Sio William: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:189. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere):Mr Chairman let me just begin by congratulating you on your elevation—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): This will not help.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: —before I turn to clause 11.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Oh all right.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: Clause 11—I want to ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Michael Woodhouse whether he would take a call and explain to the Committee the purpose of this bill and what will be the result for the workforce. When one reads the regulatory impact statement it does say there is limited evidence on the size and underlying causes of the problem that this Government has identified and if you go further into that regulatory impact statement and look at what the proposal is to allow an employer to opt out of multi-employer bargaining it says that the flexibility is for employers but there is no flexibility for employees. So I would like the Minister to please rise and tell the Committee what the outcome of this particular bill is for the New Zealand workforce. If the economy has grown by 3.5 percent in the last year why was it that last year 43 percent of the workforce did not get a wage increase? I put it to this Committee that 43 percent of the workforce did not get a pay increase because that workforce were not members of a trade union.Now you have this Government which has set its sights on those who are members of a union and particularly those who are in multi-employer collective agreements and it is determined to get rid of their particular rights. If you look at the list of those multi-employer agreements that are up for renewal in this year it is the Public Service Association and next year it is all the public sector. In my community those who work in the public sector are earning a little bit more income than those in the private sector. Why is this Government now determined to start attacking those who are the middle-income earners in the public sector? What is that Government intending to do when on the one hand it says it is out there protecting the vulnerable but on the other hand it has set its sights on undermining the ability of workers to organise and to negotiate in collective agreements? I want that Minister to rise to his feet and tell this Committee what the outcome of this bill is on the workforce that is out there in New Zealand.The Government is determined based on what I am reading in this particular bill on clause 11 to undermine the rights of workers. Why is that—why is that? What drives the Government? I would put it to this Committee that it is blindly feeding its greed and the greed of its friends who are behind the scenes telling it that this is the right thing to do. I would say to you and that Minister that this is wrong. This is wrong. It does not support any of the workforce of New Zealand. It does not address the issues that were raised earlier today by my colleagues about poverty about children—that you cannot feed children with promises that you cannot feed children with white papers and the promise to do something. This bill is actually going to affect and have a direct impact on the livelihood of the workforce. Why is that? I have asked that Minister who is pretending not to listen to me to rise to his feet and tell this Committee what the impact is.There is already a declining number of the workforce in the trade union movement but those who are in the trade union movement are able through collective bargaining to achieve a little bit better than those who are not in the trade union movement. We have a situation that all in this Committee are aware of. We have the working poor—people who are working long hours in difficult conditions often on a minimum wage but who cannot maintain the bills. They cannot pay regular rent and clause 11 in my view is designed to even make it—