Lees-Galloway Iain: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):For those members in the House who were not on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and although I am no longer a member of the select committee I did sit through a number of the hearings on this legislation the Employment Relations Amendment Bill—we heard from all sorts of different people. We heard from cleaners on the minimum wage we heard from aged-care workers we heard from meatworkers who work in the private sector we heard from clerical workers we heard from academics we heard from education support staff and we heard from teachers. We heard from people right across the range the breadth and the depth of the New Zealand workforce—all sorts of different people—and they all came to tell us the same thing which is that this legislation is unfair that it will make their lives tougher at work and most important that this legislation will keep wages down.I say that we had people from all different parts of society—all the different kinds of people whom the National Party seems to hate—but they had some things in common as well. Scott Simpson was quite derisory about the fact that overwhelmingly the workers who came and spoke to us were union members. There is a reason why the people who came and spoke to us were union members and that is that being a member of a union gives a worker the opportunity to be organised. It gives workers the opportunity to have their say on legislation like this. So not only by trying to break up unions through this legislation is this Government trying to keep wages down and keep workers down; it is trying to stop ordinary people from engaging in the legislative and democratic process just like it is trying to stop workers from engaging in their workplace from having a say in their workplace. I heard the previous National Party member—gosh I cannot even remember who it was and I cannot see him now—Carol Beaumont: Simon O’Connor.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —Simon O’Connor—who said that this was about control. Well he is absolutely right because National wants to ensure that workers are under the control of the Government by making sure that they do not have the opportunity to work together not only in their workplaces for better pay and for better conditions at work and to have a say about their workplace and their industry—because shock horror and this might come as a surprise to National workers actually have some really good ideas about what is right for their industry and what will make their industry sustainable. In fact the businesses that have done best through the financial crisis have actually been cooperatives where the workers own the business because they knew what was best for their businesses and they knew how to get their businesses through difficult times without having to lay people off. That is the power of working together that is the power of the collective and National hates it. National hates it because it is working for the 1 percent. It is working for the top end of town—the people who benefit when ordinary people are divided. When ordinary people are divided that is when National does well.I say that we should be doing everything we can to give ordinary people the opportunity to work together and if they work together against that Government then we will back them even more because it is only when people have the opportunity to work together that we see wages increase. I heard Mike Sabin talking about productivity. Well it is absolutely true that as productivity goes up so should wages but have we seen that over the last two or three decades? Have we seen it since the Employment Contracts Act? No way. What we have seen is productivity increase and wages being left behind and that is a direct result of the union-busting Employment Contracts Act which was introduced in the early 1990s. What we should be doing is trying to recover ground for workers. We should be saying that all those ordinary New Zealanders—the cleaners the meatworkers the teachers the academics the people who work in engineering firms the people who work day in day out doing the right thing and trying to get ahead in life—should be given the opportunity to work together to get ahead but no this National Government believes in divide and rule. If we stand united that is when we will beat this lot.