Little Andrew: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11918. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):It is a pleasure to take a call on this very important somewhat essential Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill and I begin by lamenting what was a shocking despicable miserable contribution from Dr Cam Calder. He began his speech by asking why Labour did not do anything about it. Well I have got news for Dr Cam Calder and it is that first of all Labour commissioned the very group the Public Advisory Group on Restructuring and Redundancy that investigated reported consulted on and came up with the recommendations. They were not just any recommendations; they were consensus recommendations which means that the employer representatives and the union representatives on that committee agreed with the recommendations.I want to say that I know a bit about that public advisory committee—and this may come as a shock to Dr Calder and indeed to some other members opposite—because I was on it. I know the hard work that went into it. I know the discussions. I know the people who are all decent people and we came up with a consensus set of recommendations. So the second answer to the question that Dr Calder asked which was “What did Labour do about it?” is that Darien Fenton one of the many hard-working Labour MPs in this Labour caucus and indeed in the previous one put together a member’s bill—which actually looked very similar on the face of it to this one—to introduce minimum redundancy entitlements.Dr Cam Calder’s speech and indeed all of the National members’ speeches illustrate their attitude towards working people and working life. They hate workers. They do not like workers having good-quality rights. They do not like it. They see work and workers as a cost to a business as something to minimise to reduce to deduct from and to discriminate against. They see workers as a pest to a business. They do not meet the 21st century standard that good employers actually have towards workers. They come from the 19th century view about workers that they are pests and that they need to get them out of the way as much as they can take away their rights treat them like dirt and give them no rights at all.I want to say this: redundancy plays a very important role in the labour market. It is compensation for the loss of job for the loss of office. It is about tiding people over while they are between employment while they are looking for work. Why is that important in the labour market? Because the reality is that when a worker is tied up with an employer they face an opportunity cost. They are not out there in the labour market elsewhere and the longer they spend with an employer the less active they are in the labour market apart from the fact that they are working and providing value to the employer helping that employer generate a profit and being paid from that profit. But when they are pushed out of that employment at the employer’s initiative for no other reason than that the employer decides that they no longer want them and can run the business without them then it is entirely appropriate that the labour market provides some compensation for that worker. That is all it is about. There is nothing particularly radical about it. It is orthodox labour market economics. It has happened before. It should happen again.Let us understand the history about redundancy in this country. Redundancy compensation was fought for by unionised workers back in the 1970s. It started with theMāngere Bridge a project that National has spent years if not decades lamenting. Butactually it has had a very important effect. It introduced the first redundancy rights. It led to a law change that allowed specific awards for redundancy compensation.Of course the biggest beneficiaries of that ever since were not workers. Actually it was those in middle management and upper management who have gone along to their boards of directors and senior managers and said: “Oh you can’t do without me. If you want to get rid of me on a no-nonsense basis you write me out a big fat cheque and you pay mebucketloads of money.” which is what has been happening ever since. That is the background to it.If it is good enough for the senior managers and if it is good enough for directors and others to walk away with big fat cheques when they get pushed out of their jobs then it is actually entirely appropriate that when hard-working front-line workers—Hon Member: What about the ones that aren’t hard-working?ANDREW LITTLE: Oh here is the National Party again. That is it. The prejudice had to come out—the prejudice had to come out. He cannot resist. Those members hate workers. National members hate workers. Everything they do is about taking away rights and expressing their hatred for workers and their opposition to this bill is just that. That is why we are supporting it. That is why we have good MPs like Sue Moroney and Darien Fenton who put up these ideas and we will be voting for this great bill.