Lees-Galloway Iain: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2953. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):Today is Workers’ Memorial Day. It is the day when working people and business leaders and others come together across the country to mourn and commemorate those who have been lost at work those people who went to work and never came back home again as well as those who have been injured at work. It is also a day to re-energise and re-invigorate the fight to ensure that the living get to work in safer workplaces. Last year 47 people were killed at work. So far this year 10 people have been killed whilst at work.Although I acknowledge that this Government has taken health and safety more seriously in the wake of the Pike River disaster and there is health and safety reform legislation going through the House right now we have to maintain a laser-like focus on accountability for health and safety and on encouraging workers to participate in health and safety and to have their voices heard in the workplace. It is also incumbent on all of us not just to rely on legislation but to carry out safe working practices and to encourage better health and safety practices so that we will see fewer people killed and injured in our workplaces.We have a workforce in New Zealand of around 2375000 people. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is responsible now for the labour inspectorate which is responsible for ensuring that that workforce gets access to the minimum standards and requirements that it is entitled to under legislation. The International Labour Organization has a guideline for how many labour inspectors we should have. As a developed industrialised nation the International Labour Organization recommends that we have one labour inspector for every 10000 workers. With our current workforce that would amount to 237 labour inspectors. At the time of the period that this review considers we had just 35 labour inspectors. I acknowledge that it has now increased to 41. That is less than one-fifth—less than 20 percent—of the number of labour inspectors that the International Labour Organization recommends that we have.Even the Council of Trade Unions in New Zealand has not recommended that we seek to hit that mark of one to 10000. It recommended 2 years ago that we double the number at the time of 35 to 70 and that we double it again so that by now the number of labour inspectors we would have would be around 140. That would be one labour inspector for every 1600 workers. This Government has not made any effort at all to get anywhere near that number.So what we see every day in our workplaces across New Zealand are minimum standards rules around the minimum wage the expectation that workers have a written employment agreement rules around the fact that you are not supposed to dock a worker’s pay if theft occurs such as where people drive away from petrol stations—those sorts of things happen every day because we do not have a ministry or a labour inspectorate that is sufficiently resourced to enforce the legislation that is in place.So I am happy that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is working on issues to do with zero-hour contracts and that the Minister has indicated that he plans to change the law to somehow deal with the issue of people having their pay docked when theft occurs—although it is illegal now; I do not know why the law needs to be changed. All those law changes are welcome as are greater penalties for employers who breach those minimum standards. But my question to the Government is how it actually plans to enforce those law changes when it cannot even enforce the laws that are in place today because it refuses to resource our labour inspectorate and the ministry responsible for it to a sufficient extent so that workers can get the minimum rights they are entitled to. I was talking to a worker just the other day who has no written employment agreement and gets paid for probably 4 days out of the 5 days a week they work. Yet they are scared to take that to the labour inspectorate because they are fearful that they will lose their job and they cannot have that happen in this job market.