Bradford Sue: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is supporting the Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill being read a second time tonight. I would like to congratulate Darien Fenton and to thank her for her work in championing the cause of this particular group of vulnerable workers. 
I must say however that as I mentioned when speaking recently on the Holidays (Transfer of Public Holidays) Amendment Bill and on the bill that deals with breastfeeding and breaks it is a pity that the Government has not been able to put together an omnibus reform of the Employment Relations Act that could contain all these smaller matters important as each of them is in one bill and deal with some other matters as well. We would have preferred one big bill to deal with all the defects but at least they are being dealt with and we will continue to support the reforms step by step. 
I am also disappointed that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee was unable to make a recommendation on this bill. That means that we will be dealing with a plethora of amendments by way of a Supplementary Order Paper during the Committee stage and that is always a bit of a confusing experience especially for members who were not on the select committee and always bears with it the problem that mistakes can be made. New Zealand First members must take some blame for this. In their view as reported from the select committee they stated that they had sympathy with the intention of the bill but that it creates “too many administrative grey areas”. That reveals New Zealand First as a party perhaps lacking some rigour— 
Peter Brown 
: I used to be nice to you! 
SUE BRADFORD 
: —and not prepared to do the hard work and negotiation to improve a bill the intent of which it seems to support—which is great. I tell Mr Brown that his giving up on it during the select committee is a bit of a pity. Now that work will have to be done by the whole House. 
The bill will close a serious lacuna in the Minimum Wage Act that permits some of our most vulnerable workers to be exploited by being paid less than the minimum wage provisions of the Act as a consequence of contract for services arrangements. It will complement my own Minimum Wage (New Entrants) Amendment Bill which for the most part removes the ability of unscrupulous employers to pay exploitative wage rates to 16 and 17-year-old workers. There are a number of totally valid reasons why good employers may choose to engage workers under a contract for service rather than a traditional employer-employee relationship. These include greater flexibility in dealing with their workforce simplicity of human resources administration and avoidance of the need to maintain a complex and expensive payroll system. Unfortunately some employers utilise contract for service arrangements to deny workers employment rights and to avoid complying with labour laws including the Minimum Wage Act. 
The increasing trend towards utilising contract for services arrangements has resulted in a growing group of workers who receive inadequate pay including people like pamphlet deliverers pizza drivers and deliverers security officers commission sales people personal care workers and homeworkers. Homeworkers are a growing but very vulnerable group of mainly women who attempt to stretch the family income through taking in work like sewing light manufacturing computer-based work and childcare. In some cases these people may actually be in an employment relationship as defined by the Employment Relations Act but a low level of awareness of employment rights and the near impossibility for unions to organise groups of workers such as these under our current employment law allows unscrupulous employers to get away with designating them as contractors thereby denying them employment rights. This small but growing group of employers is not only grossly exploiting those working for them but also potentially putting good employers who play by the rules out of business by undercutting their prices. 
This bill will help to bring the underground economy further into the open and will help to ensure that tax that can currently be readily evaded under contract for services arrangements actually is paid. I am especially pleased to see that Labour is proposing to recommend an amendment to the bill to remove the ability to prescribe minimum rates of remuneration by reference to age. Young people who deliver a few pamphlets after school or on the weekend in order to have some money independent of their parents or even sadly to supplement inadequate family incomes are among the most severely exploited of all workers. 
The Green Party supports Labour’s proposal to amend the bill to provide clear definitions of who constitutes a principal and a specified person and to clarify which components of a contract for services should be included when calculating remuneration. We also support Labour’s proposal to amend the bill to require contracting principals to keep their pay records for a 6-year period. Contrary to the National Party’s assertion this will not add significantly to business compliance costs; it is little more than what any responsible business is required to do for tax purposes. It is however necessary to ensure that the bill can be adequately enforced. Furthermore it will have the spin-off effect of helping to prevent contract for service arrangements being used by unscrupulous principals and those they contract as tax evasion devices. 
The National Party’s response to this bill is disappointing—rather predictably so but it is a pity. I would have thought that the National Party would support legislation that levels the playing field for good businesses that play by the rules and ensures that all workers receive fair and equitable pay. But no the National Party in its usual Pavlovian reaction to any legislation that improves workers’ rights opposes this bill. In doing so it abandons its constituency of good employers and takes the side of the undercutters the fly-by-nighters those who make their ill-gotten gains by exploiting their workers and those who are complicit in defrauding the taxpayer by paying under the table. 
Unlike the National Party with its abysmal record of promoting legislation such as the Employment Contracts Act which saw wages and employment conditions become seriously eroded and Dr Mapp’s appalling bill which would have left workers with almost no employment rights at all in the first 3 months on the job the Green Party has a proud record of supporting vulnerable workers. We have consistently voted for and promoted legislation that has that purpose and we will be doing so again today by supporting this bill being read a second time. Again thanks to Darien Fenton for all her work on this bill and thanks to all those parties that are supporting it.