Mitchell Clayton: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9498. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I note that we have only about 20 minutes to talk to this and so I had better get cracking because there is a lot to be said and to be fair I would like to hear some of the contributions including from Minister Woodhouse with regard to casual employment. I believe that Jonathan Young is also going to be speaking on it.Our amendment which introduces casual loading into this agreement is I think vitally important and it is one that actually covers off one of the loopholes or unintended consequences that we are seeing happen time and time again. We have gone through the zero-hour contract provisions. We are specifically talking about those people who are on casual employment agreements.As I said earlier on we had a number of submitters submitting with regard to how they were adversely affected when it comes to having uncertainty with their work conditions. The one situation I raised was to do with a lawyer who was on a casual employment agreement who was finding it difficult to make ends meet because by the nature of the employment it was very casual.What we are proposing here under our amendment is to put a casual loading on to any casual employment agreement. What we have come up with is an amount of 19 percent. The breakdown of that 19 percent casual loading comes down to a 4.4 percent loading to look at the Holidays Act with regard to statutory holidays. We have a 1.6 percent loading which is in actual fact a loading because that is relating to bereavement leave and sick leave. Of course if you are employed part-time or full time you would not necessarily be available for those provisions after 6 months of employment so we are looking to pay that in advance.Then we are looking at 8 percent holiday pay which of course is not actually a loading; it is what you are entitled to regardless. But paying this upfront actually works towards also looking after the interests of the employer who does not need to keep the records and have these accumulated fees paid out to staff who are genuinely employed in a casual agreement. So that worker would have that 8 percent paid up front also.To round that off which gets us to 19 percent is a 5 percent loading. So if you looked at it collectively you are talking about a 6.6 percent loading which is a 5 percent loading for the casual employment aspect of Supplementary Order Paper 150; 1.6 percent which is to do with bereavement leave and sick leave; and then of course everything else you are entitled to.What we are trying to say here and what it will clearly remedy is the fact that if people who are employed casually are going to be paid a premium the employers are incentivised to get that casual employee on to a permanent contract either part-time or full time. If they decide to do that and if they can manage their rostering system to allow that to happen there is no penalty for them. They will simply go straight on to a part-time or a full-time contract which will give them an idea of having certainty around the hours that they are going to get. They will still be entitled to their KiwiSaver provisions.We hope that this amendment gets support throughout the Committee because it does tighten up the final aspect in relation to the casual employment agreements creating a loophole to somehow potentially allow those zero-hour contracts or uncertainty of hours in an employment agreement. I would like to hear from other members in the Committee and so I will wrap it up there. Certainly with regard to support we would love to see that happen. Thank you.