Gosche Mark: Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1857] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I find it extraordinary that Dr Mapp’s answer to New Zealand’s economic future is to be able to sack people more easily. That does not exactly strike me as being a wonderful policy or vision. We need to work through this carefully because there have been some interesting arguments—ones that I hope some members on the other side might be interested in hearing. 
One argument is that the incentive for the people who are the most hard to employ in this country is the threat of getting the sack for no reason. I have worked with people all my life in the employment situation who are at the bottom of the heap—the people who clean and cook do the grottiest dirtiest jobs and get paid very poor wages. Many of them are casual workers I say to Peter Brown. In essence the bill makes all people casuals for the first 90 days of their employment in a new job because they have no right to stay in that job. They can be sacked at will in the first 90 days. If New Zealand First members believe that that is an improvement for people who are not casual workers then they need to think more carefully about it. 
I hope that the Maori Party members come to the select committee and hear the evidence because it will be incredibly important that they do so. Young Pacific and Maori people who are unemployed in this country will not be excited about going for a job if in fact that job can be taken from them at a moment’s notice. The successful employment programmes in this country have been those that have mentored those people I say to Dr Mapp. They are the long-term unemployed whom he says he is concerned about. He should go and look at the successful programmes. They do not work by threat; they actually work by encouragement. The people out there who work with those people day in and day out will get up at 6 o’clock in the morning if that worker has not got out of bed and will be late to work. They will pick the worker up from home and take him or her to work. That is the sort of encouragement that gets the young Maori and Pacific workers into employment permanently. 
This bill puts people into employment for 90 days at a time if they are lucky—like those who were employed on the waterfront traditionally in our evil past. I do not think that employers are bad. I have worked with employers and unions for many years and I have worked with employers who have made bad decisions. I have worked with the odd bad employer but most I have worked with as an advocate for workers had made bad decisions. Most of those bad decisions get sorted out amicably in this country. 
When the select committee heard the last lot of submissions on the Employment Relations Bill employer after employer came in and said that we should not change the legislation any more because it was working wonderfully and they did not want it disturbed. Yet when the Employment Relations Act was first brought in by this Government back in 2000 the whole world was going to come to an end. So how come things have changed? They have not changed. 
The reality is that successful programmes getting people back to work are not based on a big stick. The kids that we are talking about have had the big stick waved at them and whacked on their backs most of their lives. They do not respond to that. So who is the bill supposed to be aimed at? Because it will not work with them. The Maori Party knows better than anybody that that does not work in terms of getting young Maori and Pacific people back to work—but it will affect every other New Zealand worker. 
In terms of changing jobs the average in this country now is not what it was when I first started work—maybe a job or two for life—it is six jobs. The average now is six different forms of employment in a lifetime and for a period of six times 3 months a person would have no rights—no rights at all. Dr Wayne Mapp will say: “Oh yes you can have the Human Rights Commission looking after you.”—yeah right! We know that the most vulnerable people ain’t going to go there. 
I would like to hear Dr Wayne Mapp’s response to this question: under his bill if a person is sacked for joining a union what happens? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: That would be discrimination. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Oh no no—I want Dr Mapp to answer that question in his speech and tell me where it is in the law; he needs to do that. 
My final point concerns the term I have heard tonight—right to work. I will tell members where right-to-work laws exist in this world. It is in the southern states of America and I advise them to go and look at the situation there. I went there and saw a most appalling lack of workers’ rights. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: In Britain Canada Ireland. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: No no. Dr Mapp will get his chance in a minute. He should go and have a look. Those right-to-work laws in the southern states are about no rights for workers. I want some people who are supporting this bill to think on that because it is an interesting label. This bill is about taking away the rights of workers for 90 days and if anyone thinks that will solve our unemployment rate in this country that person is dreaming.