Moroney Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10785. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Well does that not just about say it all? That last speaker Chris Auchinvole thinks that this legislation the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is to be debated as a piece of theatre. Because that is what we just had—Chris Auchinvole from the National Party thinking that this is a piece of theatre. This is about people’s lives. I do not know what it is that that Government does not get or how it has become so out of touch so quickly that it does not realise that this piece of legislation is about everyday people’s working lives. It is about what people do when they leave their families every day. It is about the relationship that happens in their workplace. It is about them returning safely to their families at the end of that day and having the income on which to live. That is what this bill is about. It is not a piece of theatre; it is about real people’s lives.I have become used to hearing Simon Bridges butcher the English language in this House but here he is butchering people’s rights at work this time—butchering people’s rights at work. That is exactly what is happening with this piece of legislation. The member who just resumed his seat Chris Auchinvole told us that it was a good piece of legislation and then could not even tell us why. He had not one reason to offer this House about why he thought this was a good piece of legislation. I think that deep in his heart and in those of most of his colleagues they know that it is a piece of nonsense. It is a piece of nonsense. What is the Government doing but actually trying to take away people’s rights at work? And for what purpose?Let us have a think about the moment in history where we sit here in New Zealand. We sit in a moment of time when we are trying to struggle our way out of a global recession.Chris Auchinvole: And doing very well.SUE MORONEY: And not doing very well at it actually Mr Auchinvole—not doing at all well. We have been in a recession for 5 long years. That Government has been promising to get us out of recession every single year since it came in and it has been failing. But I digress.We are in the midst of a global recession—a global recession by the way lest we forget that was brought about by a lack of regulation. I think people have almost already forgotten that. It was brought about by a lack of regulation on the financial sector. That is what brought about this global recession and who have been the people who have lost out as a result of that lack of regulation of the financial institutions and the investment bankers like John Key? Who have lost out? It has been ordinary workingpeople who have lost their jobs. Every day you pick up the paper there are 50 or 60 or 100 jobs being lost somewhere in New Zealand. They are the people paying the price.What is the solution? The solution the National Government has come up with is the same one its members have always trotted out no matter what the circumstance is. The solution is to attack people’s rights at work. That is the solution they are putting up to get us out of this global recession. Well it is an absolute piece of nonsense and no wonder Chris Auchinvole could find not one reason to say why he thought this was a good piece of legislation because it is not.It is not about a level playing field Mr Bridges. I listened to his first reading speech which was I think yesterday in the House. He said the reason for this was to create a level playing field. Well hello Mr Bridges. Have a look at the environment we are operating in. When we have 1500 people lining up for 30 minimum-wage jobs at supermarkets every day of the week—as if there were that many jobs every day of the week—Darien Fenton: That’s a level playing field.SUE MORONEY: Yes tell us about the level playing field. Tell me where the power balance is in that exercise. When you have got hundreds of people lining up for a small number of minimum-wage jobs guess where the power lies in that relationship? [Interruption] David Bennett would have us think that the people lining up begging for the minimum-wage jobs have got the power on their side. That is how far removed the National Party members are from reality. They are so out of touch with what is actually going on in New Zealand.One of the parts of this bill says that it is going to require any workers taking strike action to give notice. This dreadful strike action is obviously causing our global recession. What strike action and where? No answers. What is the problem that National members are trying to fix? For these strikes that are not taking place they want these striking workers to actually have to give notice. Well I am in the middle of a debate on a first reading bill of my own in this House because that Government is refusing to actually agree to workers having any notice of their jobs going—of their jobs being made redundant.I have got a bill in the House now asking for it to be put in the law that notice is given to workers whose jobs are going to go whose entire income is going to be taken away from them. That Government refuses to give that notice in the law and yet here its members are saying that workers—who are actually not even striking by the way because we do not have a problem here in New Zealand on this issue—have to give notice that they might withdraw their labour for a period of time from the employer.Well that just goes to show how out of touch that Government is and how against the ordinary working person its members actually are. They do not value workers. They actually do not value working people or the contribution they make to this country. Bills like this show us and expose the National Party members for what they are.But the other piece of this bill that I want to draw people’s attention to is something that we should not even be debating in the year 2013 in this Parliament. That is the right for working people to have a lunch break and to have a morning tea break and an afternoon tea break. This is an issue that is actually close to my heart because I in fact wrote the piece of legislation that they are amending. I actually wrote the amendment that was brought in by the Labour Government in 2008. While Kate Wilkinson when she was the Minister of Labour was going about writing this amendment that says that employees do not have to have a break they can bargain it away her department was reviewing the law that Labour brought in to see how it was working a year after it had been established. And do you know what they found? They found that it was working fantastically well. They found that of the employers—and I think there were somethinglike 1000 employers whom they interviewed—just 11 percent of them have had to make alterations as a result of that law. And the vast majority of that 11 percent of employers said it was a really good change that it made a difference a positive difference in their workplace when they gave more regular and longer meal breaks and rest periods to their workers because productivity went up and health and safety issues came down. Employee morale went up. That is what they told the reviewers—that is what they told them.Here comes this Government with its dreadful dreadful record on health and safety. Have its members learnt nothing from the Pike River mine? Have they learnt nothing at all because here they go again not understanding that people’s rights to take a break at work is a fundamental issue around health and safety. When people do not get regular breaks at work that is when things go wrong. They have learnt nothing from the Pike River mine inquiry and they need to get that out and read it good and proper before they pass this piece of legislation. The impact of what they are trying to do here will reduce people’s rights at work and it will make their workplace less healthy and less safe. It will mean that we will have more accidents at work and productivity will go down employee morale will go down and health and safety problems will go up.Is that the brighter future? They campaigned on a brighter future and I can see no brighter future in this piece of legislation. I can only see New Zealand going backwards to the bad old days of the Employment Contracts Act.