Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15278] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 The Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) is another sock in the eye for Kiwi wage earners and salary earners. It is part of a raft of unfair and unjustified workplace laws that remove some of the most basic of rights that workers have enjoyed for many many years. This Government has turned its back on Kiwi workers and their families. Let us not forget that they are bearing the brunt of the GST increases; the miserly tax increase for the lowest paid nowhere near compensates for increased costs. There is no investment in jobs or skills. There is no plan. The majority response from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and let us be clear about what that means; it means the National and the ACT Party members—demonstrates that this Government is not prepared to listen to anyone who disagrees with it. 
The bill started badly when National used its party conference to announce the extension of the 90-day “no rights” law to all workplaces and the restriction of union access rights because it had nothing else to say at that conference. The Government has no plan to stop New Zealand drifting further and further behind Australia. Then the Government went further by pushing this and the Holidays Amendment Bill through the fast-track parliamentary process. The public was given only 3 weeks to make submissions on both bills—both substantive bills with major changes. Large numbers of submissions were ignored. Despite this I want to thank the submitters all 8000 of them—the Minister of Labour referred to hundreds of submitters but there were 8000 of them—who went to the trouble to tell the committee and this Government what they thought of this lousy bill. I am disappointed but not surprised that the Government has completely ignored many of those submissions and the protests of those who opposed the changes in this bill and the fact that only minor and technical changes were being suggested. 
However I am used to what National does. I have been here a while now with National in Government but a press release states that shopworker Margaret Dornan “… is gutted that Parliament has ignored her submission on the employment law changes being debated in Parliament this afternoon. Margaret said that she and several other members of the National Distribution Union (NDU) wrote personal submissions and came along in person to tell their stories to MPs at the select committee.” 
Carol Beaumont 
: They did. Fantastic job. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: They did a fantastic job. It is not an easy thing for an ordinary low-paid worker to do. I think Margaret speaks for a lot of workers who feel the same way—the thousands who made submissions and the more than 22000 workers who went to meetings and rallies up and down the country to oppose this awful bill. 
What was clearly laid out in the select committee—and we will hear more about it during the debate on this bill—was the disdain the National Government has for working people. It is quite happy to be the puppet of an American corporation and sell out the labour rights of a major group of workers and it is quite happy to rush through the House legislation that removes rights such a meals and rest breaks because of the little problem with air traffic controllers. But the Government has ignored thousands of submissions and thousands of workers protesting in our country. 
I want to talk about two areas of the bill in particular as there will be more time to talk about other things during the Committee stage. The first one is union access. There was no clear evidence before this bill was introduced that the issue of access was a problem. There was no problem to be addressed there. The Minister’s own department said there was not a problem and employers said there was not a problem. We at the select committee heard no evidence of problems. The only reason for change is ideology and it is supported by I think a very small number of employers who want to make it as difficult as possible for workers to have access to their unions at work. 
It is interesting that the Minister appears to have originally proposed a more watered-down access change. In an 11 August 2010 Cabinet paper the Minister proposed to exclude the consent requirements if a union representative was entering the workplace to deal with matters concerning the health and safety of union members. That never made it into the bill passed through Cabinet. The paper said that it was to ensure that the risks to the health and safety of people in the workplace could be dealt with appropriately. As I said the bill omits any of this so I would like to know whether the Government now believes it is OK to prevent matters concerning the health and safety of people in the workplace being responded to appropriately. 
I acknowledge that the select committee made a small improvement to the union access provisions by cutting down from 4 days to 2 days the time allowed for employers to provide a response to a request and—if consent is withheld—the reasons for withholding consent. But the legislation will still enable employers to say no and give a reason. The union representative will then have to challenge that reason. That could take weeks and even months and it will require legal challenges. This will be an absolute gift for lawyers. 
The second area I want to talk about is the extension of the 90-day trial period. Once again we are left wondering why the Government decide to extend this to all workplaces when its own research on the existing provisions for workplaces of 20 or fewer employees is far from convincing about the benefits. There was no demand that I am aware of for the extension of this law to all workplaces apart from the ACT Party. Even as late as June 2010 the Minister was proposing it be extended to medium-sized enterprises with 50 workers or fewer but the Minister got rolled in Cabinet and rolled by the ACT Party. That is very worrying. Today in the House I asked the Minister of Labour how she could be confident that the 90-day trial period scheme would improve productivity and skills given we have heard of an example today where a skilled chef in Timaru was fired under the scheme for using too much sauce and aioli. For goodness’ sake! The Minister replied—I thought very flippantly—“Quite easily.” which shows an ignorance of the issues that we face in this country around productivity and future skill shortages. I thought skilled chefs were in demand; I thought John Key was trying to keep skilled workers in New Zealand. 
As we have debated the extension of the 90-day “no rights” legislation I have asked the Minister quite a lot of questions to try to understand what she really thinks the rights of workers if any are in this situation. Firstly we had the TradeMe jobs with 90-day trial periods advertised as a pre-requirement. The Minister kept insisting that 90-day trial periods are voluntary and if workers did not want a trial period they did not have to have one—in other words if they do not want it they do not get the job. That is not so for workers sent by Work and Income to do a job. The Minister for Social Development and Employment confirmed that a job with a 90-day trial period was treated the same as any other job. The worker does not have the right to turn a job down because it has a trial period and in fact if the worker did turn it down he or she would be punished with a stand-down. I then tried to understand what the Minister believes the obligations of good faith are for a worker employed under a 90-day trial period but it seems the Minister really does not understand those obligations and in fact had questions about that as well. We have heard the answers and the advice that the employer would have to be responsive communicative and blah-blah-blah but the bottom line is that there is no remedy available to workers in relation to breaches of good faith in a 90-day dismissal situation. They still lose their job they still have the stain on their record they still have their confidence whacked and they still have to explain to the next employer what happened at their last place of employment. 
As I said at the beginning this bill has many other provisions that I will give more attention to in the Committee stage. But there is nothing in this bill that will build more productive New Zealand workplaces reduce unemployment or help to bridge the income gap with Australia. The Government has chosen instead the low and cheap route of undermining the ability of Kiwi wage and salary earners to improve their wages and conditions. The only possible message for Kiwi workers from this legislation is that the Government does not care about them their families their issues or their communities.