Lees-Galloway Iain: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10787. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Well the National Party has never seen a workers’ right that it did not want to get rid of has it? That is basically what this Employment Relations Amendment Bill is about. The National Party has never seen a workers’ right or a working condition that it did not want to get rid of and all this bill does is take us back to the bad old days.Some people have said that it takes us back to the 1990s. I reckon it takes us back to the 1890s or maybe even before then. It is positively Dickensian this bill. If a worker should dare ask for more sir—if a worker should dare ask for more—the Mr Bumbles over there will send them off not even to the workhouse but out of the workhouse out on to the streets. That is what the National Party wants—that is what the National Party wants. I am not sure whether they are the Bumbles or the Fagins over there but either way this is a Dickensian piece of legislation that takes us back to the bad old days of the master-servant relationship in the workplace.In the 21st century the workplace is supposed to be a partnership. It is supposed to be about the employers the capitalists and the employees the labour working together to build a better business. But that is not what the National Party believes in. It believes in the old master-servant relationship where it tips the balance in favour of the employer every time. This is all designed to drive down wages and to make sure that the workers have so few rights and are so on edge in the workplace that they will never demand anything. They will never ask for more.Removing the duty to conclude collective bargaining is about bad employers—not the good employers. There are plenty of good employers out there but the law is always about making sure the ratbags cannot get away with their bad behaviour. So bad employers will be able to put ludicrous terms on the table and when the union does not agree to them they can just walk away. They can just walk away from collective bargaining. They can spray and walk away.Repealing the 30-day rule allowing employers to opt out of multi-employer collective bargaining—this is about getting industry standards. It is about unions and employers working together to build their industry. National does not want that. It does not want multi-employer collective agreements. It does not want to see the kinds of pay rises that the nurses got when the district health boards settled a multi-employer collective agreement with the Nurses Organisation. It does not want to see wages rise. John Key said it himself. He would love to see wages drop and that is what that part of this legislation is about.Then we have got this awful thing the so-called strike tax the partial action tax. So if workers wanted to maybe wear a sticker to work to show that they were taking the smallest tiniest form of industrial action just to show that they were not happy with the way bargaining was going then the employer would have the right to deduct 10 percent of their wages. Mr Bumble would be proud of this. Of course removing workers’ entitlements to rest and meal breaks—I mean how petty. How petty can the National Party get?Actually if I could just go back to the strike tax we know that this is not the end. The northern region of the National Party voted in the weekend to support employers being able to lock workers out and to then replace those workers. So it is not even workers wanting to strike or take their own industrial action. The employer—one day if National gets its way—will be able to take the industrial action lock the workers out and then replace them with somebody else.Some people have said the National Party is anti-union. The National Party is not anti-union. The National Party loves some unions. It loves the Employers and Manufacturers Association a fantastic union that works for employers. The National Party loves it. The National Party loves Federated Farmers. If Federated Farmers say “Jump!” the National Party says “How high sir? How high can we jump for you?”. The National Party actually quite likes unions; it just hates workers. It just hates the labour force. It sees the labour force not as a vital component of growing business but as a cost—a cost to be reduced and a nuisance to be annihilated. That is how the National Party sees hard-working employees in New Zealand.This legislation is simply about removing rights removing bargaining leverage and ensuring that workers are so on edge about the ability to keep their jobs that they will ask for nothing. There will be no more requests for more under this legislation because if you ask for more you will be out on your ear.