Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13311] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 That was another stunning speech from David Bennett from Hamilton. I am sure that lots and lots of wage and salary earners in Hamilton are interested in his point of view and will give him feedback about the ridiculous things that he continues to say about the workers of New Zealand. As we have made clear Labour strongly opposes the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). It takes us backwards. 
The reason why we have this bill in the House today is that the Government is desperate to show the country that it is doing something about the economy. But really the truth is that it has no plan and the problem is that we are falling further and further behind Australia. The Minister of Labour the Hon Kate Wilkinson can talk about Australian workers having various trial periods but she never mentions that Australian workers are paid a whole lot more than New Zealander workers. They receive things like redundancy pay; they have centralised wage fixing. I ask the Minister why if we are talking about balance she does not put forward a balanced argument. The only new idea that this Government can come up with is to undermine the ability of Kiwi wage and salary earners to improve their wages and working conditions. Unfortunately removing the fundamental right of workers to protection from unfairness is not a plan. It is not a plan for growth in jobs. It simply further undermines employment security for Kiwis when we know and have seen that unemployment is already high and growing. 
I really had hoped that we had moved on to a point in our country where New Zealand’s workforce—the Kiwi wage and salary earners whom we rely on to do the work to produce goods and provide services and to help make businesses successful—could at last take a breather from being blamed targeted and hung out to dry by the National Government. But unfortunately that is not true. That is not happening because this bill removes rights from all Kiwi wage and salary earners. The bill extends the fire-at-will provisions to all workers and it leaves them with no right to appeal against unfair dismissals within the first 90 days of their employment let alone to be able to have a reason for why they have been sacked. It makes it harder for workers to have access to their union in the workplace for advice. Some of the restrictions in this bill are worse than those that were in the hated Employment Contracts Act. Can members believe that? We have access provisions coming from this Government that are worse than something that Bill Birch introduced 20 years ago. 
The bill reduces the requirement for there to be a fair process it expands the reasons for dismissal and it removes reinstatement to a job as a primary remedy even when unjustified dismissal has been proven. Is this the payback to the New Zealand workforce for its contributions and hard work during the last 2 years of recession? Many workers have reduced their hours in order to keep the business going many have taken pay cuts or had zero wage increases and thousands and thousands of workers have lost their jobs. Unions cooperated with the Job Summit with the Government and with the 9-day working fortnight. That worked because of trust in close working relationships between employers unions and staff not because John Key had a bright idea. 
But this bill is typical of National and may I say of ACT. When they do not have a plan they turn their guns on wage and salary earners. This bill sends a message to New Zealand wage and salary earners that this Government thinks workers are skivers and untrustworthy and that they should be punished. What is more it paints unions as adversaries and outsiders by making access hard and by getting in the way of good-faith bargaining by allowing employers to be able to bypass union representatives in communications with workers. 
The problem is that National has a very old-fashioned view of workers—of people who work for others for a living. National thinks that they should be grateful to have a job—that they should go down on their knees and be grateful that they have a job. Well yes workers are paid for their time but they do not own the company and they do not have any direct or meaningful stake in or say on its profits. At an individual level what a worker in a company does seldom has any measurable impact on whether the company succeeds. That is about what its management does yet this bill puts the blame for and consequences of poor management and company failure on to the economic livelihoods of New Zealand workers. It encourages sloppy management practices. It allows and encourages employers to substitute dismissal for good supervision and training of new workers. This bill is the big stick. It gives employers a powerful tool by making it easier for them to sack the 700000 workers who change jobs every year. It is a low-trust approach to employment relationships which is why this bill takes us backwards. It puts fairness as a requirement for decent work on the back-burner. 
Mr Garrett has been yelling out about one of the Council of Trade Unions cases that have come forward and I have no idea why he thinks that young woman is a party member. She happened to go on to the Grassroots Labour website. [ 
Interruption 
] Well the Minister does not know that. Has she checked our party records? How would she do that? I want to talk about a hairdresser. I am about to tell the member about another one. I would be happy to go on all day if I were given the time. 
David Garrett 
: The other one? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Another one and if the member would like to seek leave for me to talk for the rest of the day I will cite numerous cases. 
Yesterday the Minister talked about a hairdresser. She said the hairdresser was a bit rough but she was taken on and was grateful to have a job and it has all turned out lovely—it is all sweetness and light. I want to tell the story of another hairdresser whom I talked to yesterday. She got a job as a stylist via the Internet. It is funny about the Internet actually. What do we see on the Internet? We see job advertisements on TradeMe that state that the provisions of the 90-day legislation will apply. I thought that it was voluntary not compulsory. I go back to the hair stylist. Two days after she started work she was called into the office and given an individual agreement with a trial period in it and she was asked to sign it. A few weeks later before the 90 days were up she was called into work and fired. No reason was given no notice was given and no support was offered. Let me tell members about that woman. She is 58 years of age and was delighted to have a job. She had been struggling to find a job for a long time. She has never been sacked in her life and this dismissal hit her like a bombshell. Her confidence has gone down the gurgler. 
This is just one of many stories that we have been hearing. The Council of Trade Unions helpline has been inundated with calls from parents who are concerned about their children. 
Labour is totally opposed to the extension of the 90-day trial period. The Minister’s own evaluation showed that there is widespread abuse of the 90-day trial period. One in five workers were sacked. The report on the trial period was very unbalanced: 3500-odd employers were asked and just 13 workers got to give their point of view. Yet the Prime Minister paraded that report at the National Party conference as a sign of the success of the trial period. It was a very very unbalanced report. I am confused about the 90-day trial period in the current law let alone what it may mean in future law. I cannot understand whether it is voluntary. If it is voluntary what is voluntary? Is what is voluntary that the worker does not have to accept a job with a 90-day trial period? It seems to me that the only thing that is voluntary about this provision is that the employer gets to decide whether to voluntarily impose a trial period. There is no choice for many workers. If they want to have a job they simply have to accept this provision. 
I want to spend just a couple of minutes on access. There are so many things in this bill that I could talk all day but I know that Mr Assistant Speaker will not let me do that. The problem with the access provisions in the bill is that first of all there is no demand for change and that has been referred to today. No one asked for this change and no one wants it. There is no problem; the Minister’s own officials have told her that. But the Minister is proposing that an employer must consent to access by a union representative and that that consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. There is a reference to unreasonableness again which the Minister is removing from the Holidays Act with the amending legislation that we will be debating next week around sick leave because she says it is open to interpretation. Well yes it sure is. I predict that we will see big tussles as a result of this provision I say to the Minister. We do not have to look too far back in history to see what life was like when employers had to give consent to workers having access to their union. There are practical considerations as well. If there is an accident at a worksite does a union really have to give 2 days’ notice in order to go along and support the workers? There are a whole lot of things that make it completely impracticable. 
Finally I want to comment very quickly on the issue of process. Once again this bill seems to be going through a rushed process. The bill has to be reported back by 7 November. That is a very very short time frame—and we will have the amendments to the Holidays Act as well—for the biggest change to employment law that we have seen in a decade. That is a disgrace and Labour will be opposing this bill.