Tisch Lindsay: Holidays Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Holidays Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:614;Page:10510] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 I am pleased to take part in this debate because this is an anti-business anti-growth and anti-employee piece of legislation. That is what it is. Although it may be seen to give more good deals more holidays and more conditions to employees at the end of the day they will be the big losers. 
I have a number of names for this bill. One could be the “Extended Holiday Bill” because employees working in a business for 52 weeks of the year at 40 hours per week would want to be paid for 2080 hours. That is fine. I would want to be paid for 2080 hours. But the bill prescribes 3 weeks or 15 days of annual leave—15 days of annual leave at 8 hours per day is 120 hours. Then we have 11 statutory holidays at 8 hours per day which makes 88 hours; and 5 sick days at 8 hours per day which makes 40 hours. We now have 3 days of bereavement leave—and this is why it is the “Extended Holiday Bill”—at 8 hours per day which is another 24 hours plus another 1 day for a close associate which makes 8 hours. If we add all those things up it makes 280 hours of non-productive time—or we could say holiday time—out of my 2080 hours. 
What am I left with? As an employer I am left with 1800 hours of productive time. If we divide the 280 hours of time that this bill prescribes by 40 hours per week it equates to 7 weeks of time that I will give my employee. That is why I say that this bill should be entitled the “Extended Holiday Leave Provision Bill” or the “Extended Leave Entitlement Bill” because 280 hours taken out of the 2080 hours I have to pay equates to 7 weeks. As an employer that is 7 weeks of non-productive time that needs to be factored into my costing and pricing exercise. 
The other point I want to make is that the bill could also be regarded as the “Sickie and Bereavement Leave Bill”. One submitter thought this bill was absolutely outrageous because of the provisions increasing sick leave and not requiring employees to provide a medical certificate until after 3 days. He thought it was outrageous that someone who was working for him and was sick did not have to produce any evidence by way of a medical certificate. It was 5 days in the original bill and the select committee rightly brought it back down to 3 days. Even so 3 days is just an opportunity to extend that out and take advantage of the employment situation. 
The other matter I want to mention and the reason I have called the bill the “Sickie and Bereavement Leave Bill” is that nebulous 3 days of bereavement leave—not 3 days per year—which by my calculations means that it is open-ended. As clauses 62 and 63 state where one has close relatives one can have bereavement leave of 3 days. If that period of leave is multiplied the effect on a number of industries could be absolutely diabolical. Once again it is a straight-out abuse of the system. 
A fast-food operator in my area said to me that if this bill came in in its present form—with the bereavement leave provision and on top of that the extra day for a close associate so that we are talking about 4 days—he would seriously consider packing his bags and going to Australia. If he had to put up with this provision in terms of that fast-food business of 53 staff in a 7-day-a-week operation plus the extra compliance costs of working and paying statutory holidays with staff taking a day off in lieu as well one can imagine the huge compliance costs that such 7-day-a-week businesses would have to account for. The point I am making is that the title of this bill should be the “Sickie and Bereavement Leave Bill” because that is really what it is about. 
Mr Power made the point that the legislation should be about choice: employers should be able to negotiate with employees.