Roche Denise: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19190. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to take a call on the Vote Labour appropriation. It is kind of appropriate that I do that today given that yesterday there was a major celebration from The Living Wage Aotearoa New Zealand Campaign which celebrated the 20 businesses that have signed up to pay their workers a living wage of $18.80. I think that is something that we should celebrate because the only way that workers are going to be lifted out of poverty is through decent wages and through employers modelling the behaviour that we would like to see other employers adopt.I note that the Vote Labour appropriation outlines the target for the number of interventions aimed at ensuring the minimum standards of the employment legislation are adhered to and the Minister of Labour referred to that. It is a crucial task and although he may say that the Government is reviewing the minimum standards the fact is that they are being breached all the time. Previous speakers have referred to this as well. What is happening is that the labour inspectors are managing to get some inspections done but they are woefully underfunded. We do need more of them because there is a lot more they could be doing. The majority of inspections that they did in the agricultural sector which they reported on in April showed that most of the minimum employment standards were not being met.I looked at the “Fencepost Jobs” page on the Fonterra website today which actually is still advertising for jobs of 65 hours a week with 3 days off in 10 days. These are not the sorts of jobs that we want people to have. We want people to have jobs where they can actually afford to live and where they can afford to provide for their families without having to rely on the taxpayer to increase their ability to provide for their families through Working for Families which just acts as a subsidy to employers to keep wages low. That is what Working for Families has become. I have also seen jobs on “Fencepost Jobs” for 55 hours a week and when I looked at the salary that works out to be $13.66 per hour.This is unacceptable. This is absolutely unacceptable. The Government’s response to this kind of thing was actually to introduce and change the regulations under the Minimum Wage Act which meant that workers could work long hours under the minimum wage and have it spread out over 2 weeks. It is shocking. The Government’s regulatory regime is shocking. What we have seen from this Government is the exploitation of young people through the introduction of youth rates. We have seen the introduction of less job security than ever before through the introduction of the 90-day trials where workers can be sacked for absolutely no reason whatsoever in their first 3 months in a job.I remind the Committee that the bill that was set to reduce and undermine collective bargaining and take away minimum job security the Employment Relations Amendment Bill has now stalled. That was a miserly bill. It was not a moderate change as was suggested by the Minister of Labour; it was an attempt to undermine workers’ rights to the nth degree. It does not create jobs Mr Bridges because it does not create jobs when you force wages down. There was of course full employment under slavery because the pay was so low.The fact that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill has been stalled is a great thing. It is great that we will be able to change the Government and ditch that legislation away from the Order Paper after September. In the meantime it is the only thing I will probably ever thank the Hon John Banks for.The reason we support the living wage is because we believe that workers should be able to provide for their families and live in dignity. There are 285000 children living in poverty in New Zealand. Two out of five of those children have a parent who is working. More parents than ever before are working several jobs just to make ends meet. The cost of keeping wages low and of not lifting those 285000 kids out of poverty is $6 billion to $8 billion a year. We the taxpayers all pay for that as well but it is not recorded in a budget line anywhere.It is unreasonable that while there have been overall—Vote agreed to.