Fenton Darien: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fenton Darien: Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:4825] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 First I thank the various parties—the Maori Party the Greens United Future and of course the Labour Party—for their contributions and their support. I do appreciate very much their understanding that this is a situation of workers’ rights regardless of the legal form the work takes. I also appreciate the parties that are prepared to consider this as a genuine concern not a political football. 
I take the opportunity to say to Dr Mapp that if he wants to talk to me about the financial report of the Service and Food Workers Union I have it here. I am very happy to help him read a balance sheet because I do not think  
Investigate 
 is able to do it and I do not think that he is able to do it either. I am very happy to do that outside of the House if the member would like to do so. 
The starting point of the bill is that this is a dimension of labour regulation that should be extended to all workers who are economically dependent on the sale of their capacity to work. As Peter Brown mentioned I did say that many countries now accept that the traditional concept of an employee no longer provides a satisfactory basis for delineating the scope of labour law. If Mr Brown had asked me I would have been very happy to provide him with the research I have done. I have worked on this issue for many many years going right back to 1998 at the International Labour Organization conference when it looked at the issue around the scope of employment and labour legislation. In Britain for example the concept of a worker corresponding with what we call a dependent contractor is now part of the law. It is an attempt to shift the boundary of labour protection to self-employed workers who are not genuinely in business on their own account. 
There is no worry about those who are doing well but there is a worry about those who are not. I would like to let Dr Mapp know about correspondence I have had recently from somebody in his own electorate who applied for a job where paper runners of all ages were being sought but specifying students at-home parents and retired people. On phoning this person was told that the pay rate for delivering 100 to 125 newspapers is between $3 and $5 for each run and that the workers have to provide their own trundlers etc. Is that acceptable? I do not think so. 
There is widespread agreement that the traditional legal categories which are also current in New Zealand—and there are many many names for them such as employee independent contractor dependent contractor contract for services labour subcontractor labour-only contractor etc.—no longer fit with the economic and social reality of today’s work relations. This is a challenge for all of us and this bill represents a very small step towards dissolving the distinction in rights between employees and the self-employed—or contractors—for the purposes of minimum labour protection. 
I do not understand the National Party’s reluctance to extend rights to the self-employed who are contracting for services. I recall its criticism of this Government for not providing in a hurry paid parental leave to the self-employed. I am sure it would not want to remove accident compensation health and safety rights and social insurance from them either. So what is the difference in providing the very basic protection of minimum remuneration in law? 
 The rationale for this bill is fairness and social justice. Fairness requires that similarly situated individuals be treated equally—that is people who are depending on the sale of their labour should be treated similarly regardless of the form the transaction takes. The social justice argument is that all workers should be protected against harms and risks that are broadly seen as being unacceptable. Minimum wage or remuneration is one of the things our society and all parties have seen as a necessary floor below which people should not be required to provide their labour. There is no more justification for permitting discrimination in terms of minimum wage or remuneration against any worker who provides services personally regardless of the contractual arrangement under which the service is provided than there is for permitting racial or sexual discrimination against any worker. 
The point of this bill is not to facilitate workers who are contractors to reach the very hard goal of proving they are employees; it is to provide for a minimum entitlement of remuneration regardless of their legal status. New Zealanders believe in fairness and justice; they believe that people should be treated equally. That is what this bill is about.