Tirikatene Rino: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tirikatene Rino: Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7192. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 E te Kaikorero Matua tena koe. E nga rangatira o te Whare nga mema o tena ropu o tena ropu tena koutou tena tatou katoa. 
[ 
Thank you Mr Speaker. To the leaders of the House and to the members of each party acknowledgments to you and each of us all collectively. 
] 
I move  
That the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. This bill intends to give greater protection to children in their working lives. It does this by ensuring that children aged 16 or under who have paid work outside the home will be regarded as employees. This does not cover personal domestic or household work. It is intended to cover the commercial employment and contractual engagement of children in work. It is the simplest step we can take to improve the safety and working conditions of children. 
Our country has a tradition of part-time work for children. Many of us entered the workforce while we were still at school through holiday or after-school jobs. Many New Zealanders regard children’s work as a rite of passage—a harmless way to spend a few hours gaining a work ethic and some skills while earning a little pocket money. This may be how it has been in the past. It may be how we experienced work as a child ourselves but we cannot take for granted that this is how working children today are experiencing employment. 
On a regular basis children’s work problems and issues hit our headlines.  
Fair Go 
 earlier this year revealed stories of child leaflet delivery workers who had their pay rates cut without notice or negotiation. The Catholic agency Caritas has reported children experiencing potentially serious injuries harassment and poor treatment at work in two surveys of children’s work experiences. 
ACC figures show that there are children aged 9 years or under who have received compensation for work-related injuries. In 2004 an Otago University report showed that on average there was one work-related child fatality each year between 1985 and 1998. In another study conducted by the Department of Labour in 2007 over 3000 Taranaki secondary school students were interviewed by health and safety inspector Jo-Ann Pugh representing 46 percent of students in Taranaki at the time. Twenty percent of the students said that they had experienced a work injury or illness. In addition 88 percent of these young workers reported having been asked to do something at work that they considered unsafe and yet they went on to do it anyway. Over half of the young workers in this study did not recall receiving any health and safety information from their employers. 
New Zealand has comprehensive health and safety legislation that requires both employers and employees to identify hazards and take action to prevent or minimise them. It requires employers to give health and safety information and training to their employees. Many people assume that health and safety regulations cover all workers including children. Like me the members of this House will be shocked to learn that some industries that depend on the labour of children in fact carry no responsibility for their health and safety. That is because they employ children as self-employed contractors not employees. 
Take this example from the contract between a large advertising leaflet distribution company and a 12-year-old: “The parties acknowledge that this agreement is entered into by both parties on the basis that the Deliverer is an independent Contractor and that the Deliverer is not an agent or employee of the Company.” Another example from a different delivery company’s contract with a 14-year-old says: “You are employed … under a contract for services which means that you are an independent contractor. This contract does not therefore create an employment relationship between you and [Company].” 
Employing children as contractors absolves employers of obligations they would otherwise have including responsibility for health and safety. It is the reason that we get those  
Fair Go  
stories of children whose pay and working conditions are changed without their consent. It is probably one of the reasons that so many of the school kids in the Taranaki study were not given information about health and safety by their employers. If the children were regarded as contractors their employers simply did not have any obligation to tell them anything. I do not believe that contracting for services was ever intended to cover the employment relationships of our youngest and most vulnerable workers. They deserve the greatest protection not the least. 
When we look at a child’s employment agreement we ought to see the best care and attention paid to their well-being not the most distant and casual form of commercial relationship. It is actually the youngest of New Zealand’s child workers who are most likely to be working as contractors and in unsupervised situations. The stories given to Caritas have shown that 10 to 13-year-olds employed outside the home are more likely to be working as delivery workers while older children are more likely to be working in larger workplaces such as in retail and fast-food outlets. 
We have heard many words spoken this year about the protection of vulnerable children. Although many New Zealand children grow up in loving and protective families we all know that some children do not. They deserve and require the protection of the State and the wider community. But children are not only vulnerable in their homes. New Zealand children may be vulnerable in their workplaces. Many New Zealand children are well looked after at work and have good experiences to report about their employment and that is great. But there are other children who are not well looked after and have had bad experiences at work. They deserve greater protection. 
Some of the responsibility for that protection lies with their parents who are the first defenders of their children’s rights. There are many parents who wish their children to work but at the same time feel very unhappy about their children’s working conditions and feel powerless to change them. They feel there is nothing that they can do when faced with a take it or leave it contract. We need to give parents greater power to influence their children’s conditions of work. This means there needs to be an employment relationship that allows for the negotiation of conditions that are safe and suitable. 
But the responsibility for protection of children at work also lies with their employers. Businesses whose profits depend on the work of children should have a very high moral responsibility for the children they employ. Responsibility for protecting children at work also lies with those charged with the legal framework and rules and regulations around the employment of children. That means that this House must ensure that labour legislation adequately protects our most vulnerable workers. 
The children who are doing these jobs are not all doing it because they are saving for a university education or kids’ luxury items like iPads or smart phones. No many of these kids are helping out with bread and milk money or contributing to their school camps. Things are tough on ordinary Kiwi families and some of our children are growing up before their time. These children also miss out on other things. Being on the street delivering means they are not playing on the sports fields and they are missing out on kapahaka poly club or the choir. They are missing out on the social benefits that schools and communities give to our children. 
Children are our taonga. Who of us in Parliament takes for granted that all children are entirely safe in their homes? In the aftermath of Pike River who of us in Parliament takes for granted that all workers are safe in their workplaces? Why then should we take for granted the safety of children who work? In doing research for this bill I went back to look at some of those old Victorian era labour protection laws—and there were none. Talk about an era of sweat houses and child exploitation! Someone came up with a law that stopped adults sending 7-year-old boys up chimneys to clean and made the legal age 9 years. Incredible! There were 9-year-old boys and girls squeezing up chimneys to put fires out. Surprisingly very little has changed since those times. This House has more aroha than that. Surely let our kids be kids—let our kids be kids. If they want to work after school then good on them. But let us not turn our kids into small business units responsible for sub-contracting supplying their own equipment ACC levies and tax. I know adults who are in business who struggle with this sort of paperwork. 
Children are the most vulnerable of workers and deserve safe and secure working conditions. Ensuring that children are regarded as employees is a simple but real step we could take to improve the working lives of New Zealand children. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tatou.