Woodhouse Michael: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Woodhouse Michael: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled 
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MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 I will take a quick call on Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) but before I do so I acknowledge the retraction of a little faux pas that Mr Mallard made in respect of my name. I can assure the Committee that I have been called a heck of a lot worse than that but I can also assure the Committee that it is not wooden. I will just pick up on a point and tweak the paraphrasing that Mr Mallard made in respect of my comment about good employers not using the 90-day probationary provision. What I said was that some good employers will use it; some good employers will see the need not to use it. Those who do use it might use it sometimes but they will not use it all the time. It is a thing called choice. 
What we heard from submitters— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Whose choice? 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: That is a very good question and it is the sort of question that submitters to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee were asked by members on the other side in respect of the choice that employees have if they are offered an employment agreement with a 90-day probationary period in it and they do not feel comfortable about that. The answer was of course that they have a choice: either to accept the offer on those terms or not to accept the offer. 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Here we go—we hear the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. How terrible it would be that people would possibly back themselves to make their own minds up about the terms and conditions of employment including a 90-day probationary period! 
I will contrast that with Labour’s position on Mr Henare’s member’s bill in respect of a secret ballot for strikes. What Carol Beaumont confirmed was the Service and Food Workers Union position in respect of what union members can do if they do not like the rules that say there must be an open ballot process. What were we told? We were told that members are free to leave the union—if they do not like it they can just go. People who listen to this debate will acknowledge the terrible inconsistency about saying that. 
Sue Moroney 
: They still have a job. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: No it is protection but it is protection as long as someone wants to go with the flow and does not possibly have an independent thought about what is going on in the union. If someone does not like it there is the door. We have an inconsistency between choice for employers and employees in respect of the employment relations agreement but no choice for union members if they want to have a secret ballot—“we couldn’t possibly give them that because we don’t trust them.” I think there is a serious inconsistency in Labour’s position on that. 
I will touch for the first time on the issue of access to workplaces by unions because I think we will hear quite a bit about this in the Committee stage. The submissions went something like this: there is no problem so why are we putting in this solution? Actually that was not entirely what we heard. We heard that there were problems. Again there were problems at the margins but as Carol Beaumont tells us the Labour Party believes that as long as there are problems with employers they are to be locked down but if there are problems with a few errant unions and employees there is no need to do that. I think that is another inconsistency. We heard from fast-food outlets in Auckland that unions that had no members in certain workplaces were demanding rights of access at the most inconvenient times. We heard that they were creating high levels of disruption to the business and intimidating and bullying workers some of whom were just 16 and 17 years old into joining unions and that that required a remedy. 
I accept that in the vast majority of places where unions are involved where employees are members of those unions and those relationships are strong access is not a problem. But certain courtesies should be put in place. Even when I had those good relationships particularly with the New Zealand Nurses Organisation there were times when I was quite irked about the fact that I did not know that the union delegates were on the worksite or that they had actually stopped operations during their presence. I would have appreciated the courtesy of knowing they were coming; it does not take much effort to provide that information. 
As the Service and Food Workers Union pointed out it has 21000 contacts involving its union delegates going into workplaces every year and it just does not make sense to put in place an overly burdensome process for arranging access. And this bill does not do that. The bill is not prescriptive in respect of the manner in which access agreements can be reached. They can be ex ante arrangements; they can be arrangements in writing in advance that say that when certain conditions are met union access is granted and the unions are free to come and go. But employers can also have a right to expect that they have sovereignty over the premises that they own or lease. This is an important point. They should have the right to deny access to people who have no business coming in when there are no union employees in the workplace. 
We had an interesting discussion on this point and I think we want to flesh it out further. There are clearly two differing points of view around this question of sovereignty and rights of access. The employers tell us that the workplace is their place and they should have a right to come and go. The unions—and particularly some of the members of the Service and Food Workers Union who came into the select committee in Auckland—had a different perspective on the workplace. They saw it as their place: that they were part of a broader family and that the union delegates—who were not employees but were nevertheless connected to them through the union—should have similar rights to come and go freely. I do not think those two points of view are actually irreconcilable. I think that when we have good workplace relations between the employer and the employee we can have a different point of view about that common ground but still not impede access. I think this amendment will provide employers with an opportunity to better control some quite dysfunctional things that were being described to us in the select committee and for that reason it is a good amendment. 
I can speak for all employers I am sure who have good relationships with the Service and Food Workers Union and say it simply will not be the case—the union can rest assured on this—that when arrangements are put in place it will need to write 21000 letters wait 2 days and get 21000 replies. Those relationships are stronger than that. The bill will achieve better arrangements that will not impede access but that will provide the sorts of controls that are necessary. Thank you.