Gosche Mark: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1477] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 That member spent 10 minutes displaying his utter ignorance of many people’s working realities in this country. I will tell him a few home truths. The people who clean his office and who feed him in Bellamy’s are contracted-out employees. For years and years those people have done those jobs. He said that their industries were high-turnover industries. What would he know? Is he here at midnight watching his office being cleaned? No he takes it for granted that his office is cleaned nicely for him every time he rolls into it in the morning after eating his breakfast. For years and years under a National Government workers in the contracting industry were subject to abuse. This legislation seeks to make sure that that does not continue. For years prior to the National Government changing the law that was the reality. Yes people could have a contracted-out situation. New contractors could come in and take over a job. They took over the workforce with the existing wages and conditions then they set about trying to get productivity gains. Most of them did it this way: at the Auckland hospital they simply said to the cleaners who had one ward to clean that they were sorry but they would now have to clean two wards in the same time and for the same money—and they did it. What better productivity can one get than that? 
But were the contractors satisfied with that? No they were not. They said to those workers that they were still not doing their job well enough and that they were still shirking even though they had gone from cleaning one ward to two in the same number of hours and for the same money. They were not satisfied with that level of productivity gain so as well the workers were to have their hours cut and were to do their work in an even shorter time. 
So all those full-time workers many of whom had worked there for 20 to 30 years—[ 
Interruption 
] Wayne Mapp laughs because he thinks it is a big joke for people who have been hospital cleaners for 30 years to be told they have to do twice as much work in fewer hours for less money. He thinks it is funny. He thinks that those people should be treated with derision and that is what the National Party does in voting against legislation such as this. Those people are largely Pacific Island and Maori women who have been working in those jobs for 20 to 30 years. Their kids are now achieving academically and are representing us internationally as sportspeople. 
Those are the sorts of people we are talking about. They are the people who feed that member and who clean his office while he is comfortably tucked up in bed. When those people are transferred from one contractor to another they have a right when they turn up for work the next day not to be confronted with a contract that says: “Sorry I’m your new boss. Here’s your new contract. You’re going to work for $10 a week less or $20 a week less and have your penal rates and allowances taken off you. If you don’t like it go away.” 
 That was the reality under the National Government. Labour does not believe in that sort of absolute rort. If that is the commercial behaviour that Wayne Mapp wants to see in this country God help us if he is ever on this side of the House making laws! That is the kind of slavery-type situation that the National Party would prefer to see. National members laugh at that but they have never ever seen what I have seen as a union official representing those workers—the utter chaos that is created in people’s lives. [ 
Interruption 
] That new member over there is laughing too. 
Paula Bennett 
: I think you’re living in bloody Noddy-land. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: She knows all about that! She was on a benefit and claims that she knows all about the lives of the low paid. A landlord does not say: “Oh look the cleaning contract has just changed I’m really sorry that you’ve lost 50 bucks a week I’ll drop the rent.” The bank does not say that people do not have to pay the mortgage any more because their boss has suddenly cut their wages and conditions. 
That is the harsh reality of life for those people and this law seeks to redress that sort of imbalance. It is a good law. We are going to make sure it gets passed and that it protects those most vulnerable workers. They are the people who clean Paula Bennett’s office and Wayne Mapp’s office and who feed them at Bellamy’s. Those members are happy to see them completely rorted. If members do not believe that that happens they should ask the people at Bellamy’s what happened when the services were contracted out. Those employees were going out of here in droves and their wages and conditions were taken off them by the contractors. It is happening right here in this building; it is not just out there where members cannot see it. It happens every night after members have gone home when people clean members’ offices. Members should go and ask those people for once and not just ignore them or say to them: “Thank you very much for my coffee.” If members thought about those peoples’ wages and conditions and what this law will do to protect them they would support this bill.