Ward Mike: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Ward Mike: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill (No 2) Human Rights Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
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MIKE WARD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is pleased to see the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) in the House for its third reading—the original Employment Relations Law Reform Bill having been broken into three constituent bills. The bill’s progress thus far has been something of a long and winding journey and I am glad the legislation will finally see the light of day. Above all with this bill the Green Party is delighted that at last we see protections in place for some groups of particularly vulnerable workers who risk losing their jobs and built-up entitlements when the business they work for is restructured or sold out from under them. Once this bill is in place what was known as the transfer of undertakings provision in the original Employment Relations Bill will assist in the protection of cleaners caterers caretakers orderlies and laundry workers in the State sector and in some parts of the private sector. 
I commend the Government for having the fortitude to push through with this despite the scaremongering from large employers that led Labour to retreat on this provision the first time around in 2000. 
The only regret from the Green Party’s perspective is that Labour has not been willing to include caregivers in rest homes in the schedule that covers vulnerable workers. Most people in this country and MPs in this House would I believe recognise that such caregivers are one of the most hard-working essential yet exploited groups of workers in New Zealand. Their wages are often the minimum rate—around $9 or $9.50 an hour. The work they do is essential to the well-being of many of our most disabled elderly and others who need the best care and attention possible. Yet we pay these workers a pittance for work that is often physically and mentally demanding in the extreme. 
These are also workers whose workplaces are at high risk of being sold because residential care is big business in this country. When rest homes change hands the staff concerned often go through a period of extreme anxiety and distress. Workers are in danger of losing their jobs and all the long-service leave and other entitlements they may have built up. I am sorry the Government did not see fit to support a Green Party amendment that would have seen caregivers in residential homes added to the schedule of vulnerable workers. I just hope they will be the first group to be added to the schedule as soon as is practicable through the new process. 
The Green Party also put up several other amendments to the bill during the Committee stage. One of these was aimed at strengthening good-faith provisions in cases where there are serious breaches by employers. The second amendment called for the bill to be amended to allow all employees who transfer to a new employer in a “transfer of undertakings” situation the right to bargain for redundancy entitlements. Neither of these amendments was radical or out of hand. Again I am sorry that Labour has not seen fit to support them. 
I turn to an issue in the original Employment Relations Law Reform Bill which has now disappeared altogether. Part 2 as it was first drafted was devoted to amending equal pay legislation. But it was completely inadequate in this day and age because of its refusal to deal with pay equity—that is equal pay for work of equal value. It was highly ironic that at a time when the Government had just done a lot of excellent work through the Pay and Employment Equity Taskforce it should introduce legislation that covered equal pay but left pay equity out. Fortunately the majority of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee agreed with the bulk of submitters in this area and in the end Part 2 was deleted wholesale from the bill. 
It is now critical that the Government does not just use this as an excuse to abandon the equal pay and pay equity “ship” altogether but rather treats as a matter of urgency the need to draft distinct new legislation that builds on all the good work that has already been done in this area. I hope we will see as the commentary on the bill points out the development of robust equal pay and pay equity provisions being introduced in the very near future. 
With regard to the bill overall as it was returned to the House the Green Party congratulates the Government on being willing to learn from some of the weaknesses and failings of the original Employment Relations Act. We are pleased to support measures to strengthen collective bargaining to further define and refine what is meant by good faith and to tidy up matters in the area of personal grievances so that this legislation is not such a bonanza for lawyers. 
We are also pleased to see some minor moves to take stronger measures against the problem of freeloading which sadly has become endemic in many unionised and semi-unionised workplaces. The Green Party has every sympathy with workers who feel a natural resentment when colleagues doing the same or similar work in the same workplace get all the benefits of collective bargaining that have been hard won by the union without those colleagues having to pay a cent for the privilege. We have therefore been happy to support moves through this bill to prevent the overt passing on to the collective—when it is done with the intention of undermining the bargaining position of the union—with the introduction of bargaining fee arrangements when these are freely agreed to between the employer and the union. We believe that unions and employees should have the right to include arrangements within a collective agreement that will allow for non-union members to pay a bargaining fee. 
To those on the right who argue that that is a return to compulsory unionism or a replica of the closed shop system in America I say that that is total nonsense. Those agreements can happen only when both employee and union freely agree and non-union employees will still have the right to opt out of that arrangement and negotiate directly with their employer on their own behalf. That is neither compulsion nor anything like the closed shop system. In fact the Green Party would have liked to see much stronger measures taken against freeloading but we accept that the tightly argued compromise contained in this bill is probably the best that could be achieved in the current climate. 
In conclusion I would just like to note once again the way in which even the mildest of industrial relations reform seems to bring out the worst in certain parts of the business community. Although some big-business and employer submitters offered calm rational submissions pointing out as they have every right to do what they saw as wrong or right with this employment relations bill others seemed to use this legislation as an opportunity to make the wildest claims about what will happen to the economy if it goes through. Sue Bradford made the point that having been in Parliament for 2 years she was starting to get used to fact that some parts of the business world always cry wolf claiming that even the smallest change to the employment relations framework will result in businesses closing down or going off shore high unemployment and an economic disaster in general. That manifestly did not happen as a result of the Employment Relations Act and I certainly do not believe we will see a host of business closures or an unemployment Armageddon as a result of this bill going through. 
What amazed Sue Bradford most of all this time around was the way in which so many employer submitters calmly told the select committee that the Employment Relations Act is working fine and to please not change it—when so many of them had forecast doom and destruction in 2000—especially given that the industrial relations bill is very moderate amending legislation based in large part on the contribution of working-parties which included employer representatives. 
To finish I would once again like to thank the Government for sticking to its guns with this bill and for not caving in to unreasonable demands from some parts of the business community. I fully expect that when the next good industrial relations bill turns up the business community will be saying how well everything is working with this one as it turns its sights on the latest supposed atrocity from Labour and the Greens.