Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee Recommittal Third Reading 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am very disappointed with the Government’s attitude to ordinary working New Zealanders who will be disadvantaged by the passage of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. I actually found it a bit galling to listen to the Minister of Labour the Hon Kate Wilkinson give us a lesson on good-faith requirements when she knows perfectly well that with this legislation she is exempting every employer from the obligation in the first 90 days of employment to treat an employee with good faith. An employer does not have to be open and honest with the employee at all. Employers do not have to treat employees with respect and dignity because they can simply let them go if they do not like them. “Don’t come Monday.” is all employers have to say; they do not have to say a single other word. They do not even have to explain why the decision has been taken. 
Annette King used a very good example in her comments in the Committee stage. She said it would be very easy for an employer to shoulder-tap an employee and say: “Look I don’t think you are very happy in your work. On that basis I think we’ll just let you go.” That is what will happen. The problem is—and the National Government has not acknowledged this at all—that the provision covers a multitude of sins because the employer does not have to say what the real reason is. Let us look at people for example who do not mention that they are gay. An example was raised by I think the senior Opposition whip of a person who does not mention he or she is gay when hired and suddenly in a conversation the employer finds out that the employee’s partner is a male or in the case of a female that her partner is female—that is that the employee has a same-sex partner and has had a civil union. All of a sudden this employer says: “I don’t think you are very happy in your work.” The employer does not actually have to say what reason really lies behind the termination of employment and can just say: “I don’t think you are very happy in your work. Don’t come Monday.” 
What if the employer is away on holiday and the manager has to bring in somebody on a trial period? When the employer comes back and finds out that the manager has hired a Maori a Pacific Islander an Asian or a person with a disability—somebody the employer has a deep sense of disquiet about and would not have hired—what does the employer do? The employer says: “Actually I don’t think you are very happy in your job. Look don’t come Monday.” That is the real concern that we have about this legislation: it will hide a multitude of sins. Clayton Cosgrove used the example of a worker asking for health and safety training or for a guard for the saw at the sawmill. The employer will not say to the worker: “I’m sacking you for insisting on your rights to a healthy and safe workplace.”; the employer will say: “I don’t think you are very happy in your work. Don’t come Monday.” That is all the employer has to say under this bill. 
The Minister of Labour will look at whether this bill should be extended to apply to all work places; she has announced this morning that she will be giving consideration to that recommendation. I wonder whether the Minister has realised that the compliance costs for business will go up as a result of this legislation as they did in the UK when legislation of a “don’t come Monday” style was introduced. The UK legislation does exactly what the Minister’s legislation does: it allows for exceptions under the Human Rights Act such as sexual harassment discrimination based on racial grounds sexism and all of those things. In actual fact when there is a termination and the employer does not say what the reason for the termination is people with genuine grievances try to assert that it was for one of those reasons. Therefore a lot more cases are taken as a result of the change in the law in the UK not fewer. I think the Minister will find that this will add to compliance costs because employers will have to prove that they did not terminate employment for one of those reasons. 
Hon Member 
: They’ve gone very quiet! 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yes they have gone very quiet. They had not thought that this legislation might have the total reverse effect to that intended and that employers will still get out the cheque book to pay off somebody because they do not want to experience the cost of going through the process even though this bill was apparently designed to protect against that. The Minister has not really done her homework. The Government wants to look as if it has done some action on its action plan for 100 days even though it forgot to mention this bill in its 100-day action plan. The Government has just thrown it into the mix and is pushing it through all of its stages. 
It is quite amusing that the Government has accepted the ACT Party’s amendment. We know why the ACT Party moved that amendment. It is because the new Minister for Regulatory Reform the Hon Rodney Hide is from the ACT Party and he has now allowed two bills to go through without an adequate regulatory impact statement. The only way the ACT Party could do anything to assist the new Minister—its leader—was to bring forward the implementation of the bill to 1 March to make it look as if the bill could not be implemented in time if it was sent to a select committee and to make the bill look a little more urgent. But I have never seen a Government vote for a tabled amendment from another party in that way—without taking a single call on it. I have never in the 18 years that I have been in Parliament seen a Government vote for an amendment from another party without taking a single call on it. It is absolutely extraordinary. 
I also want to look at the question of who is really disadvantaged by this bill. I make the point—as I did in the Committee stage—that as a former trade union organiser I know there are many many excellent employers. I dealt with many many employers who treated their staff with the utmost respect and dignity and who supported their staff in an excellent way. But when the union got called in it was usually because something had gone terribly wrong. I thought I would mention one of the cases because it struck me as one where it was difficult to determine whether there had been sexual harassment. This particular employer—I could name the particular place but I will not—was having a few drinks at the end of the day; of course our union covered the hospitality industry. One of his staff members joined in. He had a few of his mates there and they were having a few drinks quite late at night. The employee made some comment and the employer said to her: “You need to lose weight.” She said: “I beg your pardon?”. He said: “You should go home take off all of your clothes look at yourself in the mirror and think about what other people look at.” She decided that she was not happy in her work and that her employer was not very happy with her. 
That is what happens in the hospitality industry when people’s weight fluctuates they get pregnant something happens in terms of their appearance or they have an accident. I had a friend who had a major accident and had cuts on her legs. She could not wear pantyhose and her employer at the retail store where she worked said that she could not work without pantyhose on. I know these are individual small examples but these are the people who will be affected by this bill. That is what will happen to those who have no ability to defend themselves against the requirement to have this clause included in their agreement. It will be a “take it or leave it” option. 
I want to end on the question of young people. People going into their first job are entitled to know what is expected of them. Young people can be very vulnerable in their first job. As I said I know I have used an extreme example but it does happen. What happens to those young people in their first job can either set them back or set them on the pathway to a very successful career making them a constructive part of the workforce. It is utter sophistry on the part of National to say that this legislation will help young people. National says that small-business people do not have to know how to manage their business because they do not have human resource departments. But what about young people? Are they not entitled to a first job that gives them the ability to develop themselves into good employees? Is it not fair that they have support as they enter the workforce? That should not depend on the number of employees they work with. We all know what freedom of choice means when there is no equality of bargaining position and we know that in this case freedom of choice will mean “take it or leave it”.