Bradford Sue: Holidays Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Holidays Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15392] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is with some reluctance supporting the Holidays Amendment Bill being sent to the select committee but we are certainly not promising the Government our vote for this bill after that. The only reason we are voting for this bill at all is that we realise there have been a couple of genuinely unintended consequences arising from the Holidays Act so recently passed by this House. 
We agree with Labour that if an employment agreement already expressly makes provision for a worker to have a penal rate of time and a half or more for working on a public holiday or a weekend for example the employee should not then be entitled to another penal rate of a further time and a half or more on top of that. As someone who sat on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its consideration of the original bill I still do not quite understand how that latter interpretation has been made. But given that there is advice that that is so the Green Party does accept there is a need to clear up the matter for the sake of all concerned—both employers and workers. We are also relaxed about accepting that there should be a longer period of exemption from the time and a half requirement for existing collective agreements. That will allow more time for employers and unions to come to an agreement on amending collective contracts in order to separate out the public holiday penal rate. The Green Party also accepts the clarification the bill provides that someone who is sick or bereaved on a public holiday will have that leave treated as an unworked public holiday rather than as sick or bereavement leave. 
However when it comes to the question of making amendments in the area of proof of sickness or injury we are completely in disagreement with what Labour is doing in this bill. The Green Party is extremely apprehensive that what is before us today is in fact the thin end of the wedge in terms of retreating from one of the original intentions of the Act. This bill if passed as it stands appears to give employers the right to require a sickness certificate from an employee even if a worker has had only 1 day or part of a day off for illness or injury. One of the main reasons the Green Party was so enthusiastic about the Act was that finally we had a law that meant employers did not have an automatic right to require proof of sickness or injury until a staff member had been absent from work for 3 or more consecutive calendar days. 
Now the Government is proposing that such proof can be demanded at any time if the employer has what is called reasonable grounds to suspect that the sick leave being taken is not genuine if the employer informs the employee right away of that suspicion and if the employer agrees to meet the employee’s costs of obtaining such proof. That is a really major backtrack on the Act and it flies in the face of the many submissions we received from workers and unions supporting the intentions of the holidays legislation. This new amendment plays right into the hands of the many business submitters who evidently distrust their staff to such an extent that they believe that employers should have the right to demand proof of sickness or injury as soon as employees take any time off work at all. The Green Party totally opposes this attempt by employers and the Government to return New Zealand to a system that requires employees to get a doctor’s certificate at the employer’s behest even if the worker is taking just 1 day or even less than 1 day off. 
While Labour has moderated its original proposal—thank goodness—by stating that seeing a medical professional must be at the employer’s expense there is still nothing here in this bill to state whether the employee has the choice of going to his or her own doctor or whether the employee will be required to attend a company general practitioner. In the light of what happens with regard to many accident compensation claimants who are required to be assessed by health professionals who are contracted to the Accident Compensation Corporation I can see similar problems arising under this legislation if employees are forced to get their proof of injury or sickness from a company doctor. I am afraid that there are times and situations in which doctors who are under contract to the stakeholder with the most power tend unfortunately to come down with decisions that favour that stakeholder despite the general requirements of medical ethics. 
Further to that if the Government insists on going ahead with this amendment at all the bill will need to clarify whether this provision is to be a reimbursement system. If there is to be a reimbursement system there will be real problems as often people do not have the cash on hand or credit that will allow them to pay high doctors’ fees upfront. For people on low and uncertain wages as so many New Zealand workers are the cost of seeing a doctor can be prohibitive and even if they can get back from their employer later the $50 to $70 that they pay the doctor it is money they can ill afford to do without in the meantime. Often those people simply will not have the money at all if they fall sick or are injured at the wrong end of the week. Before the Government responds loudly to that by talking about the benefits the primary health organisations have brought in terms of lowering the cost of going to the doctor I note that in all too many cases it appears the cost has actually risen especially for A3 patients in which category many paid workers fit even those on pretty low incomes. 
On top of all that it would appear that the requirement to provide a doctor’s certificate at the employer’s whim may also affect people who take domestic leave—that is staff who take time off because a child or other dependant is sick or injured. Will the employer pay for the child’s visit to the doctor? Who has the pleasure of assessing how genuine a child’s sickness is and then penalising or not penalising an employee because of that judgment? Overall what are the consequences for an employee if adequate proof of sickness or injury on the part of his or her family member is not supplied? Do those people lose a day’s pay? Are they subject to other forms of discipline? 
At the heart of all this also lies the question of what kind of proof if any employers will have to use to meet the requirement that they must have reasonable grounds to suspect that the sick leave being taken is not genuine. Given that this new obligation on workers will apply to only the first 5 days of sick leave in each year what grounds will employers have within that time frame of 5 days for thinking that workers may be abusing the sick-leave provisions? How low or high will the bar for reasonable suspicion be set? This provision is bad enough for workers who have a union to help them to negotiate the reality of how it may be applied but for the 80 percent of the workforce that is not in unions the situation will be a nightmare. When exactly do employers have to ask for proof? The bill as drafted refers to leave being taken thereby implying that employers must ask for proof on that day and not after the sick-leave period is completed. No matter how sick or hurt workers are will employers have the right to force them out of bed during the day to go forth and seek a medical certificate? Will employers be happy to foot the cost of the staff member receiving a home visit from the doctor? I doubt it. 
That takes us back to many arguments that were already canvassed during the early select committee process on the previous bill which I naively thought had been resolved. For example many people do not go to the doctor on the first day of their illness because they are not sure of the severity of what is wrong with them. Most people have a sensible tendency of waiting to see whether they get better or worse before making a doctor’s appointment both because of the cost and because if people are not feeling well it is often better to stay in bed at home. They have a better chance of recovering if they do that. If it turns out that the illness is quite mild and the person is better the next day then it is a waste of both money and time for him or her to visit the doctor simply in order to satisfy the obligations stemming from an employer’s mistrust. 
The Green Party believes that the amendment requiring proof of sickness or injury after 1 day or less than 1 day is a strange capitulation by Labour to the hyperbole of employer submitters on the previous bill who spend a lot of time bemoaning the supposedly huge number of workers who take days off when they are not really sick. Given that the statutory entitlement to sick leave is only 5 days a year there is a limit to the abuse that can be made of that provision anyway. I had hoped that New Zealand employers would be a little more mature and trustful of their workers than seems to be the case. I call on the Government to reject this measure outright and to go back to the original intention of the Act. It is all very well to put forward an amending bill to simply amend any unintended consequences of that Act but to actually use that as a Trojan Horse to give in to unreasonable employer demands that negate one of the original intentions of the Act is a wholly different story. Unless Part 2 of the bill is radically changed or eliminated altogether I can assure the Government that this will be the last occasion on which it can expect Green Party support for this particular bill.