Bradford Sue: General Debate 
Bradford Sue: General Debate 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 Some of our children will at this moment be walking or cycling out on to our streets to face the daily hazards of dangerous dogs creepy strangers and out-of-control bikes not to mention rain and wind in some cases for just $2.50 an hour or less. At the beginning of 2004 Caritas the Catholic agency for justice peace and development published a hard-hitting survey of nearly 5000 children. The survey revealed that some as young as 11 were being forced to work to support their families sometimes for incredibly low wages and at times in dangerous or downright illegal working conditions. 
Earlier this week Caritas issued a second report called  
Delivering the Goods 
. I hope other members of this House will have had a chance to read the report and if not I encourage them to do so. It contains detailed findings from an in-depth survey of child delivery workers in 2006 a group of workers who in some ways symbolise the ambivalent attitudes we adults have to the situation of child workers in Aotearoa today. This latest study shows that although many children delivering circulars and newspapers have good experiences on the job many others are not faring quite so well. Many of these surveyed children with an average age of 12½ were independent contractors meaning that for them there are no holidays there is no holiday pay and there is no sick pay or other employment rights. Instead their welcome to the world of employment includes the task of filling out an IR3 each year. Most of their pay rates fell somewhere between $1.67 and $6.25 an hour. Then because these children are contractors they can pay their expenses out of that $1.67—or whatever they are getting—for their bike maintenance their carrying gear their wet-weather gear and their high-visibility vests if they have them. 
The survey shows that children who are in direct employment relationships rather than working as contractors do a lot better in terms of pay support clothing bike allowances and health and safety overall. But for those children who are self-employed contractors most if not all of these protections are missing. 
It is time we as a country stopped seeing some forms of work as child’s work and thus below the radar in terms of employment rights. This not only devalues the work that children do but also may be helping to keep adult wages down possibly at the expense of other children whom those adults are supporting. The increasing reality is that in some families children’s wages are actually propping up and supporting families’ incomes because our minimum wages are still far too low. Then again the child who told Caritas he was earning $15 a week for delivering 88 papers a day probably is not able to contribute much to his family’s grocery or clothing bill. Another child had it written in his or her contract: “You will be paid approximately monthly.” Approximately? Is this child required to deliver to “approximately” the right addresses? 
One-third of the children in the survey felt that their delivery work interfered to some degree with their school work. More than one-third expressed definite interest in joining a union for delivery workers but of course this is hard when many of these children are contractors so have no access to a collective employment agreement. It is estimated that 31 percent of children aged 10 to 14—or 95000—are employed or on contracts. 
In 2003 the United Nations specifically recommended to New Zealand that it expedite the ongoing process of reviewing and strengthening legislation protecting all under-18-year-olds who are employed. Both the Ministry of Youth Development and the Department of Labour have acknowledged the ongoing issues about child labour and in particular the repeated calls from the United Nations for our country to sign up to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Labour Organization core labour standards. Despite all this it has now been 10 years since the UN first recommended that New Zealand pass legislation to protect children in employment. Since then the Government has not introduced or passed any amendments to address this problem. 
Child workers need and deserve fair employment rights. Working children deserve at a bare minimum at least the same employment rights as adults. Otherwise we are effectively saying that children deserve less protection than adults. We need to work with our children collaboratively involving them in our consultation processes to develop a framework that guarantees them these protections. Children who work should be entitled to a guaranteed minimum wage guaranteed minimum conditions requirements for direct employment relationships job security better health and safety coverage and an opportunity to belong to a union.