Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a great pleasure for me to rise and offer the Green Party's support to this bill in its first reading. I do want to specifically congratulate the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for getting such a substantive piece of legislation into this House with a good deal of consideration in the process within the first 100 days. This is an important signal to the country on where we are going and where our values lie and I for one am incredibly proud to stand in support of this.For too long our laws and Government rhetoric have dehumanised people trying to turn us basically into nice compliant cogs of industry. We have been told that we are employees and consumers—hardly ever citizens. Most New Zealanders that I know have at times shed blood sweat or tears for their jobs. Many of us spend a huge amount of our lives at work and yet despite this working people are all too often described and treated as a cost to business.The relationship between employee and employer is not equal. An employee can't fire their boss they can't cut or change their hours and they can't send their employer into an unsafe situation. We've been told for years now that we need to reduce costs for business even up the playing field and provide more balance in the employment relationship. The strange thing though about this is that almost all the changes we've seen in this House have tipped the balance more in favour of employers.The change of direction has led us in recent years to a low-wage economy too many workplace injuries and burgeoning inequality. This was led by the employment reforms and started by the employment reforms of the 1980s and 1990s—partially clawed back by the last Labour Government but then again undermined by the last National Government—and they've created barriers to working people acting collectively to balance that power against their employers.We've heard so much this evening that echoes the view or that just reinforces that the National Party sees workers working together as a problem. They see unions as a problem and this was so clearly demonstrated in the laws they introduced to this House where National decided that a guarantee of tea breaks was an unnecessary privilege for workers. They decided that partial strikes even to the point of wearing a badge was too much power in the hands of working people and that needed to be balanced by enabling employers to cut those workers' pay. National decided that union representatives having access to workplaces without an employer's permission was unfair to employers. Our poor poor employers—they've been having such a hard time at the hands of these difficult difficult workers! Surely when we know that this is starting off as an uneven playing field this perception is unbalanced.We've been told that all these changes were necessary that if workers waited we would ultimately benefit from those gains of business and that those gains would be shared and we would all be better off. We've been hearing that again and again throughout this debate and yet what we have seen over the last nine years particularly since the global financial crisis is that what we knew was a pattern that when employment goes up workers' wages also used to track up as well—there was a connection between those two things. But that has been disconnected under the policies of the last Government and many many working people are now struggling under working more hours but not getting the financial benefit out of it. While productivity has increased their share of that profit has not been returned to them. It has gone to profit for the businesses or the owners or the shareholders and not the people doing the work. This bill is the start of fixing that to make sure that the people who are actually creating the wealth get a share—a fair share—of that benefit.We know that we have a lot of work to do. I suspect that most New Zealanders will know that feeling of resignation at best or resentment—not even at worst—in the face of low wages insecure hours and stressful conditions. This has become the norm in our country. It shouldn't be and it doesn't need to be. It's really hard to challenge these things on your own. It's been really hard even for people in unions to challenge these things under our current laws. It doesn't need to be that way. Our job in this House is to represent the best interests of all of our people not a small select privileged group. That is why we need good employment laws that support workers and their unions.The National Party often tries to undermine unions and man we have heard that tonight. They suggest that this side of the House—I've heard it particularly targeted at the Labour Party—are just union lackeys. They keep on talking about referring back to the 1970s and how we're out of touch. But really their rhetoric just shows how out of touch they are. Even the International Monetary Fund once the flag-waver of neo-liberalism has now recognised that the decline in union power has been responsible for the increase in income inequality around the world—even the IMF has recognised that. Their analysis found that the impact of declining unionisation is felt across the entire income spectrum. This is critical to this bill which is about rebuilding the ability for unions—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Speak to the bill.JAN LOGIE: —to get access to workers and to be able to organise.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Speak to the bill.JAN LOGIE: This is the bill. It is core to this bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: There's nothing about the IMF in the bill.JAN LOGIE: As the Minister introducing this bill said there are two key areas this works on: one is about working standards and the second point is about improving the ability for collective bargaining and union access. This is critical to this bill and the opposition that has been expressed against it. Their analysis found that loss of unionisation was a key contributor to the top income share as well as loss of income in middle and lower income workers. Reducing their bargaining power and de-unionisation has necessarily increased the income share of corporate managers' pay and shareholders' return. That is something that almost every New Zealander recognises when we look at the television and we see the people around this. We see this inequality that has been created by the policies of the previous National Government and that is why it is so great to stand in this House to be able to start unwinding that to return the ability for workers to join together to create some sense of balance and collectivity and community in their workplaces.I do also want to challenge the idea that may be perceived by some that this is anti-business. I've managed many workplaces and been responsible for staff and when those workplaces—and all of them have been thankfully—became unionised I benefited. I found out problems before they became a problem for me. We created a positive culture in our workplace and we ensured that everyone was able to have a say. Without a union supporting that it doesn't happen and we all suffer. Our workplaces suffer our families suffer and our society as a whole suffers.This bill is the very first step in turning that around and restoring our well-being and the fairness and community back to this country—values the Green Party values highly.