Moroney Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:169. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):Well here we are the very first act of this Government in the 51st Parliament and what is it? Surprise surprise! It is dealing to hard-working New Zealanders. That is the very first thing. It has suspended the Address in Reply debate to deal to the working people of New Zealand. It is a disgrace and the Government is reverting to type. Part 1 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is where the rubber hits the road. This is where it is all happening because what is the urgency that this is the very first act of this new Government? What is the urgency in this? What is the harm that it is aiming to fix up? Well in determining and weakening collective bargaining who is it that this Government could be going after in such a hell of a hurry?Well I am looking at some of the collective agreements that are about to expire: nurses. Public hospital nurses are who the Government is after because they are negotiating their employment agreement right now—right now—and that is who the Government is after. It is the nurses who actually look after people when they end up in the public hospital that this Government is going after. Why else would this be the very first act that it has undertaken as a new Government? Then after the nurses come the teachers. The teachers’ collective employment agreement is up about the middle of next year and they are whom the Government is going to have in its sights next. That is why it has suspended a debate to try to force this through. Nurses teachers—police will be next firefighters will be after that and the Government is after each and every single one of them. So when nurses teachers firefighters police and anyone on a collective agreement think about the vote that they may have cast during the election they need to know what the very first act is that this Government is taking against their interests.The only reason for weakening collective bargaining—and Part 1 is weakening collective bargaining—is to drive down wages. That is the only reason to do it.David Bennett: Oh what a load of rubbish!SUE MORONEY: Government members say “Oh rubbish!” but what is the reason? What is the harm that we are trying to fix here? Is it because we have had lots of long and bitter industrial disputes where workers have demanded unrealistic wages and gained them? Is that what has been happening in New Zealand? I have not seen any of that. In fact what I have seen though is a report in the New Zealand Herald earlier this week where a Skycity worker got up at the annual general meeting and talked about how she is a sole parent working 2 days a week trying to make ends meet and actually doing what the Government wants. She is actually in paid employment instead of being on the benefit. She was working 2 days a week. She after 17 years or 11 years—one of those two it might have been 11 years of service for Skycity—without any consultation was cut down to 1 day a week. She was cut down to 1 day a week at the minimum wage to try to exist on. She got up in that shareholders meeting. She told her story to a group of shareholders who were just about to vote in an increase in directors’ fees for Skycity.That is what has been going on this country. We have got growing inequality. There have been wage movements all right but they have been for directors and chief executive officers when we know now that the gap between people on the average wage in organisations and their chief executive officers has grown hugely under this Government. And that is what this bill is designed to do. It is designed to make that even worse—even worse—than what it is under the current Government.That is not the New Zealand that I think and the Labour Party believes we ought to have. We actually do not think it is fair that chief executive officers keep getting huge increases while this Government passes this sort of legislation for no reason. Where is the harm? Where is the dispute? I want the members opposite to get up and name the dispute where workers have won an unreasonable wage increase because there has been a duty to conclude collective bargaining. Minister Woodhouse I challenge you to get up and name that dispute where workers have won an unfair wage increase because the Act the legislation currently requires a duty to conclude collective bargaining. If there is no such dispute if there is no such example then why is the Government making this its very first act? Well I will tell you why. It is because it is after the hard-working nurses. It is after our very valuable teachers. I listened very carefully to Steven Joyce earlier this week when he said—Hon Member: Why?SUE MORONEY: Well because I am interested to know what is in the recesses of the dark minds of the National Party. That is why I listened to him. He talked about the tertiary education sector. And do you know what he said? He said its costs have increased by 70 percent in the last 10 years and it must get its costs under control. Well on this side of the Chamber we all know what that is code for because the tertiary sector does not have whizz bang machinery or lots of capital expenditure in terms of research and development costs and that sort of thing. It spends its money on employing quality people. It spends its money on wages to have the best academic people we can have in our tertiary institutions. So what Steven Joyce is saying is that he wants wage cuts. He wants wage cuts and this is the legislation in Part 1 that the Government is going to use to bring that about.I want to move on to talk about the meal breaks and rest periods part of this bill. It is an issue that is very close to my heart because in fact I wrote the current piece of legislation. It was a member’s bill that I wrote in my name. It was adopted as a Government bill in my first term in Parliament and so I take it a little bit personally but more important the stories that we heard when we passed that legislation were incredible and that is what we are about to go back to. What people said was that they could not believe that in the year 2007—I think it was 2006 or 2007 when we passed that—workers in a civilised democracy like New Zealand did not have the legal right in law to have a lunch break or a rest period. People could not believe that but when they came to hear the stories—and Mr Bennett was on that select committee at the time—I think even they could not believe it. There were people who came before the select committee and told us stories about how they had been sacked. Yes they had been sacked because they dared to take a lunch break in their workplace in the year 2007 in Aotearoa New Zealand.That was not just an isolated incident. The one I remember very clearly was from Hamilton. A young guy by the name of Ānaru came and told the select committee about working for Subway in Hamilton where he had done his shift and he agreed to stay on and do a second shift because another work colleague of his was sick. He did the right thing. He did not have to agree to it but he did it. But after he had done about 10 hours he started to get pretty tired and fatigued and he knew he was going to make a mistake if he did not get a break. He insisted on taking a break a half-hour meal break—and when he returned he was sacked. He was sacked for daring to walk off the job. They said he had abandoned his duty. He had gone to take a meal break.This brings me to another point. The reason I wrote that piece of legislation was because of my concern around the health and safety issues associated with fatigue at work. That is the reason we have the right to a tea break and to a meal break. It is to keep people safe because we know that if people are tired they will hurt themselves and others and sometimes that actually ends up in workers losing their lives. This is particularly when you think about dangerous industries like forestry where we know already there is pressure on workers to work without taking their breaks because they are paid on a piecemeal basis rather than on the hours that are worked. We already know that there are actually major health and safety issues going on and here is the Government saying: “Well actually you can bargain away your right to have a meal break. Just don’t bother having one.” Maybe the employer will offer you a chocolate fish! Or maybe the employer will just threaten you as they threatened Ānaru with his job if you insist on taking a meal break.Those are the sorts of things that are going to start happening over and over again if this Government has its way. That legislation that meal breaks and rest periods legislation which was brought in as part of a Government bill that also dealt with infant feeding breaks—[Bell rung] I am probably going to continue the story later on.