Bennett David: Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bennett David: Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:17862] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. The first thing we ask when we look at this bill is why we would want to push it through Parliament only a couple of months before a general election. The reason is simply that it is part of that incremental change in labour policy and labour relations law that the Labour Government is engaged in. Rather than doing it in one fell swoop the Labour Government has engaged in a process of incremental change because it believes that this is the way to hide from the public the changes in the general employment situation it is bringing about. 
I think that one of the first things we need to look at is the point that this bill is about breaks and infant feeding; this is not a bill about the 90-day - trial period. All of the Labour members may want to go out and talk about the 90-day bill but that is not what we are talking about here today. We are talking about something to do with meals rest breaks and infant feeding so the way that Labour has used this session to try to promote legislation not actually being debated in this House today is a shame and it really shows the Labour members’ true intention towards this legislation: they do not actually mean what they are doing here today; they have no real desire to progress workers’ rights; and they just see this as being another tick in the box they can give to the unions leading up to the election campaign so that the unions can fund them again in their campaign to try to get votes at election time. 
We also have to look at this legislation in the sense of what is happening out there in the market place. We are in a situation where there is rising unemployment. By the end of next year the unemployment rate will probably be peaking at around 6 percent. This country is going through a dire situation where people are losing jobs and they are losing jobs because of the economic management of this country. Employers came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and said that they did not need more conditions placed on them in these tight economic times. They asked committee members whether we wanted to make it harder for them to employ someone or to retain people in situations where they could easily close businesses but the Labour Government has ignored that. It has totally ignored it and feels that it is appropriate to put more conditions and requirements on employers even though employment is becoming very tight in the sense that there will be an oversupply of staff and employees going into the next year which is quite contrary to what we have had in the past couple of years. So instead of helping employees by making sure that they will have job security and that jobs are there for them the Labour Government is putting another hurdle in the way of employees at a time when it does not need to do that—it does not need to do that at the time of these economic conditions. 
This legislation came before members of the select committee in a form that would have actually hurt employees. It would have meant that some people would lose the entitlements they already had; it was too prescriptive. In some cases employment agreements were already giving greater recognition for breaks. Employers and employees had agreed on something that was less onerous than what was in this legislation and if Labour had fulfilled its requirement and had just gone through with the bill in the blunt form it had had originally employees could have lost out. But the reality was that when the bill came to the select committee Labour became aware that this legislation actually took away some workers’ rights and it had to amend the bill. 
How many pieces of legislation do we see going through this House that have a commentary of nearly 2 pages and over 1½ pages of that commentary are proposed amendments? That shows what a quick-fix solution this bill has been. It shows that it was not thought out in its initial form. It shows that the Labour Government did not have the best interests of workers in its initial thoughts. It had only a conceptual basis that it wanted to pay its unions back with and that has become the start of this legislation. 
Let us look at these amendments. There will have to be amendments with regard to breastfeeding facilities and breaks—a “so far as it is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances” clause needs to be added—and there will have to be amendments with regard to the entitlements to rest breaks and meal breaks. The timing of those breaks needs to be further mandated through the legislation so that people actually know what the timing of those breaks will be and what time frames employees will be entitled to. Some big amendments are required around the timing of rest breaks; many people felt that the provisions were far too prescriptive. Some of the nature of the agreements between employers and employees will also have to be incorporated into legislation so that if there is already an agreement then that will take precedence over what the legislation may say. 
A very important part of the legislation is the enabling of employers and employees to agree on things. There is nothing wrong with that in a workforce environment where both parties have the ability to negotiate and agree as they do now. We do not need to take away that ability from employees. The ability for an employee to agree on certain conditions can be to his or her advantage and if we have prescriptive legislation over little parts of an employment agreement then we can take away workers’ rights. We can take away their ability to negotiate and agree. 
The legislation also affects employers in the sense that they may be mandated to do things that just do not suit their employment relationships in the nature of their businesses. We very much heard that from bus industry representatives who were very concerned because of the nature of their industry that prescriptive requirements on them would be detrimental for their business. They had no problem with giving people breaks—and they do so now—but they did not want to be told they had to do that in a prescriptive nature which would mean that the breaks were detrimental to their business. 
The ability of an employer and an employee to come together and to make mutually beneficial rules is something that we must cherish and support. If we take that away by incremental legislation that aims to be prescriptive on every little element of the employment relationship we will be hurting employees. We will be taking away their ability to negotiate. We will be taking away their rights. How can Labour members stand in this House and take away employees’ rights? Why would they want to do that? All this is about is Labour giving payback to its funders going into an election campaign. 
A number of people who spoke on this bill in its first reading raised a very important issue about the bill—that it has not been thought through. The financial consequences of this bill have not been thought through. The research has not been done to see what the implications of this bill will be in the community. There was no regulatory impact statement submitted in time for the bill and the analysis has been very much lacking. This has been just a conceptual mandate by the Labour Government. The legislation has not had the hard-core research and analysis done that we would expect in a bill to make sure that it is solving a problem. The nature of this legislation because it has been so rushed because it needs so many amendments and because it takes away the fundamental debate between employer and employee means that in time it will be shown to have created a number of holes and problems that will have to be sorted out through further legislation or through agreement between the parties. 
When we pass things quickly in the House just for the sake of an election campaign it does not make for good legislation. This bill needs to take its time. It needs to be thought out and to have the proper research and analysis done on it so that all parties can determine what needs to be done in the circumstances and it needs to have time spent on it so that we can get the best results for all concerned. That is one of the concerns that many people raised when submitting to the select committee and it is a concern that many members of the select committee held as well. They felt that this legislation was rushed it was not done in a proper process and it did not take account of what was going on in the market place between employers and employees. 
Although the National Party does support this legislation we believe that the Labour Party and its allies could have done a better job. Employees will be detrimentally affected by this legislation and it sets a bad precedent for employees when parts of their employment negotiations will now be done through mandatory prescriptive legislation rather than by giving employees the ability to negotiate through the nature of their work. 
Bill read a second time.