Hayes John: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hayes John: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:5096] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I can see very clearly that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill has been drafted by people who have not the slightest idea about business or running a business. The first thing that I want to draw the Committee’s attention to is that this legislation will impose further bureaucracy red tape and costs on small businesses. The legislation simply will not work. Any law passed in this House has to be capable of working irrespective of whether one agrees with the policy intent. This bill is not going to work. For example the bill assumes that one employer will give commercially sensitive information to its competitor. That is simply not going to happen. 
A contractor who wins a tender for a contract is forced to take on the employees of the company that lost the tender. The contractor has to make redundant his or her own employees who may have worked for that contractor for many years and to take on the staff of the business that previously held the contract. Contractors cannot keep both sets of employees. Under this amendment bill they are forced to keep the new employees. 
I see this bill as a very high cost on small businesses in the Wairarapa electorate. The Wairarapa electorate has many small businesses and this bill is simply adding red tape and cost on to them. It comes on the back of this Government’s intention that every employee have 4 weeks’ leave. Let us work through that issue. I know of a company for example in Pahiatua that has 30 employees. Having to provide 4 weeks’ leave a year means that it needs to employ another staff member to cover the extra 30 weeks’ leave it has to provide under the framework being imposed by this Government. Where does that money come from? It will come from the bottom line. It is simply a cost being imposed on the business. 
This sort of legislation which is being imposed by the members opposite—who just laugh and would not know a business if they tripped over one—will simply send our small companies to the wall. Let us take the example of a shearing contractor in the Wairarapa. He buys up an existing contractor and he has to take over the staff. What use is that to him? How is that fair to his own employees who may have worked for him for years? He has to chuck them out. It is absolute nonsense. Where is the value added from this legislation? There is none. The legislation is simply red tape and adding costs to business. That is very very unsatisfactory. 
Let us come back to the situation of a company taking over a contract. A businessman who has a cleaning contract in a retirement village may decide that as he is about to lose the contract he will fix the new guy by doubling trebling or even quadrupling the pay rates of his employees. How does the buyer know that that will not happen? Suddenly the buyer might be faced with paying cleaners $100 an hour because of some smart work by the outgoing contractor that would be entirely plausible and possible under this legislation. 
I do not believe that this legislation makes the slightest bit of sense whatever. The National Party is going to oppose every clause in this bill. We are very very concerned that employees will lose their jobs because the companies they have been working for simply are thrown out of business because of impossible conditions being imposed by people who have never been in business. I think companies have the right to decide whom they will contract to provide their services. They have a right to decide what is best for their business. It should not be imposed by central government. This legislation is a total nonsense. It does not support our workers who need the protection of a free and open market.