Gosche Mark: Employment Relations (Probationary  Employment) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Gosche Mark: Employment Relations (Probationary  Employment) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6728] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I think that for the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee this was an interesting process. At the end of it we obviously had diverging views but on a couple of issues there was agreement. 
One area of agreement was that the existing provisions within the Act are not well-known and that they should be better advertised. We felt there should be more education on and quite frankly more use of the existing provisions within the law for probationary employment situations. I hope that happens because I think that many employers are looking for an opportunity to have a probationary employment period for their new staff—but not the Government believes with a total removal of the rights of those workers as this Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill would see. 
The second thing we agreed on was what I think is a blight on the employment scene—that is the advocates and lawyers out there who operate a sort of “no win no pay” type situation. We should just have a look at that as a proposition. I know that some of the lawyers on the other side of the House are here to defend their mates in good trade union fashion and they will do so in their speeches as they did in the committee. But the primary remedy of the personal grievance procedure in our current law and as far as I am aware through most of this country’s history is reinstatement to the job. So if a person has been unfairly dismissed that person should in fact be put back into the job. 
But how would “no win no fee” lawyers approach that as a proposition because they would not get paid. They will not seek the primary remedy that at the end of the day is the most sensible thing because it does not cost thousands of dollars for the employer and because it does not inconvenience the worker who has been unfairly dismissed. I ask how that could happen in a “no win no fee” situation in relation to advocates and lawyers—who have no place in my view in the industrial relations scene in this country. I think the research the committee has asked for will show that that has been a terrible blight on our industrial scene since it came in in the Employment Contracts Act back in 1990. 
I am not alone in this view; Roger Kerr agrees with me. The Business Roundtable says that these people are a blight. So it is not a left/right argument that we have here. It is just common sense that those sorts of parasites should not be in there doing damage to the employment scene and many employers—and I agree—feel quite rightly that that process is an unfair imposition on them when it is done in that manner. We did agree as a committee on that. 
However we obviously did not agree on the rest. On the Labour side of the House we do not believe that workers who go into a new job should have all their rights removed for the first 90 days. But the member has now put up some amendments because even his own supporters in the business community said that he had gone too far and that what he had put up was absolutely over the top. He has made a last-minute effort to try to soften it so let us have a look at that. 
The Opposition continually goes on about compliance costs for employers. Well could there be a more ridiculous compliance cost than this? Under Dr Wayne Mapp’s Supplementary Order Paper—I think it is—that he just sought leave to put forward an employee can force the employer to mediate on the decision to sack that employee. The employer can be forced to go to mediation and actually sit there and engage in mediation as to why the employee was sacked. But then the employer has the absolute right to say he or she does not care. The employee might have a convincing argument the employee might be right—the employee might have been unjustly treated by the employer—but the employer wins because Wayne Mapp’s bill says that the employer wins every time. There is no argument; it is a case of “Sorry you’re wrong I’m right—because I’m the boss and you’re not.” So people will have to go through that if this type of change is made to the bill—what a ridiculous waste of time! Workers know that if the boss has sacked them and they have no rights under the law they are definitely sacked. 
So Dr Wayne Mapp has put up a bit of window dressing because his own supporters have said that even though he went to university got a law degree and became a professor he did not get this right. That is what the business community told him and he has tried to soften it by pretending there can be mediation—but only one side gets to make the decision. That is not mediation; that is nonsense. Everybody in the world can see that for what it is—just a pathetic bit of whitewash. 
We heard a whole lot of interesting arguments but it is a real shame that the facts get in the way of those arguments. We heard that New Zealand was suffering on the employment front because we do not have probationary periods as they do in Germany France and the UK. So I looked at their unemployment figures compared with our unemployment figures and can members guess who is winning? This country here with a sensible probationary period is streets ahead in terms of unemployment and in getting people into work. It is terrible how these facts get in the way of a good argument but that is what we have heard constantly from the other side and that is what we are hearing during this debate. 
Employers have been coming along and saying that it is really hard to get people to come and work for them and we have heard that also from the rural industries. Federated Farmers representatives said that they were really able to attract only the dregs. Well I do not think they said those particular words but they did say that they were getting only the hard end of the labour market—the people who nobody really wanted. Apparently then the big plan to attract better people is to say: “Come and work for me for the first 90 days. Uproot yourself from wherever you are in the country and come here. And if I don’t like you after the first 90 days you are gone.” Well that is really going to help those industries that are struggling to attract staff! It gives people no security of employment yet Federated Farmers said that every one of its members would do it. But the logic is just not there. If they cannot attract staff now why will having a punitive arrangement like this in the law help them to attract new people into their workplaces? It is just beyond belief that people cannot figure this one through logically. 
In New Zealand we know that we have a youth unemployment situation that is worse than our adult situation but punishing people by urging them to go and work for employers who will get rid of them if the employers do not like them—get rid of them for even the most unjust reason—will not resolve issues with the hard end of the employment market. We know that the people getting those young people at the hard end of the employment market into work do it with mentoring programmes with training and with all sorts of incentives but not with a big stick like this one. It does not work; it never will; it never has. That will be the same for Maori and Pacific youth as it will be for Pakeha. 
The fact is that successful outcomes in youth employment that have been run by this Government have been about a much more progressive approach around mentoring. And that involves getting people up out of bed picking up kids and taking them to work visiting them at the workplace and checking with the employer that things are going well. That is how we deal with the hard end of unemployment that is what has been successful in New Zealand but the National Party jumping to the tune of its business mates has said: “No no no. We’ll just make it easier to sack people and that will increase employment for those people.” It is nonsense. 
Most New Zealanders can see that this bill would affect everybody. The Opposition says no—that it will be only for young Maori and young Pacific people and so on—but the people who came and made submissions said that it would affect us all. The average New Zealander now changes jobs about six times in a lifetime and this legislation would mean that for six times 3 months spent in changing jobs employees would be without rights. That is just ridiculous. How does that encourage the teacher currently residing in Auckland who wants to go to do some rural service in Masterton— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Because it’s a voluntary agreement. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Well that is not what the School Trustees Association said was it when it gave its submission—anything about voluntary? No it was another group that came along and misrepresented its membership’s view because I know that a lot of people who run schools are much brighter than that. They would not get people going into rural New Zealand after uprooting their families and selling their houses if those people did not have security of employment. We heard that from university professors we heard that from teachers we heard that from nurses—we heard that from all the people who have to be mobile around this country if our public service is to be the same in rural and provincial New Zealand as it is in the big cities. This legislation would wreck rural New Zealand. That lot over there have forgotten they are supposed to represent rural New Zealand. They just go along with a blind ideological piece of nonsense like this and pretend it will make a difference. 
We know that it would not make a difference. Our employment figures in New Zealand are the best—the best in the world. We get those figures on the basis of fairness and justice and good faith but the National Party knows nothing about that.