Bradford Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:352] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 As members may have noted when I spoke earlier during the first reading debate on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill one of the main concerns the Green Party has about this legislation is the way in which there is no obvious or visible protection for workers who are laid off under the 90-day provision and who then will at least in some cases be subject to the 13-week stand-down at Work and Income. Both the Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson and Dr Nick Smith have indicated that in fact this is not the intention of the Government but I have seen nothing in the explanatory note of the bill or in the content of the bill itself to provide any reassurance on this matter. The Green Party would like to see the bill amended to ensure that someone who is dismissed during the 90-day period cannot be subjected to the 13-week stand-down mandated by section 60H of the Social Security Act. I will be lodging a Supplementary Order Paper to this effect during the Committee stage.  
The Minister has since in her second reading speech and in a media release indicated that it is clearly not her intention to force people into the stand-down period and I am very relieved by that. However there is still nothing in the documentation so far to give me any assurance that this will not happen. For example the press release frequently asks questions and talks about people not facing a stand-down unless they have been dismissed for misconduct. The problem with this is that under the new legislation there is no legal grievance process so there is no way of establishing who is right or wrong when it comes to a disputed situation.  
I will give an example of how this might work. Let us say that David is employed as a barista in the café down the road and after 2 months the boss sacks him because he reckons he might have given free coffees to a mate. That is misconduct. He tells David this and sends him on his way. David goes to Work and Income to apply for the unemployment benefit. Work and Income asks him and the employer why he has been dismissed. The employer tells Work and Income that it is because of misconduct and that is that—David has no income for 13 weeks. However David disputes the situation and says he never gave away free coffees and that he was not fired for misconduct but for no reason at all.  
At this point how will Work and Income judge the facts of the case? David cannot go to the Employment Relations Authority or to the Employment Court to get a ruling from them and I doubt that the Work and Income case manager would want to spend hours if not days determining the rights and wrongs of the situation. In fact it is far more likely from my experience in dealing with the department that in most cases the case manager will simply take the employer’s word for what happened in the situation—that it was misconduct—and David will end up destitute and ultimately probably a drain on our criminal justice and/or health budgets. 
A second issue in this area is that as far as I can see there is no requirement under the new law for an employer to actually give the employee any reason at all for his or her dismissal. Thus when individuals turns up at Work and Income and are asked why they were sacked again it will be up to the good will or otherwise of the case officer on duty to determine whether they should be subject to the 13-week stand-down period.  
In her speech just a short while ago while discussing this very issue the Minister attempted to clarify the Government’s approach when she said that they did not intend that beneficiaries going into work or those who would be later eligible for the new redundancy assistance which the Government is evidently going to bring in before Christmas will be subject to the 13-week stand-down unless they are dismissed for misconduct. Well OK sort of; and I welcome that further clarification from Ms Wilkinson.  
But what about all those employees who are in their first 90 days on the job but who are not on a benefit when they go into a job? Most new employees are in fact not on the benefit when they start in a new job. They will have come from another job or they will have come from a school a training institution or a university. Many of them are not on the benefit at all. And what about all those other workers who will not have been on the benefit but who also will not be eligible for the Government’s planned redundancy assistance?  
Although of course I have no idea about the details of what the Government is planning we were told by National during the election that there were going to be quite a few restrictions around who would be eligible for the new redundancy package including one that said that only those who are laid off after 5 years in the workforce would be eligible. If that is still to be the case of course a whole group of employees who have been in the workforce for less than 5 years would again miss out on this protection.  
I think this whole imbroglio of uncertainty loopholes and glaring gaps in application or potential application just on this one comparatively little issue of the stand-down period is a very clear demonstration of why a bill of this complexity and significance should go through the whole select committee process. If we had had a chance to receive advice from officials to hear submissions from organisations and groups that have expertise in this very complex area—if we MPs had had a chance to debate and consider these problems—then this bill would be a whole lot better and we would have a chance to work together across the House to try to deal with something that is going to be really serious for those affected once this bill goes through.  
The administration of our welfare system is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is a morass of accretions of regulation and law that overall is not geared ultimately to err in the best interests of beneficiaries when there is any doubt or confusion about a particular situation. For this reason and given the Government’s concern which I welcome that people should not be unfairly subjected to the 13-week stand-down I call on the National Party and other parties in the House to support my proposed amendments. If the amendments are not properly drafted or quite right—and very likely that will be the case because of the very short time we have had to draft them—I welcome the Government’s support in redrafting and putting up better amendments.  
The National members also keep talking about how this 90-day trial period is going to be by agreement. They seem to neither care nor understand the total imbalance of power that characterises the relationship between an employer and someone applying for a job. As I discussed earlier in the House today this is one of the most vulnerable moments in a worker’s relationship with his or her employer. Most people who are keen if not absolutely desperate for a job will agree to anything in order to get it even if they are deeply unhappy about the required conditions of employment that they are being asked to sign up to. This imbalance is only made worse when other factors enter the picture such as migrants desperate for a New Zealand job and without good English language skills perhaps young workers who are often very intimidated in these kinds of situations or people who have disability or illness issues or criminal issues who are very much on the back-foot when they enter that situation and are trying to get work.  
This bill is not about providing some kind of lovely social service to poor unfortunate migrants ex-prisoners and youth as some Government speakers have sought to portray it in the House today. Giving people a chance at a job and then taking it away again through dismissal at will without legal protections actually deepens the exploitation of the many in our society who struggle at the low and most powerless end of the job market. I am sure that once this bill goes through we will start hearing some really sad stories from people who thought they were being given a great opportunity to enter the workforce. For example what about ex-prisoners or migrants finally getting a job—very happy self-esteem suddenly boosted all their dreams coming true—then 1 2 or 3 months into the job they are dismissed without reason or without apparent reason and find themselves back on the scrapheap? At this point they are unemployed again. There are a whole bunch of new issues to deal with.  
It is bad enough being out of work but being sacked without reason is even worse. Dismissal often leads to feelings of despair and a massive loss of self-esteem. When this happens to people who are already struggling with other issues in their lives the outcomes can be devastating. I spent 16 years of my life working with people in these kinds of situations. I predict that once this law takes effect and some of our less scrupulous employers start using it mercilessly there will be a number of casualties. People will revert to crime or become seriously drug and alcohol addicted and suffer other health problems. They will face family breakdown and in some cases people actually do take their own lives in these kinds of situations. It is a real pity that this Government does not seem to understand the human impacts of what they are doing here. However it is even worse if they do comprehend those impacts and are going ahead with it anyway. Ultimately it is people’s very lives that are being played with here.