Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:420] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 Mr Chair— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Excuse me members. I think I have made a mistake. When I was first here the rules were that one could not move a closure motion twice. The Clerk has now advised me that one can. Having said that I have given Darien Fenton the call and I feel obligated to allow Darien to complete her call. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: I thank the Minister of Labour for her answers although there were a number of questions she did not answer. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Chair could I speak without that stuff? I have some serious questions I would like to address to the Minister. Her answers before about Part 6A of the principal Act just opened up a whole lot more questions actually. 
First of all the question about the ability to reduce the size of entities in order to exploit the law is not covered by Part 6A. It is about restructuring contracting out and so on. I would still like to know what the Minister intends to do to prevent deliberate avoidance of the requirements of her bill. 
Anther thing about Part 6A is that it deals with contracting out and a change of employer. I am very very familiar with this matter. I have worked really really hard on it with the Labour Party and with my former union. It is a very very important issue for low-paid vulnerable workers. What happens when a group of fewer than 20 workers is contracted out? Are they covered by the 90-day provision of this bill? That very very important question needs to be answered. 
The other thing is about the definition of “employee”. I did not quite get the Minister’s answer about that. She said that she went with the definition in the Employment Relations Act. I ask the Minister whether I am right. Was that her answer? Well actually it does not answer the question I had about how one calculates 20 employees. The Minister is really saying that an employee could be a casual worker working 2 hours a week. An employer could have 20 workers on 1 2 3 or 4 hours a week and none of them doing a full-time job. The employer could quite deliberately set up the workplace like that—so that he or she has 20 people instead of four people working full-time. That is another way to avoid the provisions of this bill. 
The other thing that came to my attention when I was looking up the definition of “employee” was the definition of “homeworker”. The Act states that homeworkers are people who work in dwelling houses—who provide a service within dwelling houses. I presume that they will be covered by this 90-day provision. Surely the Minister is not expecting people providing a service to an old lady or to somebody who is receiving accident compensation treatment to be able to make a decision about sacking someone and to go through the consequences including going to mediation including all the protections that the Minister says are there for these workers—whether they have been sacked for discrimination whether they have been disadvantaged and so on. Surely the Minister is not expecting somebody in that situation to be able to make a decision. Or is the Minister actually saying that homeworkers because they are covered by the definition of “employee” are also covered by the provisions of this bill? There are some serious questions there. 
I am genuinely concerned about the situation of people who are contracted out. One of the members opposite talked about contracting out and said that it was a consequence of not having the 90-day probationary period which I thought was quite ridiculous. Contracting out has been going on for years and years. Part 6A is there specifically to protect workers in that situation. I am deeply concerned that we might be opening up a whole new series of problems not just for teachers in schools but also for cleaners and caretakers in schools who are almost always contracted out—the majority of them are contracted out. There are definitely schools that have fewer than 20 workers. What happens when the employer changes when Spotless Services stops doing the cleaning and some other contractor comes in? Are those workers covered by the 90-day probationary period? It is a serious question and I would like an answer.