and it is exactly what has happened.Someone mentioned the reinstatement—I think it was Nicola Willis. Now I have also spoken to early childhood places that had some issues with that because they had the completely wrong idea about reinstatement as the primary remedy. It is for an unjustifiable dismissal so if somebody should not have lost their job in the first place they get reinstated to the place they were in before. Now there are a lot of hurdles still to consider. If for example a workplace cannot practically have that person back then that person does not get their job back but at the end of the day if you're dismissed and it wasn't your fault then you should get your job back. I don't understand why that is such a big thing to consider for the other side. The other one is the multi-employer collective agreements (MECAs). Now there seems to be a really unclear message about MECAs—MECAs are not one size fits all. If you look at MECAs that are used by big businesses—for example we had Chris Flatt from the Dairy Workers Union explain to us how it works at Fonterra and Jill Ovens from E tū about the district health board (DHB) workers. They actually explained to us about the schedules in the MECAs and sometimes those schedules are larger than the MECAs themselves. So once again the narrative about it being one size fits all is not right. There's also insufficient understanding about the access provisions. Now it's not unfettered access and we had an organiser from Together actually make that point really well. She said "Think of me as an organiser as a contractor. If there is a health and safety induction requirement then as a union official as a contractor that's what we do. We report in we sign in." So that's exactly what it is. There's no just walking in and doing whatever you like. But once again this access is just going back to the way things were previously. On the 90 days there has been no evidence at all—because we've asked the officials—of extra job creation for the 90 days but when it comes to flexibility in the smaller businesses that has remained. But when it comes to young people someone from Stand Up told us actually "The 90-day trials teach us as young people that we are disposable" and someone said "The 90-day trial caused an endless sense of anxiety". That's the sort of comment that we've heard from working people and how this old law has affected them. So for all those reasons I applaud this bill and I commend it to the House. Thank you."