SpeechMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a real privilege to be able to take a call in the first reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. Now it's clear as we've heard that parties across the House seem to be agreeing that there are cost of living pressures on Kiwis and global economic pressures making it even tougher for many to make ends meet. Since we have come into Government in fact we've lifted wages and done what we could to reduce those pressures for Kiwis with many measures including of course recently the 1 April ones increasing support for 1.4 million New Zealanders. But as we always say there's more to do. So we were elected to take action on Aotearoa's long-term challenges and that includes making sure that we don't leave our lowest-paid workers behind. For a very long time now working life for so many working people has been really tough. Many have struggled to make ends meet and it's not a matter of just working harder because New Zealand workers already work some of the hardest and longest hours in the OECD but they've also seen their share in the economy decrease over the last decades.The problem—and we heard that from Minister Michael Wood very eloquently earlier—is that we had the start of the Employment Contracts Act in 1991 and of course what we saw then was an individualised bargaining framework as a model to supposedly come to higher productivity but that model has absolutely failed. While the economy grew we saw that growth was not being equally shared amongst employers and employees. So productivity grew and workers worked harder and longer but their wages and salaries didn't keep up. Over that same period we saw good employers being forced out of the workplace by bad employers because there was this continued drive for flexibility and cutting costs and we had inequality grow. We refer to this as the race to the bottom. It has been mentioned already several times by several speakers but the race doesn't actually benefit anyone. It doesn't benefit the workers. It doesn't benefit existing business owners because those are the ones that are forced into bad practices by other employers—bad employers—just because everybody supposedly needs to compete.Now we all know people affected. They have been mentioned today. We see them every day in our supermarkets. They are our security guards keeping us and our property safe. They are the cleaners in our offices making sure that we have healthy and safe environments to work in. They are the care workers looking after our vulnerable and the drivers on our buses. Lifting the wages of our most vulnerable working people has to be a priority for New Zealand. Sector-wide pay agreements have the potential to distribute the wealth that New Zealand produces more fairly and while they do that we can then protect businesses that actually want to compete on quality on innovation and on investment in their people. When companies can only win a contract by putting in the lowest bid the impact of competition on wages and labour costs is borne by those workers.People have mentioned hard-working employees and how well they've done under this current system in place. Well let me mention some of those hard-working employees like Leava a solo mum of three working 70 hours - plus a week. After three years she is still on a casual contract earning minimum wage. She had to give her eldest child to her mum and gets a babysitter to look after the youngest one when she does the night shift. She hardly ever sees her family because when they are awake she is asleep and when they are asleep she is awake and working. She said she feels like a failure as a mum and her kids miss out on family time. Leava recently had her cleaning hours cut but at the same time her workload remained the same.We have Jess a solo mum of a six-year-old. They live with her mum in a small apartment. She works in the supermarket. She starts at 1 a.m. she works till 8.30 then she goes and takes her child to school and then she goes back and works till 10 o'clock. The business recently had to let some staff go but the work remained the same and when anyone on the shift is sick they just need to work short-staffed.Sui a security guard used to work in excess of 60 hours a week on minimum wage just to get by. But then one day her contract was changed. She's now part-time but no reasons were given. She's not allowed to leave the site during a shift so that means that because there's no toilet she can't drink while she is at work. She often works at car parks or in railway stations and she doesn't always feel safe. She's casual. That means her roster can change at any notice really and she can be sent all over Auckland. She says she can't plan anything in life because of that uncertainty in her work. When you ask her she describes her life as being in survival mode.Now these workers have many things in common. They all struggle to make ends meet. They're too afraid to speak up for fear of losing their job. They describe similar feelings of helplessness and increased levels of stress fatigue and feelings of isolation. There's little job security no training and no career progression. These workers are all in industries that share the same problem: they are trapped in a race to the bottom. It's important to know that many employers would actually like to offer fair terms but they're unable to because they get undercut by competitors that are offering only the bare minimum. So look at supermarkets for example. Countdown is unionised but Foodstuffs has little unionisation because how it is structured is as franchises. Countdown workers are told by their employer that they have to compete against the lower-waged competition and then that pulls the whole sector down when it comes to terms and conditions. Connor says about that that A fair pay agreement across the supermarket industry will do a fantastic job at setting a level that can't be undercut and allowing as a result of that for better conditions better wages and better livelihoods." But poor working conditions in these jobs lead to higher risk of injury at the workplace and then you get reduced quality of work and service increased sickness and reduced motivation to work hard or even remain in the job.Now that is in very stark contrast to the fact that New Zealand has one of the worst productivity performances in the world as the Minister mentioned before but what we see in countries like Germany or in Australia is that it's the opposite. But these agreements have been operating in those countries—and in fact in Australia—for over four decades. But Australia continues to outstrip what our Kiwi workers are getting.So what would a fair pay agreement (FPA) do? It would enable the parties—the unions and companies—to negotiate a set of industry standards a decent floor that upholds pay and conditions and covers things like pay training qualification and thereby it would uplift the overall capability of that whole industry. FPAs by putting a floor on the price of labour encourage competition on the quality of services of product and of innovation instead of focusing on competition on wages and labour cost. Morale staff retention and skills would all be improved and these jobs that we talk about as low-skilled would actually become sustainable careers. But actually it is much more than just jobs; it is about protecting the basic human rights of workers: the right to be treated fairly and with dignity to feel respected and to feel valued. When people are engaged there's positive energy and that then translates to higher discretionary effort. As my colleague Minister Whaitiri said it's going the extra mile—you get better productivity.So the key is that people in these industries are best placed to tell us what they need to have fair decent and secure work. They should be able to sit around the table with the employer and negotiate the things that they need to achieve fair and safe working environments. It's about giving workers a voice in the setting of their work conditions.When we talk about giving workers a voice it reminds me of the time that I worked for Air New Zealand and I was president of the flight attendants' union and later head of aviation of E tū. In 2013 with the arrival of a new CEO we began to work with High Performance High Engagement (HPHE). It's a workplace democracy model where people closest to problems in the workplace work together to find long-term solutions. I know that the Air New Zealand CEO at the time really became heavily invested in the process. In his words he wanted to get away from the Punch and Judy show because the HPHE process was a way of ending decades of distrust and hardball industrial relations.That Air New Zealand CEO for five years worked collaboratively with unions giving workers a voice: unions workers and the company sitting around the table working on solutions. That CEO is now the current Leader of the Opposition and if the National Party has turned the page as the Mr Luxon has said before then this is Mr Luxon's prime opportunity to show that. But having listened to some of his senior speakers senior members of the National Party I am not holding my breath. As I've said earlier we all seem in agreement that it's tough for many Kiwis to make ends meet and National have frequently mentioned the difference in wages between New Zealand and Australia. So rather than spouting slogans and rhetoric now is the time to actually do something about it because let's be clear that any party that votes against FPAs is in fact voting against higher wages.I would like to thank Minister Michael Wood for the leadership and determination shown. FPAs will make a huge difference to New Zealand workers. As chair of the select committee that will work on this bill I'm looking forward to receiving and hearing the submissions. It's therefore a great privilege to commend this bill to the House. Thank you Mr Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The next call is a split call. I call the Hon David Bennett—five minutes."