Moroney Sue: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9483. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on Part 2 of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. It is kind of hard to take this call without starting it off by saying “Well we told you so.” because on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee we on the Labour side tried very very hard to convince the National Party members. We hoped that they were talking to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety at the time to actually do the right thing and tighten up the provisions so that zero-hour contracts were gone from legislation. I think Minister Woodhouse to be fair if that was just a small amount of distance then we ought to have been able to sort it at the select committee. It should not have been reported back to the House needing all these Supplementary Order Papers that were negotiated afterwards if in fact it was just a small divide.The truth is that the things that have been subsequently agreed to make all the difference in terms of a level of job security and the ability of people to have certainty over some guaranteed hours of work. Having the provision in here to have guaranteed hours of work is no small matter for those people who have been sitting on these zero-hour contracts with no option otherwise. For them to have guaranteed hours of work that will be proportional to the hours of work that they are to be available for is the crux of the matter. That makes all of the difference in terms of how vulnerable they are their ability to plan their ability to be involved not just in paid employment but also life—because that is important as well—and their ability to be able to go to a bank and talk about their guaranteed hours of work and to talk about what their salary will definitely be as a minimum every week or every fortnight.Those things matter. They make a big difference to people’s ability to be able to participate fully in society. For the Labour Party having people being able to participate fully in their society is a very important thing. In fact we go further than that and say that we want everyone to have access to the Kiwi Dream. Certainly sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring because that is your only opportunity of getting any income at all that week is not elevating for this country.In fact I will just say very honestly to the National members that they are lucky that they had Iain Lees-Galloway to be dealing with over this to help them through it because Iain Lees-Galloway tried that once before with the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill. The Government failed to take our advice on that count and that turned into a complete and utter shambles. So perhaps those members learnt something through that exercise but I am going to say that they are very lucky that they had Iain Lees-Galloway to work through this issue with. Of course I have been one of the other two members from the Labour Party on that select committee. I am still in the “never trust a Tory” category after having been done over by them once when I took them at good faith around paid parental leave so they are very fortunate indeed to have Iain to be dealing with.The loopholes that have been used by—and I will call them lazy employers—lazy employers to not roster work appropriately and therefore give people some certainty and some security will be closed down by the provisions that we are recommending here for Part 2. Should those lazy employers—well you know that is probably being nice about them actually because there are lazy employers. Sorry I will start from the big group. The big group is the good employers actually who understand that people’s livelihoods and the way they earn those livelihoods is a huge part of their lives but it is part of their lives and they have another part of their lives as well. Most employers get that.In fact the fascinating thing about the select committee process was when employers came to do their submissions. I have got to say almost all the questioning of those employers was happening from the Labour Party side of the equation to find out exactly what was going on. Those employers—almost all of them told us that actually they did not need zero-hour contracts. They did not want them.Phil Twyford: They didn’t like them.SUE MORONEY: They did not like them and they do not need them. They said “What we need is the ability to have a permanent workforce for the work we know is permanently available. We need the ability to have fixed-term contracts for the occasion when there is a particular project that we want to take on or there is a seasonal need for increased work. And we need the ability for properly casual work to”—I was going to say “to deal with the peaks and troughs” but it is actually the peaks that is the reality—“to deal with the peaks.” That is what they said they needed. Those are the good employers.What was surprising about that in a good way was that the employers who were most clear about that were the employers from the home-care sector which a few of my colleagues have raised already. They could have been the employers whom we expected would need the maximum amount of flexibility in their labour market but what they have learnt over the years is that if they require that level of flexibility from their employees they end up not being able to guarantee getting the quality work done that they need for their clients. So they have gone through a process with unions and are working out how to actually maximise the most guaranteed hours that they can for their workforce and I commend them for that.But we did have the odd employer who came in—and the one that sticks in my mind I have got to say and perhaps it is because I did once work for them a long time ago in the past is McDonalds which said that it did not use zero-hour contracts. But what it ended up describing to the select committee—under intense scrutiny from the Labour Party I have got to say—and in fact what it was using was the definition of zero-hour contracts that both sides of the House have used which is permanent part-time work with no fixed hours.Jonathan Young: And?SUE MORONEY: Despite the fact that it knows—end of story. Despite the fact that it knows that its restaurants are going to be open for a certain number of hours that they are going to be open on certain days and that there will be a minimum number of employees it needs to staff those restaurants on those days and in those hours that they are open for it would not even guarantee those permanent shifts as being available for employees. That keeps people vulnerable—that keeps people vulnerable.People listening to this debate may be starting to get concerned about the complexities of some of the amendments that are being made. I have a simple message for those people: join a union—join a union. That is the best way to get job security because it is the unions that will be able to negotiate their way around all of these issues. It was the unions that raised the zero-hour contracts issue at the outset and so that this Parliament could deal with them. In order to get work that is decent work that people can have certainty about where they will know that they will get the good provisions negotiated into their employment agreement for availability and for cancellation of shifts join a union. That is going to be by far and away the best way that people can make sure that this piece of legislation works for them.I want to put on record that the position of the Labour Party is that we believe that this will deal with the zero-hour contracts issues because it guarantees people minimum hours of work. That is incredibly important. That will change this situation for thousands of these workers. I also want to put on record that should those lazy or unethical employers find loopholes around that Labour will find those loopholes and it will close those loopholes if they ever present themselves. So that is the commitment that we give from this side of the House.People might be surprised to learn of the types of submissions that we heard on Part 2. They might be surprised to learn that yes it was some of the hospitality sector and some of the accommodation sector employers who came to see us but it was also lawyers. We actually had a submission from a female lawyer who told us that she was on a zero-hour contract. She described the situation as one with lots of law graduates looking for work where employers were taking advantage of that situation by using the skills experience and the education that the graduates had invested in for themselves. Graduates were using their law degrees but employers were not prepared to give them permanent hours of work even though those permanent hours existed. We have got more work to do on this.