Faafoi Kris: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9493. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is my pleasure to speak to Part 2 of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. I have got in my hand here one piece of A4 paper with two sides to it. It is probably one of the most important pieces of paper that we have got in this House for workers this year. It is Supplementary Order Paper 155 in the name of my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway. The first two of his amendments to Part 2 have been well traversed the functional one being one of the changes to clause 87 that provides for a new section 67E(2) which many of my colleagues on this side of the Chamber have spoken about. Basically that does away with zero-hour contracts. I do not want to concentrate on that one but I do want to speak to the third and the fourth amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 155 that Iain Lees-Galloway has put forward in his name.I think it speaks to one of the concerns that the member from New Zealand First Clayton Mitchell raised in his contribution earlier on in this debate in that the fact that we have got a clause that does away with zero-hour contracts is good—technically we cannot do that—but it also I think tightens the noose to prevent employers from essentially doing the same thing by any other means.The part of Supplementary Order Paper 155 that I want to first look at is again a change to clause 87. The amendment replaces new section 67E(5) with a new passage that says: “an employer and an employee who is remunerated for agreed hours of work by way of salary may agree that the employee’s remuneration includes compensation for the employee making himself or herself available for work under an availability provision.”That is one way that I think Supplementary Order Paper 155 is very pragmatic in the way that it is saying: if you are a salaried worker and you have got guaranteed hours but you are expected to be available then we can work that expectation of availability into your salary. Rather than wait for it to come along later we are going to make sure it is dealt with at the very beginning of your contract that you sign with your employer and we are going to work some more money into your contract to make sure that you are compensated for if you are made to be available and you are not asked to work in those hours.Again I think that is one really good way that Iain Lees-Galloway has protected workers from not being I guess—for want of a better term—screwed by their employers by another means. We have taken away that main clause that says that we will do away with the zero-hour contracts but there is not another loophole that the employer can go through to not pay that employee as much money if they have been asked to be available during other hours but they are not actually either warned that they are going to not work during those hours or compensated during those hours. So that is one way that I am really happy that Supplementary Order Paper 155 protects the workers out there.The other amendment I want to talk about in Supplementary Order Paper 155 is the one that amends new section 67G. Please bear with me because I am going to read it out. I think people at home would want to hear this because the concern as we have heard in this House around zero-hour contracts is real. I had one father call me on a Friday night worried about his daughter and the unfair practices of her employer at the time which was a shop not too far away from here. If anyone wants to have a juice it is TANK down on Lambton Quay. He was really concerned about the practices of that employer just down the road from here. He was saying: “It is not fair that my daughter is asked to be on call and given close to no hours of availability. How is my daughter expected to work if she does not know when she is going to work or how much she is going to get paid?”.I think that the new provision that Iain Lees-Galloway has got within Supplementary Order Paper 155 new section 67G(2) and (3) will speak directly to the concerns of that parent. He was not actually from my electorate. He called me—I do not know how he got hold of my number; he was outside of my electorate. He just wanted to make sure he could speak to someone to tell someone in this Parliament how outraged he was that his daughter was being treated this way. I think that that is fair that he did that and I am glad that his voice is being heard. I am glad that Iain Lees-Galloway has worked on those concerns.I want to talk about new section 67G(2) and (3) because to do so hopefully will put that father at ease as he may think that there is another loophole within this legislation that will disadvantage his daughter.