Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's not a privilege to take a call on this bill today because as I said in my second reading speech yesterday it is a dark day for workers. What has concerned me a lot about the debate—and it's happening again—is that when those of us on this side of the House who are proud to have worked alongside some of New Zealand's most vulnerable workers are telling stories about bus drivers having to take a pee in the bushes the other side have laughed.I just find it so offensive that people on the other side of this House actually think that stories about workers being mistreated in the workplace having to go to the toilet in a bush having to argue why they need to keep their job because they're an older woman without savings and they just can't stack a supermarket shelf that quickly—again I'm seeing smirks. Please don't do that.This is why I'm so proud to stand here today on this side of the House—because these things aren't funny. They're not funny. I've sat with workers in tears and with unfortunately mental health challenges as a result of what's happening in the workplace. I've heard claims of sexual harassment of women by their managers that are not being taken seriously. I say to the other side: maybe put yourselves in the shoes of some of those people just for 10 minutes would you? This is a serious matter for New Zealand workers.Back in 1991 when the Employment Contracts Act was brought in it took away the ability for us to have sector agreements. And during this debate they've been talked about as being some kind of weird thing. My colleague Helen White talked briefly about what they actually are which is minimum standards and I might just talk about some of the really basic minimum standards that could have been introduced into the retail agreement.If you're a retail worker if you're a supermarket worker or you work for Bunnings or Farmers or one of those big-box retailers quite often people will have rosters from Tuesday to Saturday which is very normal. It's expected if you work in retail that you will work a Saturday or Sunday and it's reasonable to have that expectation as they are the busiest days for retail. But if you work a Tuesday to Saturday roster given that most of our public holidays in New Zealand are on a Monday you miss out on about six days of public holidays. It's actually a whole week of leave that you miss out on. And just recognise again that these retailers are multimillion-dollar businesses. They're making significant amounts of profit. One of the things that we built into collective agreements with retail was that if you worked a Tuesday to Saturday roster the Tuesday would be treated like a Monday. It's pretty reasonable. It's a pretty basic minimum standard.We have minimum standards in law already. We have the minimum wage we have our annual leave we have public holidays we have sick leave we have bereavement leave. But one of the things is that across each sector there are actually specific things relevant to each sector that don't get covered by that and this is what we were doing. We weren't looking to achieve a gold standard agreement necessarily. That is actually still the opportunity between either a union and an employer or an individual and an employer—to get to gold standard. We just wanted bronze standard you know for a lot of these workers.Take that bus driver example again. We've seen split shifts across the country. There are examples in Auckland of bus drivers starting their day in South Auckland ending up in central Auckland for a four-hour break before starting their shift again. So they're not actually able to get home to spend time with their families or maybe pick the kids up from school. They're expected to have this four-hour break hanging around in the Auckland CBD.What a fair pay agreement would have been able to do is deal with that specific issue and set a minimum standard around it. It wasn't about saying we're going to pay people 100 bucks an hour or anything outrageous that the other side's kind of scaremongering about. It was about saying what are the minimum standards that are relevant for that industry.I think what's really fascinating about this is that when Jim Bolger worked on this law in the 52nd Parliament one of the things he noted in 1991—and we can talk about what happened in 1991. I think the Government at that time expected the union movement to push back harder than it did and we all know from history that it didn't. He has now accepted that they went too far.So if you look at our history around employment law the fifth Labour Government brought in the Employment Relations Act. It brought back collective bargaining. It brought back multi-employer collective agreements (MECAs) which are actually really similar to what we are trying to achieve with fair pay agreements. What we saw with those MECAs was that that only worked mostly in the health sector when the Government of the day instructed those departments to agree to a MECA. It was still a voluntary process. We didn't see MECAs roll out across the country as we had hoped to through the Employment Relations Act. So it's the missing piece of the employment puzzle that needed to be brought back in. It's really common overseas. Everyone in New Zealand economic commentators business leaders unions—we all talk about how things are.Simon Court: They're all wrong.RACHEL BOYACK: They're all wrong apparently—even business leaders according to Simon Court. He just said they're all wrong. So business leaders economic leaders Simon Court from ACT thinks you're wrong. They talk about Australia. We have so much evidence to show that there are higher wages over in Australia. One of the reasons as I've said in previous contributions is that they have what they call enterprise bargaining which is the comparable sector-based bargaining that we were looking to achieve. The sky hasn't fallen over there. When you look around at where they have this type of bargaining the sky hasn't fallen. All it does is ensure that we have minimum standards that reflect the needs of that particular industry.I've talked a lot in my contributions about supermarket workers and I'm going to continue with that theme a little bit. There are two submissions that have been sent to me that I want to read out. The first is from wonderful Connor who was really brave and spoke on the forecourt of Parliament yesterday. He told me that fair pay agreements are important to him because they would lift the pay and conditions that essential workers could achieve. He said they would put an end to the status quo of those workers being undervalued by the most greedy and exploitative employers in the sector.I want to talk a bit about that because we have a duopoly. We have Countdown/Woolworths owned by an Australian company and all the profit heads back to Australia. Then we have Foodstuffs New Zealand which is split into Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island—actually a nice union of employers.If you look at Foodstuffs employers they are part of a collective and I've been on the other side of bargaining with a Foodstuffs supermarket a multibillion-dollar one where they try to say No no no we've got our own approach to this." yet they put the exact same terms and conditions from each supermarket into the negotiating space. So they try to pretend that they're somehow unique and individual but they all come up with the exact same option for an agreement. So you know they can say one thing but the actions show something quite different.As I've said in previous contributions during COVID it really was wonderful to see people thanking supermarket workers. We saw art competitions from children in primary schools and they sent beautiful art to say thank you to our essential workers during COVID. People dropped off cards and chocolates and thanked them in newspaper articles but what they really need is actually to be treated decently in their employment and paid properly. Thanking people is all very nice but a thankyou and a box of chocolates doesn't buy your supermarket shop for the week. It doesn't pay your mortgage or your rent.I'm going to finish by reading the submission on the original legislation from my friend Jenny Wells. Here is what she said: "When employers can make unilateral decisions regarding employment without consultation with employees it is unjust. When employers declare that an employee is not allowed to share their pay rate or employment conditions with other people it is unjust. When an employer can set a pay rate for a position arbitrarily it is unjust. It is unjust because it sets people against each other. Then the only way to deal with workplace disputes is through the Employment Relations Authority. It is unjust because the authority takes years to make a decision however just. As William E Gladstone said in 1866 justice delayed is justice denied. The purpose of a fair pay agreement is to have a consistent wage and consistent conditions across an industry. I work in the retail sector in a supermarket. Recently it has been revealed that all supermarkets are making excess profits. However what is different between the different supermarket chains is that they treat their staff differently. There are different rates of pay. There is a different approach to how public holidays are dealt with. There are different approaches to staffing levels and to places considered to need an extra level of expertise. Having a fair pay agreement means that both employers and employees will know what to expect."As a Labour MP I said in my maiden speech that I would not rest until I saw a retail fair pay agreement. That is the commitment from me but it is the commitment from all Labour Party members—that when workers' rights are under attack we will stand up and fight back. We will make sure that these fair pay agreements become a reality when we are back on the Treasury benches in 2026."