Harawira Hone: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13315] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare. Maori Party policy is to support the right for workers to be treated with dignity and fairness so when the Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson said when introducing the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) that the Government is committed to producing an employment relations system that is fair pragmatic and helps to give New Zealanders more opportunities and flexibility it sounded good. But the relentless increase in unemployment confirms that the 90-day trial employment period that we have had since March last year which this bill aims to extend is having none of the positive effects that the Government has been touting. The statistic showing that 25 percent of those who got jobs under this scheme have since been fired tells us that we were right to oppose the scheme when it first came to the House. Although the Government has been talking about how good the scheme would be for young people I note that the youth unemployment rate has jumped 12 percent since this policy was introduced as well. I also note that the Department of Labour evaluation of this trial employment period says that “[employees] saw it as making them more vulnerable to reduced job security and unfair treatment from employers. This belief was confirmed for the few employees who had been dismissed without explanation and in their view unfairly.” The interesting point is that those comments were not from the unions or from the Opposition; they were from the Government’s Department of Labour condemning the actions of employers who were using this scheme to simply fire people rather than pay them properly. 
The Maori Party concern with the probationary period legislation is that it discourages the very thing that is needed—clear contracts for new employees and good employment induction and training processes to minimise the risk of poor performance. We were told that the 90-day scheme would result in all kinds of employment opportunities for the 7000 Maori and the 2200 Pasifika youth currently unemployed but there is precious little information to suggest that it has. There is no data on how many Maori and Pasifika youth started under the scheme how many were paid more than the minimum rate how many were kept on after the 90-day trial period and how many got a pay increase. That information is important because we know that Maori and Pasifika youth are struggling to get into the workforce in the first place. We know too that they will often accept less than they are due by employers exploiting that legislation for their own benefit. We think that the Government should be focusing on ways to get our rangatahi into work and on keeping them there rather than making it easier to sack them. We will oppose any move that marginalises them especially during the current unemployment crisis and particularly given the leap in the Maori youth unemployment rate over that time from 6 percent to 27 percent. This bill is not fair it is not providing the opportunities for secure sustainable employment and we will not be supporting it. Kia ora tatou.