Franks Stephen: Holidays Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Holidays Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:614;Page:10532] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Part 2 contains a whole lot of old-fashioned class-warfare ideas. It is the area where the Labour Government addresses employees generally—[ 
Interruption 
]—and the Hon Margaret Wilson whose bill this is giggles. It would be good if she as Minister in the chair would take a call to explain some of these things. I come to the debate as someone in this Committee who is probably nearest to being a potential user of this bill—a bill that was supposed to clarify things. 
Let us take the example of the new sick leave provisions. The worst employees of course make things bad for the other employees. It is the worst employees who take advantage of any privilege. It is the worst employees who make an employer wish he or she had never been decent and granted concessions. It is the worst employees who allow a burden to fall on others because they do not care when they turn up or what they do when they do. This bill recreates the public service culture of skiving off—of Spanish customs that mean sick leave is not for sickness but is just another holiday entitlement—and it extends that culture throughout New Zealand’s employment scene. This bill says that the employer effectively has to recognise that every employee has not 4 weeks’ but 5 weeks’ holiday. This bill says that 5 days’ extra sick leave per year without any proof whatsoever of sickness or injury is an entitlement that accumulates like holidays and can then be taken in the same way. The employer is not allowed to ask for proof of sickness or injury until 3 days have gone so employees can take all their sick leave as holiday leave as long as they do not take it in lots of more than 3 days at a time. 
This bill now says to every employee: “You’re a mug if you don’t cheat.” This bill recreates in every workplace tension upon people who are diligent whose object is the job at hand and who want to feel proud of the integrity in their work unit. It says to them: “Lie”. This bill says that good employers do not ask questions of employees who take the occasional sick day. If good employers offer a benefit like that the Labour Government will force every employer to do it. Of course it also takes away the safeguard. It will take away the procedure that enabled employers to make sure that a concession like that was not abused. That safeguard was that employers could ask for a certificate if they were suspicious that employees were exploiting any concession. Now they will not be able to do that. 
The corrosive effect relates not just to sick leave but also to bereavement leave entitlement. A whole lot of the new entitlements to bereavement leave do not depend even on the immediacy of a family relationship. Decent employers with valued employees would very rarely have insisted on bereavement leave being taken to the letter when someone was plainly broken up by a bereavement. 
A new set of prudent customs will develop in the workplace. One of them is one that this Government is very good at introducing. Essentially a simple rule of thumb for this prudent employer will be: “Do not hire Maori. If you can avoid it do not hire people who may have got their qualifications on some kind of preferential quota. Do not hire them because you will not be able to ask about previous convictions—and now do not hire them because they can ask for bereavement leave if they have ‘any cultural responsibilities in relation to the death’.” Who will be able to challenge that? What employer will want to buy into the fight of challenging someone’s claim to have cultural responsibilities? If the Hon Margaret Wilson had really wanted to simplify clarify and make it easier to be flexible as she so falsely claimed this bill would have had in it a definition of “cultural responsibilities”. It would have assisted employers to know when someone was not just dragging the chain but also taking ruthless advantage.