Moroney Sue: Employment Relations (Breaks Infant Feeding and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Employment Relations (Breaks Infant Feeding and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18201. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 People say that timing is everything. I think it is very appropriate that at roughly 8 minutes past 10 when a lot of workplaces throughout this land are in the middle of having morning tea we are here in the third reading of the very bill that brings that provision into law and makes it compulsory for workplaces to recognise that workers have the legal right to—not just the right to negotiate—decent breaks at work. As a member of Parliament who was involved in drafting the parts of this bill that refer to the right for workers to have those decent breaks at work I feel very pleased to be able to stand up here as most of the nation is having its morning tea break to vote in favour of the third reading of this bill.  
I shall talk a little bit about the history of why as a new member of Parliament I chose to make this an issue that I wanted to put before this Parliament. It was because of my experiences as I campaigned in the last election when this issue was brought to my attention. I remember one particular instance very clearly. A group of young men who were working in a service station in the Waikato came to see me because their staffing arrangements had changed. Their service station had cut the number of staff it was employing. We all know the story that when we pull into service stations these days we do not have someone come out to fill up our car for us; we prepay and we do it all ourselves. The cutting back of staffing numbers at that service station meant that those workers were not getting a lunch break. They were not getting a lunch break at all. They were working 12-hour shifts and because there was a requirement to have one person available for forecourt duties at any given time the service station did not have the staff to allow any of them to go off to have a lunch break. Those young men said to me: “This can’t be right. Surely there’s a law against this.” When I looked into it sadly I found that there was no law that safeguarded them. That was the very beginning of my thinking very seriously about this issue.  
As I kept thinking about this issue I found that those young men are not alone in their predicament; there are a range of workers for whom tea breaks rest periods and meal breaks are not the norm in their working day. They are invariably young people they are invariably workers in small workplaces and they are invariably the most vulnerable in our workforce who have been suffering this fate. But as a result of this bill being passed they will suffer no longer.  
Another situation that came before our select committee demonstrates the need—yes the need—for this bill. I know that National Party members have said they do not think the bill is necessary but we had many stories coming before our select committee that demonstrated that it was. One example was from a young worker in Hamilton East where I come from. He had been working for Subway and told us about being sacked for daring to take a meal break of half an hour during a 12-hour shift. He was sacked for that. I observed that National Party members at the time— 
Kate Wilkinson 
: He deserted the workplace! 
SUE MORONEY 
: —and I notice Kate Wilkinson is saying something quite different now—said to this young man that that was illegal and that he could take a personal grievance. Yes under the current laws he can take a personal grievance and he is in fact taking a personal grievance. But the National Party is proposing a 90-day probationary period bill that it wants to bring in if it is the Government. That policy would completely take away this young man’s right to take a personal grievance over that issue because this young man was in the first 90 days of his employment with Subway. There were some very nice sentiments from National Party members opposite but absolutely no ability to understand that their policies would have taken away that young man’s right to contest that unfair dismissal over the right just to have a reasonable lunch break while at work.  
The next situation I want to talk about is with regard to the KiwiSaver aspects brought into this bill. I fully endorse the Government acting at the earliest opportunity to stop that unfairness in the workplace because there is an unfairness in the workplace. What has been happening is that some employers—and I would call them mean-spirited employers—have taken away and reduced workers’ take-home pay because they dare to be some of those workers who look to the future and save for their retirement. They have been discriminating against workers because they dare to save for their retirement—and that is wrong. This Government was not going to stand by for another minute longer and let that unfairness continue to happen in our workplaces in this country.  
I feel confident that fair-minded New Zealanders resile from this practice because I have had pay clerks come to see me because they do not want to implement their employers’ mean-spirited views on this. The people coming to see me are not those who are disadvantaged by it but the pay clerks who are saying they are being told to do that and they do not want to do it because it is unfair and is just not right. If that is the view of a pay clerk who is not the person who is going to be disadvantaged at all then I feel confident that fair-minded New Zealanders will see the basic unfairness.  
Members should have seen the look on the pay clerk’s face when I told her that the situation was even worse than she expected. When I informed her that her employer was getting a $20 a week tax credit for every single employee involved in the KiwiSaver scheme and that that was more than the 1 percent the employer was knocking off employees’ wages then she could see straight away that the employer was double-dipping—taking taxpayer money for having employees involved in KiwiSaver and then taking money off those workers to pay for the employer contribution that was already being paid for by the taxpayer. That was completely unfair. 
The National Party cannot see that at all. It voted against the Supplementary Order Paper that said that that was wrong and would not be tolerated in this country—because the National Party does not care. The National Party thinks that that sort of unfairness at work and that sort of double-dipping into taxpayers’ and workers’ pockets at the same time is fine. It has no problem with it—“Let’s not fix it up; let’s just keep it going.” Well that will not happen under a Labour-led Government. We will not stand by for another minute longer and let that unfairness continue in the workplace.  
I will not go into great details about my own personal experiences of infant feeding. Suffice it to say that expressing milk in a toilet cubicle is not a very dignified thing to be doing in one’s workplace but that is certainly the experience I have had in the past as a young mother in the workplace. Again I congratulate my colleague the Hon Steve Chadwick who had the foresight to ensure that this bill also included the right to have some dignity in infant feeding in the workplace and I think that is a very appropriate thing to do.  
In closing I also thank the Minister and the officials for their work on this bill. It is a very important bill it will make a difference to a significant number of New Zealanders and it will ensure fairness in our workplaces. Thank you.