Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I was quite sure I saw a discernible shudder from Willie Jackson at the revelation that he was sitting beside a capitalist—albeit a responsible capitalist as Mr Clayton Mitchell claimed himself. He then went on to decry the neo-liberal experiment of the last 30 years.One of the things about going in this order in this slot is that I don't get the opportunity to hear from the Hon Willie Jackson before I retort because I know exactly what he's going to say. He's going to portray employers as villains and employees as victims and there'll be some tub-thumping 10 minutes about how this is the right thing to do and how bad employers are because we've heard it before. What he's really saying actually the really sad part of that—and I predict we will hear this—is that what I hear in that message is that employees are too weak and too stupid to actually negotiate with their employers in a mature and respectful manner. That's what I think we have at the moment in the employment relations landscape in this country. Not all employers do the right thing by their employees but that's the exception not the rule.What we see in this bill is an underlying philosophy that employers are the villains and that being the rule. I'm very very disappointed to note that because the overwhelming number of employers do the right thing and that inference is a stain on them and their efforts in being the backbone of this economy.In my three years as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety I did at least the two things that Mr Mitchell mentioned fairness and flexibility—and I want to give examples of that—but also safety. I think the passage of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 was a really important milestone that the previous Government saw as very important in our employment relations landscape but it wasn't just that. In fairness it was increasing the penalties for non-compliance by employers to make very clear that that sort of behaviour wasn't acceptable. It was suspending their access to the international labour market if they breached employment law and it was of course the reality that if they themselves were recent migrants they could be liable for deportation.The zero-hour legislation was passed with the unanimous support of every single member of this House. That was a very important—Marja Lubeck: But it's still happening—it's still happening under this legislation.Hon Jacqui Dean: Well you've been the Government for a year or more.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —National-led amendment to protect employees from poor practice. That's a very good point Mrs Dean—not a single word about that in the 12 months that they have been in Government.Flexibility though—I think that's where the saddest part of this bill comes in because it reflects a completely jaundiced view of why certain things are necessary. I want to start with the 90-day trial because not a single Labour-led Government member has actually explained why prior to the sensible changes the Key-English Government made New Zealand was the only one if I recall rightly—there might've been two but no more than two countries in the OECD that did not have a 90-day trial. Some of those countries were some of the most socialist leftist Governments in the OECD and they saw the 90-day trial as fair and flexible.Marja Lubeck: Where's the evidence? No evidence.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: So if they do if Turkey does if Australia does if the United States does if most of the Eastern bloc countries—all of the Eastern bloc countries that are members of the OECD—think that's a very good idea why was it such a terrible thing for New Zealand to have it? The answer of course is that it wasn't. We started with small business we extended it to all business and I defy anybody to put substance behind the interjections of Ms Lubeck that somehow that was bad for employees. The marginalised those returning to the workforce and the recent migrants have all benefited from that. They will talk about the number of people for whom the 90-day trial didn't work out. They don't talk about the overwhelming tens if not hundreds of thousands of employees that were given a go coming out of the global financial crisis when they otherwise might not have had that opportunity.I do credit New Zealand First with at least putting back the small business exemption to the removal of the 90-day trial. I say that if it's good for those businesses it's good for all businesses.Now the other one that really upsets me that disappoints me more than anything is the rest and meal breaks one and I've used these examples in the House.Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: See they laugh—they think it's funny. They think it's funny that we don't think employees are too stupid to negotiate for themselves flexibility in their shifts and I'll give you an example of that.As some members know I used to run a surgical hospital and at certain times of the week the ward at night was not busy enough to justify more than two registered nurses. In fact sometimes it didn't justify even that but for clinical safety reasons it's necessary to have two registered nurses on a night shift. Now the definition of a rest or meal break" is one where a staff member is able to leave the ward. That is not possible under those clinical conditions and therefore I paid a generous allowance and gave them a meal so that they were compensated.Marja Lubeck: They can still do that.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No they can't—that's the point. They simply cannot. They can negotiate the timing of their rest and meal breaks but they cannot negotiate it away.Indeed shifts in hospitals traditionally—and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation still haven't been able to negotiate this away; I hope they do redouble their efforts—are actually very very bad for working parents. Most of them are women. The morning shift starts at 6.45 and it ends at 3.15. Now I had arrangements with some of my staff to enable them to leave early. As long as the handover of patients was done they could leave if they didn't take a lunch break at 2.45 instead of 3.15 and be ready and available to pick their children up from school. That's unlawful and actually rather on one point it may be possible to schedule the lunch break for 2.45 but technically again they can't leave the ward.The point is: why did we need this? When it was unacceptable when it was inflexible when the employers were not doing the right thing there were already provisions to protect employees from that and frankly the unions would and should and were doing their job of that. But the problem is we have an attitude of villainous employers none of whom can be trusted and therefore that kind of flexibility has to be rooted out with the bill. It's a crying shame.Now I want to go on to access to the workplace. In fact I was fascinated to hear Mr Mitchell say that this was some kind of watering down of this because section 20A now as a consequence of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 153 that the Minister has introduced suggests that the union representative must obtain consent to enter the workplace. Indeed that's what it says but the exceptions to that are not just if there is a collective employment agreement in place; it's also "(b) at the time of the representative's entry into the workplace—(i) the union or employer has initiated bargaining … and; (ii) the intended coverage of the collective agreement as set out in the notice given in accordance with section 42 covers the work done by employees at the workplace." It doesn't say that the workplace is going to be covered by the collective agreement and indeed this could well be a place where the unions want to extend the coverage.But we now have a provision that says there is an opt-out provision in the multi-employer collective agreement and it's far from clear to me whether or not this change is completely obsolete in the sense that if the union intends and hopes and is trying to get an extension of the coverage to that workplace where one presently doesn't exist they nevertheless don't have to seek permission to enter the workplace. So I see this as Clayton's watering down. It is actually a stalking horse with a lack of permission that I think a respectful union will continue to do even though this law has passed. I would like to think that they were overwhelmingly in that space but members of the House should not think for a moment that this amendment in the SOP is something like akin to a watering down back to what the present Employment Relations Act says.Now the last thing I want to touch on is the issue of partial strikes because I don't believe there's been any change to that. I wasn't on the committee at the end of the process but we have partial strikes going on in hospitals right now with midwives. They are taking two hours off per shift between 22 November and early December. Now when the Minister was confronted on this in January when the framework was announced he talked about partial strikes as some kind of protest thing and he used the Wellington Free Ambulance workers wearing red shirts at work and somehow being at risk of punishment and that was a bad thing. Well of course that's not any sort of definition of a partial strike. What is a definition is these two-hour breaks and the employer will have to pay for that every single time they do it. It will become the norm. We'll speak more about this in the committee of the whole House but there is very very little redeeming about this legislation."