Little Andrew: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16811. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):The Employment Relations Amendment Bill is a nasty insidious document—yet another repeat of the nasty insidious strategy that this National Government has for working New Zealanders. That is what it is and that was a shocking address a shocking speech delivered by the Hon Jo Goodhew on behalf of the Minister of Labour on a matter that affects hundreds of thousands of working people every day. Far from being balanced there could not be a more unbalanced a more radical change to our employment laws and our workplace code than what is in this bill. It is just another continuation of the nasty rubbish that this Government insists on serving up to hard-working New Zealanders.There were 13679 submissions and more than 160 oral submissions and most of them—the vast majority—were totally and deeply opposed to what is in this bill. The advice from the officials from the Civil Service is this: “the proposed options are likely to increase choice and reduce compliance costs for some employers. They will reduce choice for unions and employees and may expose New Zealand to critical international scrutiny over its international labour obligations.”This National Government does not care about the long and enduring obligations that this country has stuck with when it comes to the treatment of workers in this country. It just does not care. The evidence is clear cut. It is getting harder and harder for workers in New Zealand workplaces today to get their voice heard whether it is for wages whether it is for other issues that affect them in the workplace even whether it is for health and safety—and I will come back to that in a minute.Before looking at what this bill actually does which is nothing like what the Minister reintroducing the bill says it does let us actually look at the problem that we are trying to fix in this country. Let us look at the labour market problem in this country: wages. It is wages and incomes. The wages of the bottom half of the workforce in New Zealand have stayed the same in real terms or gone backwards over the last 20 years—the last 20 years. The pay rates of 50 percent of New Zealand workers have stayed the same in real terms or gone backwards over the last 20 years.What about productivity improvements? It will be news to this Government because its members mislead this House all the time about them but the reality is that productivity in this country has improved—gradually and incrementally but it has improved—every year for the last 20 years. It has improved by nearly 50 percent in the last 20 years in this country. Real wages on average have moved barely 14 percent. If the average wage in this country had actually matched productivity improvements which is the very thing that Business New Zealand and its acolytes in the National Party call for the average hourly rate in this country would be between $7 and $8 a hour better than it is now. The truth is that wages in this country have not been keeping pace with productivity as Business New Zealand keeps on claiming they should do.What is the other fact here? It is that 400000 workers in this country nearly one-fifth of the workforce are dependent on tax credits because their earned income is not enough to make ends meet—400000 people are dependent on tax credits because their wages do not allow them to make ends meet. That is a shameful statistic and that is something this House ought to be embarrassed about. At the very least that ought to prompt this Government to do something meaningful about it—to do something meaningful about wages and incomes.The problem in the labour market in this country today is wages and incomes. They are too low they do not keep pace and far too many New Zealand workers are being ripped off. We have had economic growth in this country and we have had productivity improvement so affording better wages is not the issue in this country—affording better wages is not the issue. For the National Government the issue is about screwing more out of workers and giving that to its rich mates in corporate New Zealand. That is what it wants to achieve and that is why this bill is drafted the way that it is.Wages and incomes have been going backwards for far too many for far too long. What would a solution to this particular problem look like? Well first of all we would want mechanisms to improve bargaining so that workers would not be fearful about approaching their employers to say: “You know what? I’ve been here a couple of years. I’m doing a pretty good job. The manager seems pretty happy with me—can I get a pay increase?”. Or here is something else: why do we not protect the freedom of choice to belong to a union so that people do not have their employers standing over them saying: “You go anywhere near the union you’re in trouble.”? That is what happens. Why do we not have mechanisms to improve wage bargaining and collective bargaining at that? Why do we not give a greater voice to working people and protect freedom of association? Why do we not respect the internationally recognised right to strike? This Government with this bill wants to punish people for standing on their digs standing up to bad employers and taking industrial action including when that industrial action does not lead to any loss of production or revenue or income at all. That is how nasty and vicious this National Government has become when it comes to New Zealand workers.This bill will fix no problem that I can see in the labour market. It panders and cuddles up to the worst employers in this country—the donors to the National Party who keep saying to their MP mates in the National Party: “Do something. Give us a bit more. Squeeze more blood out of the worker stone so it’s better for us.” This bill sets up a number of things such as the peremptory opt-out by employers from multi-employer collective bargaining. Never mind that workers have to go through various hoops to get their employer round the table with others in their industry to get some commonality some baseline conditions in their industry; never mind that workers have to vote on that; and never mind that workers choose to have that. This Government says that whatever employers want employers should get. It is not about mutual relationships. It is not about mutual respect in relationships. It is about whatever the boss wants.Then we have employers going to the Employment Relations Authority to get a declaration that bargaining is at an end. I have to say that the sole redeeming feature of the Minister’s statement in the House just now is that the Government has accepted—after protestations at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I might add were rebuffed by the Government and indeed personal approaches to the Minister were rebuffed. It is pleasing to see that the Government has recognised that a fundamental condition to the Employment Relations Authority’s interfering in bargaining is that the applicant to the declaration has to at least have met their good- faith requirements. That is part of the employment jurisdiction that we have had for over 100 years in this country; it is called the equity and good conscience jurisdiction and it comes from the equitable principle that whoever comes to equity comes with clean hands. You could not possibly have an employer rocking up to the Employment Relations Authority demanding a declaration that bargaining is at an end with no requirement that they have acted in good faith all the way through. I have to say that that is the only redeeming feature in the statement given in the House this afternoon.Then there is the removal of the 30-day rule amongst other things in the bill. When unions negotiate a collective agreement workers in a workplace come together and get the best deal from their employer. They do not do it just for themselves; they do it for every generation of workers that follows and the new workers who start. That will now be undermined. The freedom of choice the workers exercise to join together and negotiate collectively with their employer can now be undermined by that new employee provision. It is all about driving down wages as if somehow the wages in this country are a problem. It does not help of course when you have got a Minister of Finance and others who go abroad boasting to other countries and big business in those countries about how low our wages are and that being therefore a reason to relocate here.This bill is all about saying to workers: “Leave your brains at the gate. Your thoughts aren’t welcome here. Your voice has no place in this workplace.” This bill is all about saying: “Leave your spirit and your motivation at home because we don’t want that at work.” It is about command and control—command and control of the employer because that is all this National Government understands. It does not understand modern workplace relationships. It does not understand genuinely mutually respectful workplace relationships. This Government like this bill is embarrassingly out of date.Here is the challenge we have in this country. It is to create high-quality workplace relationships and high-quality workplaces with high-quality businesses that respect workers’ rights that respect freedom of association and that are respectful of the place of workers and their thoughts and ideas when it comes to decision making. The challenge is to have high-performance workplaces managed well with good-quality managers. Everything in this bill like every piece of employment legislation passed by this Government incentivises bad managers and poor management.The one thing we need is workers in this country being properly and fairly paid. This bill will do the opposite. That is why we are opposed to it totally and utterly and we will object strenuously every step of the way.