Lees-Galloway Iain: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9473. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Before I embark on my contribution to Part 2 of this bill can I also like Minister Woodhouse make a couple of acknowledgments. The first is to the Unite union. If it were not for the Unite union this issue would not be a political issue. We would not be considering this issue this evening. The second is to the Council of Trade Unions which was there at the beginning of this legislative process and which has been an enormous source of information and knowledge and support in the period of time between the select committee consideration and now and before the select committee consideration as well.Assuming all goes well tonight and going by Minister Woodhouse’s comments it sounds like things are going to go well tonight I look forward to the opportunity to make a few more acknowledgments during the third reading. Can I also acknowledge the officials. The Minister is absolutely right—they have worked extremely hard on this legislation and ought to be acknowledged for that.I have a definition of a zero-hour contract. It is not unlike the Minister’s. It is “a permanent part-time agreement with no fixed hours”. “Permanent”—i.e. not casual. It is permanent in that the employee does have to come to work when they are told to come to work by the employer. “Part-time”—not full time. “No fixed hours”—no guarantee of work. That I understand is the term that was actually used particularly in the fast-food industry for what we term a zero-hour contract: a permanent part-time agreement with no fixed hours. The result of that is people are literally stuck at home waiting for the phone call and then must go into work when the phone call comes.The result of that is people cannot plan their lives. They cannot get a loan from the bank because they do not know how much income they are going to have. They cannot get hire purchase agreements to buy a fridge or a bed or anything else like that. They cannot join sports clubs because they do not know when they are and are not going to be at work. They cannot be available for their children sometimes—you know if their children have got a sports game on a Saturday morning but they are suddenly called into work or likewise if the children have got a school play or something. Zero-hour contracts just stop people being able to live an ordinary decent life. That is why we have got to get rid of them and that is why I am so hopeful that tonight will go well and the result will be that we will get rid of them.There is certainly a difference of opinion about how significant the changes are that we are talking about making tonight. The Government says they are minor. I am less convinced about that. To start with I would like to go to the first change made on my Supplementary Order Paper 155 which makes changes to new section 67E in clause 87 because this is what changes this bill from a bill that entrenches zero-hour contracts to a bill that eliminates zero-hour contracts.I understand—I absolutely understand—that in the public’s mind that is a difficult concept. It is that a bill that we have been saying—and we are quite right in saying this—entrenches zero-hour contracts could actually be changed significantly by changing only a couple of clauses and be changed so significantly that we actually do a 180-degree turn and end up with a bill that eliminates zero-hour contracts. It might be difficult to believe—I can barely believe it myself—but it is true and that is what this amendment will do.So the issue we had with new section 67E when it came back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was section 67E(2) which said “an availability provision may relate to—(a) all work performed under the employment agreement;”. In other words all the work you did under that employment agreement would be subject to an availability provision. In layman’s terms you could be on call all the time with no guarantee of work. That is a zero-hour contract. That is the very definition of a zero-hour contract. That was the fatal flaw in the legislation and that is the bit that we have desperately wanted to change.The other changes are important—there is no doubt about it—but the change to section 67E(2) is the linchpin. Without that none of the rest of it really matters all that much but with that it changes the context for the rest of the bill and it changes the context for the rest of the amendments that are proposed both by the Government and by the Opposition. So this is the important one. For everybody out there who desperately wants Parliament to eradicate zero-hour contracts this is the one that changes this bill from a bill that entrenches zero-hour contracts to a bill that eliminates zero-hour contracts.Instead of the availability provision relating to all work performed under the employment agreement the availability provision may in my Supplementary Order Paper “only—(a) be included in an employment agreement that specifies agreed hours of work and that includes guaranteed hours of work among those agreed hours;”. It also must relate only “to a period for which an employee is required to be available that is in addition to those guaranteed hours of work.”What does that mean in real terms? It is the classic on-call situation that most people in this Chamber will have experienced and a lot of workers have experienced. To be asked to be on call—because that is essentially what an availability provision is to be asked to be on call; in other words when the phone call comes you have to go to work—can happen only if you have guaranteed hours in your employment agreement. So you will have your guaranteed hours and then in addition to that you may be on call.In my younger days I worked at a medical laboratory. I worked a shift during the day and every fortnight or so I was on call overnight. I got an allowance for being on call because you do have to put your life on hold. You certainly cannot drink and you cannot go and play a game of football or whatever because the phone call comes and you have to go into work. If you went into work then you got paid for the actual work that you did. That is a situation that we recognise well and that is what is now going to be the case under this availability provision.So people have previously been required to be available with absolutely no guarantee of work; now if you are required to be available that comes only on top of guaranteed work. That eliminates zero-hour contracts when taken in the context of all the other provisions that are included in this legislation.In the time I have remaining in this call I want to address a question that I have been asked and I really want the Minister to address this one as well. The question that I have been asked is: what is to stop an employer giving someone 1 guaranteed hour and then putting them on the availability clause for the rest of the time? It is a fair question and we have to answer that. The answer to that comes in new section 67E(3B)(c) which says an employer must have regard to “the proportion of the hours referred to in paragraph (b)”—which is “the number of hours for which the employee would be required to be available”—“to the agreed hours of work.” So it would be disproportionate for someone to have 1 guaranteed hour and 39 hours when they have to be under an availability clause.Obviously what is reasonable will have to be tested but that would be disproportionate. That would be an onerous contract. Let this Committee be clear: that is not what we intend at all. If a judge has to look back at this debate and has to figure out what our intention was I want it to be absolutely clear: we do not intend that employers would be able to give people a very small number of guaranteed hours and then require them to be available for a much larger number of hours. The weighting should be such that the majority of time is guaranteed and a few hours—the fewer number of hours—are under the availability provision.That has to be our clear intention from this Committee and I really want the Minister to contribute at some point in time this evening to make it clear that that is the Government’s view as well because without that really we are potentially window dressing. We really need to ensure that that intention is the case. I am confident that it is the case; I just think we have to be absolutely clear in this Committee that that is our intention. Mr Chairman—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No you’re right.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I thought you were going to cut me off there for a second Mr Chairman.So there are certainly other aspects of Part 2 that I am very keen to speak on but not being able to see your clock Mr Chairman I have got no idea how much time I have left—1 minute OK. Well I will talk briefly to the cancellation of shifts because that is the other thing that my Supplementary Order Paper does. Actually you need some bits from my Supplementary Order Paper and you need some bits from the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 154 to deal with the cancellation of shifts issue completely. But what we do not want to have happen is the situation where employers can cancel a shift at the last minute. That was another aspect of the whole zero-hour contract regime that was inequitable and it was exploitative of workers.We want to make it absolutely clear that workers must have a reasonable period of notice for cancellation and if they do not get that reasonable period of cancellation then compensation must be paid. Furthermore that notice period of cancellation must be included in the employee’s employment agreement so they know up front what the situation is and what the period of cancellation is and that must be a reasonable notice period.