Fenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10775. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): This bill the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is the poster child for the failure of this National Government: the failure to deliver on John Key’s promise of more jobs the failure to lift wages for hard-working Kiwis and the failure to close the wage gap with Australia. With this bill National has declared war on wages. It wants to cut the pay of hard-working Kiwis and it has reverted to its modus operandi of last century dressed up in the soft-soap language of choice and flexibility that we heard from the Minister of Labour. John Key’s Government is now the low-wage king of New Zealand. It has held down the minimum wage it has cut young workers’ pay and now it is gutting the primary wage-fixing mechanism under New Zealand law.It is already hard going and it is costing New Zealand workers and their families but this bill is going to have a knock-on effect throughout the labour market and further entrench Kiwis in a low-wage economy. By taking away Kiwis’ right to fair wage negotiations and standard setting this bill will result in workers across the board seeing their wages fall.Every change from this Government from allowing employers to walk away from collective bargaining and negotiations to stopping people from finding out why they have been sacked to taking away the right to a tea break is about National looking after its mates at the expense of everyone else. This is payback for the Government’s wealthy mates who have become restless—and did we not see that last week in the media? They think the Government has been too soft on workers and unions. They hate unions. The Government’s mates do not like the fact that we still have the remnants of a bargaining system in New Zealand where workers can actually have a say. They donated big time to the National Party expecting a whole lot more. What did we see last year? The former Minister Kate Wilkinson with all due respect to her had pressure put on her and now it is on Simon Bridges that very ambitious Minister to deliver to the party’s donors. They want to see workers put in their place and that is what this bill is about.This bill undermines the foundation of the Employment Relations Act which is meant to promote collective bargaining not destroy it. It is meant to promote compliance with important international conventions. The bill destroys the foundation of good faith and fair dealing in our law which Governments business and unions have worked on so carefully for the last 10 years. It puts industrial relations firmly back on the agenda as a political issue. We say: “Bring it on.”—bring it on. Kiwi workers are sick and tired of being told by this Government that they should be grateful to have a job. No matter what the pay is or what the conditions are they should be grateful. That is what this bill is about as well.Once the backbone of New Zealand jobs was about a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. It was about a chance to build a better life for ourselves and our families. But now while John Key gives handouts and favours to his mates Kiwi workers are seeing the dream of decent work slip further away.This bill is not good for workers but it is not good for employers either. Good employers under this bill will have to compete with bad employers who will have free rein under these changes to employment law. Actually I have had many employers express privately to me their puzzlement about these changes. They do not seem that fussed about them and many tell me they never asked for them. What employers are saying to me is that they need stability and this bill is going to upset the labour marketin a way we have not seen in years and years. The truth is that the only people who are going to do well out of this bill are employment lawyers and I hope the Minister has provided more resources for the Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court because that is where this is going to end up.The Government seems increasingly out of touch with good employers who are trying to do the right thing. It is missing out on the conversation that is taking place all around us about the living wage. We have got employers lining up to sign up to be living wage employers. The Government is deaf to that. It does not seem to understand that things are changing in New Zealand. People do not want this bill. They do not want us to go back under this Government to the system that we had 20 years ago.But let us be in no doubt: under this bill standards set by collective agreements that extend across the labour market to wage and salary earners will stall. New workers being employed and doing the same work as others can be paid less. The Government’s own advisers said that; it is in the Cabinet papers. Collective agreements are going to be harder to settle and I think that is the aim of the bill. Then there are the extraordinary proposals to tax workers 10 percent of their pay for partial actions and allow their pay to fall below the minimum wage. There is no measurement about what that action can be. The Minister said yesterday that it was about a level playing field. Employers already can suspend and lock out workers who take partial action. There is no balance in this in terms of workers being able to do things similar to that. Actually I cannot find a jurisdiction anywhere in the world that does this.A consequence of this silly policy—goodness knows where it came from; probably from the floor of a National Party conference and we know the sorts of things they come up with—is that this bill has pages and pages and pages dedicated to being able to tax workers fine workers for taking little little action. That could be just working to rule with workers doing their full hours but saying to an employer: “We’re a bit upset with you about the collective bargaining. You’re not giving us a pay increase. So we’re going to do just our jobs and no more.” They can be fined.If we are talking about meanness there are in this bill cuts to meal and rest breaks which I thought we had seen the back of in 2010 when it disappeared when it went to the bottom of the Order Paper. They have been revised. What that means is the boss will decide whether workers get their break. What is even worse is that workers will be required to work during unpaid meal breaks. I do not know what the name is for that. I think years ago they used to call it slavery where people were required—Andrew Little: I think they call it flexibility now.DARIEN FENTON: It is flexibility these days that is the thing—slavery or flexibility. What it means is that workers are going to be required to work for nothing during their breaks.I was interested in the Minister’s comments about Part 6A. Clearly he has had the message that the proposal to cut the protections for vulnerable workers is not supported by many businesses. We all know where this proposal came from despite a comprehensive review which took the Minister 3 years and included not only the Department of Labour but the employment of a separate consultant. There were specific recommendations that small and medium sized businesses should not be exempted. Then former Minister Kate Wilkinson got the CrestClean message: “Get rid of Part 6A or we will campaign against you.” And they did—they did. The National Party connections in CrestClean a company that has had cases against it around Part 6A got rid of her. The next minute despite all the advice and a 3-year review Cabinet decided to exempt small business.This bill comes from a Government that simply does not get it. It has never understood the vulnerabilities of a worker standing up to an employer when theemployer holds all the cards when the worker’s economic livelihood is on the line and when their only choice is to keep quiet to shut up and be obedient or lose their job. This is a Minister running this who has never had to face an employer who has more bargaining power than him. This is a Minister who made it plain yesterday that he does not understand the consequences of this bill. I do look forward to the conversation he is committed to at the International Labour Organization next week and I look forward to a report back on that. But there is a better way than this. This constant grinding down of Kiwi workers is not acceptable. We need a party with the backbone to make decent work a reality again and that party is Labour.