Roche Denise: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10012. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): It is my pleasure to take a call on the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill and I congratulate the Labour member Sue Moroney on bringing this bill to the House.The Greens will be supporting this bill. It is a bill that will provide compassionate and necessary minimum standards for those many workers who have lost their jobs and find themselves through no fault of their own made redundant from their workplaces. The previous speaker Mike Sabin was incredibly stingy in his approach about this.The bill provides for 4 weeks’ notice of redundancy to the worker. That is really important. If a worker is about to lose their job—a job they have held for many years say—then the more notice the better. It gives a bolster of time for the worker to be able to start the process of looking for another job. The bill also provides redundancy compensation of 4 weeks’ pay if the worker has worked there for at least a year and 2 weeks’ pay for each extra year up to a maximum of 26 weeks. So that means that the worker would get 26 weeks’ compensation only if they have worked at the same place for 12 years or more.I am not sure whether many members in this House have ever experienced being made redundant but I can assure you it is a traumatic experience. During the recent cross-party manufacturing inquiry which did not include the other side of the House I heard an incredibly moving and brave submission from a woman in a small town who had lost her job because the factory she worked in had to close down. She described how redundancy affected not just her financial stability but also her self-esteem which undermined her ability to confidently apply for other jobs—not that there were many jobs available. She had to shift from the manufacturing sector where she had worked for 17 years into retail. She counted herself lucky to find a job at all since they are very scarce in New Zealand and especially in small-town New Zealand.This woman was one of over 40000 or so people in New Zealand in the manufacturing sector who have lost their jobs in the last 4 years. She could easily have been one of the more than 5000 Public Service employees who are no longer providing public services to us. This woman was luckier than many workers who are made redundant because she belonged to a union Mr Bennett. She had a collective employment agreement with her employer and so she did receive some compensationto tide her over through the months that it took her to find another job in her small town. Her union had been able to bargain for those provisions. It is worth mentioning that this will become increasingly difficult when the Government introduces changes to the Employment Relations Act that include measures that will make it harder for workers to join a union and bargain collectively. In this type of employment relations environment that the Government is fostering it becomes increasingly important to have minimum redundancy provisions enshrined in legislation.This bill did not come out of nowhere. Most other OECD countries have some form of rights for workers to have notice of and compensation for redundancy. Many OECD countries have much better provisions for workers generally which really does make us less of an attractive working environment for the skilled workers we desperately need to keep in New Zealand and attract to New Zealand. Without redundancy provisions employees have less incentive to make long-term investments in their jobs and the Government is left bearing the bulk of the cost of supporting and re-establishing them into new jobs. This is a recommendation from the public advisory group. There were employer representatives in that group who supported this and acknowledged that this is a basic right and a cost to employers that they should bear. We will be supporting this bill.