Salesa Jenny: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9411. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this call on the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. First of all I would like to also pay my respects to Professor Ranginui Walker. I have to say that he was one of the professors who taught me at the University of Auckland and he was by far one of my favourite professors. I pay my respects to his family.Labour does not support this bill in its current form. Labour is supporting this bill at its second reading but only at this stage and only because we are negotiating in good faith with the current Government. The Minister the Hon Michael Woodhouse and the National Government promised that it would get rid of zero-hour contracts. We would like this bill to actually do just that. However the conditional support that the Labour Party is giving this bill at this stage is only because we are hoping that at the third reading the Government will definitely get rid of zero-hour contracts.Supporting this bill at its second reading comes with three bottom lines from the Labour Party. First we would like the ability for employers to be able to put people on contracts when they are on call with no permanent hours. Being on call is fine in some respects but being on call all of the time when there is no security and no guarantee of regular hours cannot be acceptable especially when people are sitting at the other end of the phone waiting to be called. But in many of these cases people are not actually called to come in to work. That cannot be acceptable in New Zealand.Secondly we would be supportive of this legislation if employers are not able to cancel shifts at any particular point. Right now we are not comfortable that what is currently proposed by the Government would allow employers to just cancel shifts whenever they like. We are not comfortable that the current Government should normalise this and put it into legislation.Thirdly the Labour Party would like where practical for hours of work to be included in the employment agreement so that people can plan their lives with some security. We get lots of constituents in our office in South Auckland. Many of these people work in low-income jobs. Many of these people are cleaners. Many of them work in the fast-food industry. And when they come in to seek our advice and ask for assistance many of them tell us that they do work and they do have an employment contract. But many of them do not have guaranteed hours.Zero-hour contracts are amongst the worst form of worker exploitation in New Zealand today. Zero-hour contracts must be eliminated and we in the Labour Party will do everything we can to ensure that this occurs. Labour has not moved an inch on zero-hour contracts. It is absolutely essential to abolish zero-hour contracts in this country. We should not in New Zealand allow by law for workers to sit around and wait at the other end of the line to be called hopefully to come in for work. New Zealanders have a right to the protection of the law and they also have a right to expect their elected representatives—those of us in this House—to treat their rights as workers with care. They should not be placed at the mercy of legislation that would make their exploitation as workers legal. New Zealanders have a right to work and their conditions of work should be equitable and fair.The Labour Party gives conditional support at this point to this legislation. Thank you very much.