Clark David: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9487. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the bill before us. I want to start first by congratulating my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway on the excellent work that he has done in getting this bill across the line. It speaks to basic Labour Party values of course. The course of action needed was clear. But actually it is often hard to achieve the kinds of things we would like to achieve from the Opposition benches.I got a little taste of that with my Mondayising bill to Mondayise Anzac Day and Waitangi Day which became law eventually but against the Government’s will. When the Government did not want to make those changes it took a great effort to get the smaller parties together to recognise the importance of making the change and perhaps even more important than that to get the public of New Zealand behind a change and to enable them to understand the complex laws that get put through Parliament in a way that boils it down to the basic stuff.What we have got here in terms of zero-hour contracts has been put out there into the wider realm and 56000 people I understand signed the petition to bring an end to them. Iain Lees-Galloway has led that work and we now have this positive change before us. So I congratulate him and others who have worked towards this end.How does this come to pass? How does it come to pass that we are in a world where we have this kind of insecure work? There were submissions made to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I have flicked my eyes over a couple. I have also seen the submission which people carried and used as a resource from the Council of Trade Unions on vulnerable work. Part of it is of course around the fact that we live in a globalised economy. Labour’s Future of Work Commission project is designed to deal with the issues that that presents in terms of shifting to a higher value diversified economy; the research and development tax credits that we know would make so much sense for our economy; the investment incentives to grow businesses that are in the weightless sphere; and capital debt.But I come back to this particular aspect in terms of the zero-hour contracts that are no longer going to exist as a result of the excellent Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Mr Lees-Galloway. That is there to protect the downsides of globalisation which we know will be there in the transition to this higher-value economy that we want to have. It is to look after the vulnerable workers to make sure that those who are in the position that they cannot negotiate against a global trend are protected. So in the Supplementary Order Paper there is a very clear set of provisions that will be put into law to make sure that those people are protected that the vulnerable workers are looked out for and that decent wages and decent working conditions can be guaranteed over time.Let us face it. Nobody wants their kid or their workmate or their family member to be on a contract where they cannot guarantee to pay the rent or the power or for the food every week. Nobody actually wants that for anybody they care about. I do not believe that the majority of New Zealanders want that and that has been shown in the incredible support for these changes that have been brought through in Part 2 of the bill in the wider social movement that has supported that and in the support within this House eventually for getting rid of zero-hour contracts.So again my congratulations to Mr Lees-Galloway. His Supplementary Order Paper amends clause 87 to ensure that there are guaranteed hours to start with to make sure any contract that has flexibility within it does actually have those guaranteed hours. You cannot start with zero hours guaranteed. And then if you are going to have some on-demand aspects of a contract the employer is now required through the changes being proposed to be specific about when and how those changes would take effect. So they cannot just pluck something out of mid-air. They cannot pluck something unreasonable out of mid-air.Most employers we all know and would acknowledge in this House would not do that. This legislation like much of the legislation we put through this House is designed to guard against the worst abuses that can happen when employers who are not good employers and often are not very effective or profitable in their businesses resort to the weaknesses that they can see in order to make ends meet. That ends up harming people and stopping them meeting their ordinary everyday commitments such as their ability to commit to a mortgage. We know we have got the lowest homeownership rate in New Zealand since 1951 and that problem is just getting worse every year. It is because of labour provisions like this that people cannot commit to that future expenditure. That is why this Supplementary Order Paper from Mr Lees-Galloway is so important.The second thing his Supplementary Order Paper does is ensures that there are genuine reasons. There must be reasonable grounds for having an availability provision at all in an employment agreement. So they have to meet a test of reasonableness. They have to have specific provisions. There cannot just be provisions that they can vary. They must specify why and for how many hours. That is clearly specified in Mr Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper. The third thing that is very clear to me is that a shift cannot be cancelled at all unless the employee’s agreement specifies it. It must be done with a reasonable notice of cancellation.