Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):Labour is strongly opposing the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. That was a most disappointing speech from the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee David Bennett who sat and listened to something like 170 oral submissions; who travelled around the country to Auckland Wellington Christchurch and Palmerston North; and who had as evidence the people who came before the select committee. They had no impact on that member at all. They certainly had an impact on the Labour members of the select committee. I will always remember Christchurch. We went to Christchurch and I have never seen anything like it in a select committee hearing. Workers came before the select committee showing support for each other. They came waving their banners to show they were opposed to this bill.Jacqui Dean: Back to the 1970s.DARIEN FENTON: They came forward and told their stories and I have to tell that member over there who is shouting out that they cried.Iain Lees-Galloway: It was Jacqui Dean.DARIEN FENTON: Jacqui Dean. Shame on her because they cried. They cried about this bill. What they told the select committee was that this is the last straw for them. They have been through the earthquakes. We had workers from a range of occupations from the lowest paid to quite professional nurses and front-line response workers and a whole range of other workers who came forward. They talked about how after the earthquakes they went back to work to help other people. The cleaners at Hillmorton Hospital went back to work and helped clean up the mess helped the people who were coming into that hospital and helped their workmates who were suffering because their houses had been trashed.Those workers from all walks of life have not been listened to by this Government. It is extremely disappointing because I asked the Minister of Labour Simon Bridges late last year whether he would listen to the submissions and particularly to the submissions around Part 6A which is the provision that he is weakening thanks to his friends from CrestClean who sent the media unit a stupid mug last week. Actually what it says is to not go ahead with the amendments. Well we agree with CrestClean on that. But however it wants to be able to make sure that it does not have to employ vulnerable workers or transfer them from one job to another.Simon Bridges told me in answer to the question I asked him about the workers at Hillmorton Hospital who I said quite truthfully were sick with worry about the changes to Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act because they feared they could lose their jobs—and that would be the last straw after the earthquakes they have suffered—that “In all seriousness they can be confident that I am listening and taking this very seriously.” Well did he? Have the amendments to Part 6A changed? No they have not changed except to make another group of employers exempt as well—that is franchisees who are not the parent company. So he has actually made it weaker than it was before it went to the select committee.The other person whom I will never forget who came before the select committee was a home-care worker called Julie Reason. She was fantastic. She told the select committee that she earns between $14.10 and $15.86 an hour depending on the nature of the work. Ninety percent of her work is at the lowest rate of $14.10 an hour—well lucky her; she will have gone up to $14.25 an hour with the miserable increase in the minimum wage! She said: “I drive between my clients’ homes and then help them shower or dress or do their shopping or housework. My work is deemed to be casual so I do not have guaranteed hours. The idea is that we build up a pool of regular clients and try to fill in the gaps in the day as best we can. Extra assignments are offered via group texts sent out to everyone and are grabbed on a sort of ‘first come first served basis’. I am not reimbursed for my petrol my travel time or my vehicle wear and tear. Roughly 10 to 15 percent of my income goes on work-related petrol. Our terms have not always been this generous. It is only recently that a freephone number has been provided so that we do not have to pay for our own work-related calls and texts and it used to be that if a support worker like me arrived at a scheduled appointment and could not actually do the work because the client was not there they would not be paid at all.”This Julie Reason told the select committee that it was union pressure and union collective bargaining that made the tiniest bit of difference for her and her job. What was really interesting about what Julie told us was about meals and rest breaks. Do Julie Reason and other home-care workers like her get a tea break? They are not allowed to sit down with their clients when they visit a home and have a cup of tea with them because that would be breaching some kind of protocol so she never gets a paid tea break even though the legislation provides for it. The Government is unfortunately proposing to weaken the legislation. Julie Reason never gets a paid tea break. She has to pay for her own tea while she is on the road driving if she is lucky to the next client. She told the select committee: “It is hard enough doing the work I do without having the Government actively trying to undermine the bargaining position of my union and the union representing me. Why would a Government want to make it even harder for me to earn a fair wage?”.I will never forget the courage of Julie Reason and the workers like her who told their stories to the select committee and who were ignored. They have been ignored because apart from minor technical changes this bill is as bad as it was when it went to the select committee.There were 13679 submissions—13679 submissions. Workers put a lot of effort into making sure they got their submissions through. There were complaints about the fact that the select committee did not hear enough submissions and in fact there was a people’s submission process organised by the Council of Trade Unions so that people could have their voices heard throughout the small towns and regions throughout our country. But of course it has all gone for nothing because this Government does not take workers seriously. It does not believe that it is a struggle for some people and that our system that we already have of collective bargaining our system under the Employment Relations Act—which this Government has weakened through pieces of legislation after legislation since 2008—does not work for them.What this bill will do is make it even harder for those people those workers on the margin like the cleaners in this place who earn just on the minimum wage of whom Tau Henare said: “Oh if they don’t like it they should get another job.” Remember that? He had to apologise for it but how disgraceful was that? How disgraceful to have a member of Parliament on a huge salary telling the workers in this place who clean his office that if they do not like it they should get another job. He should be ashamed and I know he was actually. But that is the attitude of the National Party.Another little part of this bill—well it is quite a big part of the bill—is the stupidity around the ability of employers to decide that they are not going to conclude bargaining. What that means is that workers will go to bargaining and the employer can come up with an excuse to drag it out and eventually apply to the Employment Relations Authority to say that bargaining has ended. Workers in that situation immediately lose their collective agreement. They immediately go on to individual contracts and what is more they cannot strike for a period of 60 days—in fact it is 90 days by the time they reinitiate. So we have a strike ban on workers who want to get a collective agreement. Then we have this petty thing that if they decide in their workplace—like Julie Reason the home-care worker might decide she does not want to go on strike because of those clients whom she looks after but maybe she will not take them shopping. That would be deemed a partial strike and her employer could fine her 10 percent. So we have now got stupid pitiful and mean provisions in this legislation that are going to make it really hard for everybody.Labour is deeply opposed to this bill. It is not necessary—it is not. It builds on the bad record of this Government and the way that it treats workers. It will not survive a change of Government. In fact it may not even get through by the election—Mike Sabin: That’s right. You won’t have to worry about it because there won’t be a change in Government. Don’t panic Darien.DARIEN FENTON: Mike Sabin is saying that there is not going to be change of Government. Well I will tell you what: bringing this bill to the House is the best thing you could have done to mobilise the workers of this country against that Government.