Lees-Galloway Iain: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:186. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):I wish to speak to clause 56 of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill which adds new sections 95A through to 95H into the original legislation. This is in relation to partial strikes and the penalties that this bill introduces for workers who undertake a partial strike. A partial strike is when workers maybe work-to-rule. They do not do any additional work that they are often expected to do over and above their normal contracted conditions. A partial strike may involve wearing a particular colour or wearing a badge to work that indicates to the customers of that business that the workers there are in some dispute with their employer. Under the current legislation there is no immediate penalty for workers who use that opportunity to have a partial strike. It works as a nice halfway house. It is a nice opportunity for employees to demonstrate that they are in bargaining that they have reached some impasse and to withdraw a portion of their labour or maybe to demonstrate to the wider public that they are in that position with their employer but without going the full way to a full strike which of course has an impact on them as employees because it means lost wages but it also has an impact on the employer in terms of lost productivity.What this legislation does is it penalises workers who use that partial strike option. The concern here is that what this clause in this bill will do is it will actually create the situation where industrial action—full-scale industrial action—is more likely to occur because if workers are going to be penalised for taking partial strike action if they are going to be penalised if they show up at work wearing a particular colour then why not go the whole way and take the penalty for going into a full strike? Actually the way the legislation is written creates a lot of difficulties for workers who plan to take a partial strike. For instance there is no clarity in the legislation around whether the employer has to indicate whether they are planning to use the provisions of clause 56.There is no indication that the employer has to indicate how much they are going to dock an employee’s pay by. It is set at a maximum of 10 percent of the employee’s pay. If the full 10 percent is adopted that would most likely be an enormous overreaction from an employer for a partial strike especially a work-to-rule strike but there is no requirement in the law here for an employer to actually indicate how much they are going to dock the pay. If a group of employees were considering going into a partial strike and then the employer responded by saying “We are going to dock your pay.” then the employees do not actually necessarily know what the consequences of that are going to be. I imagine that the intention of this legislation is that it will try to disincentivise the use of partial strikes by employees but of course they still have that ability to go to a full strike. If they are already at an impasse in bargaining if they are talking about taking industrial action then the obvious next step is to shift to full industrial action.The other concern is of course that the decision made by the employer may be challenged by the employees. That means there is more likelihood in the event of these partial strikes and if clause 56 was enacted by an employer that we end up with more arbitration more necessity to take these issues to the Employment Court. That takes up more of the employer’s time. It takes up more of the union’s time. That is more wasted resources which I should imagine is the exact opposite of what the Government intends by introducing these clauses. Where a worker or a group of workers believes that the specified pay reduction has been incorrectly made they may ask their union to request the information relied on to calculate the specified pay reduction. The union must request that in writing and as soon as reasonably practical after the pay day on which the first deduction was made. The workers cannot request the information directly.