Fenton Darien: Holidays Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fenton Darien: Holidays Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:665;Page:13335] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is difficult to have to deal with two attacks on workers’ rights in one day. I put on the record an invitation to Kate Wilkinson to turn up to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions rallies on Saturday in Auckland Wellington Dunedin and Christchurch— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No Dunedin’s is on Sunday. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: OK Dunedin’s is on Sunday. I invite her to turn up and justify these changes to New Zealand workers. She will find it very difficult to do so. One of the things that make me very angry in this House is that members like the previous speaker David Bennett and others talk about what is good for New Zealand wage and salary earners although clearly they do not talk to them. They talk only to their friends in business. The announcements at the National Party conference were all about its big-business backers and making sure that they will continue to fund the party at the next election. 
I thought I would start my contribution today by reflecting on where we are at what we are looking to change what the current legislation says and where that came from. Currently workers in New Zealand are entitled to 4 weeks of annual holidays for rest and recreation. Who brought that in? The previous Labour Government brought that in. It took 30 years for New Zealand wage and salary earners to go from having 3 weeks’ holiday to 4 weeks’ holiday. The Labour Government did that. We also brought in time and a half on a public holiday. I am really pleased that we are not now looking at a push-back on paying time and a half on public holidays and a day in lieu even though there are some issues—and I will talk about those. But a Labour Government brought that provision in. Prior to that workers who had to work on a statutory holiday a public holiday had a day in lieu but received no extra money for it unless that was specified in their agreement. So that was really really hard. Even the 5 days of sick leave is under attack as well but that also came in under a Labour Government. It came in under a Labour Government which added bereavement leave to that. 
Those are the things that Labour brought in. In some ways it is reassuring that this Government has not really been able to go into an all-out attack on the things that Labour has entrenched in the minds of New Zealand workers New Zealand wage and salary earners as being their entitlements. But the Government is coming at it in another way. 
I thought it was interesting that the Minister talked about cashing up annual leave. As I said it took us 30 years to get to 4 weeks’ leave. In the previous debate about the changes made in the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) she and all her colleagues could not wait to talk about what happens in Australia with regard to trial periods. But that is interesting because in Australia there has been 4 weeks’ annual leave for a long time. Workers there cannot cash that up. They can go beyond that and cash it up if that is part of their agreement. But Australian workers have had 4 weeks’ annual leave for years and years just as they have had many many other things. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Off they go to Australia. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Well more Kiwis are going to Australia. 
I can understand and I think that we on this side of the House can understand why any workers who look at the fact that they have had no pay increase under this Government in the last 2 years—unless they are on the minimum wage and then it was a measly 25c an hour—and who look at their household bills and think about how they will feed their children may think that cashing up the fourth week’s leave is quite a good idea. I can understand that. Our leader Phil Goff was trying to explain that; that is what he was saying about our position on the fourth week’s leave. But underpinning the fourth week’s leave from our position is the fact that it is about rest and recreation. New Zealand workers New Zealand employees work some of the longest hours in the OECD and have some of the fewest holidays in the OECD. There is an interesting thing about that; I read an article the other day that said that the only other country that works longer hours than New Zealand is Japan. There is a thing happening there called karoshi where people are working such long hours that they are actually dying from overwork. 
We have very few regulations about rest and recreation breaks and holidays and we have almost no regulations on working hours in this country. The situation is so deregulated that it is not funny. The only other things that we have are meal and rest breaks but hey can members guess what is happening to them? They are under consideration in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee right at the moment because the Government is trying to take them away. Labour is doing its best to try to make sure that those protections stay— 
Dr Jackie Blue 
: Rubbish! 
DARIEN FENTON 
: —but what is happening with regard to meal breaks I tell Jackie Blue is the proposal to have a situation whereby workers can be required to work during an unpaid meal break. I think that it used to be called slavery when people worked for nothing. That is what I think it was called. 
There are other things in this bill but before I move on from annual leave I tell members that I remember that National voted against the fourth week’s annual leave. John Key called it a bribe. That is what he called it. National members can try to write in all the protections that they like but the fact is that many many workers will come under pressure to cash up that fourth week’s leave. We should be encouraging people to take leave and have time off with their families—to have 4 weeks with their families. Failure to do that is why we have the social problems that we see around the country. That is why families are under pressure. 
Then we move on to public holidays and the proposals in the bill to transfer public holidays. I do not know where that came from. It certainly was not a National Party policy; it was not a National Party election promise. It was not in National’s manifesto. [ 
Interruption 
] It was not. I tell the Minister that it was not in National’s manifesto. There was the whole thing about relevant daily pay but transferring public holidays was not in the manifesto. I can kind of accept the thing about the fourth week’s leave even though I do not agree with it because National did go out to the voting public and say that was what it was going to do. People had a chance to understand that. But the transferring of public holidays seems to have arisen in the last couple of years. I am on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I remember some employers coming along and proposing that it would be a good idea to be able to transfer the 11 public holidays that we recognise in New Zealand the festivals to other days which could be other cultural festivals or whatever else. 
Well OK that all sounds very very good and I see that the Minister of Labour has tried to write in protections to make sure that the transfer of a public holiday is not being done just to avoid paying time and a half on the day. But in reality what will happen is that at the end of the day if the employer and employee cannot reach agreement on a transfer the employer gets to decide. So we could have workers working on Christmas Day away from their families. They could have to work on Christmas Day and not be paid time and a half and at some other time during the year the employer will decide that another day will be the holiday for Christmas Day. It could be in April. It could be 1 April—what a joke! What an absolute joke that is. 
There are some very real concerns about the public holiday transfer. No one has asked for it I understand except Business New Zealand and the Employers and Manufacturers Association which came up with the bright idea. The way that I saw it at the time was that it was a way to try to get out of paying for 11 public holidays. In fact we have a problem next year. We should be paid for an extra holiday because we have Easter Monday and Anzac Day falling on the same day as my colleague Grant Robertson said. We need to look at that. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I’d rather have 4 weeks’ holiday. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: The member would rather have 4 weeks’ holiday. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That’s my priority. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Well that is true. Yes I am sure that many many workers would rather have that too. 
Then we get on to the whole issue of sickies and the tone of this bill is that workers cannot be trusted. They cannot be trusted. Apparently they are so untrustworthy that their employer can require them to go to the doctor so that they can provide the employer with a medical certificate on their first day of illness. That is very unfair. If a worker has a sick child I ask whether the worker is really expected to drag that child out of bed go off to the doctor and get a medical certificate. We have heard from doctors that they will not appreciate it. I go to my doctor sometimes and there is a big queue—particularly in winter when there are many cases of flu. People will not get in to see their doctor and what happens then? 
Hon Member 
: If you did you’d just infect other people. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right so then they drag themselves off to work. It is just ridiculous. The whole argument around the Minister’s removal of the word “reasonable” is an interesting one too because that flows over into the Employment Relations Act and we had a discussion on that earlier. 
In closing I say this legislation will help us to drift further away from Australia. We will see more people getting on planes and going off to Australia because people do not have to argue about their holidays in Australia. They do not have to argue. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Forty families from Whangarei last week. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Forty families from Whangarei went off to Australia last week and who can blame them? In Australia people are treated properly. They get time off to be with their families and they do not have to put up with this nonsense.