Robertson Grant: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9477. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Thank you—Hon Ruth Dyson: Good choice.GRANT ROBERTSON: —yes and thank you to my colleague Ruth Dyson for that support. Can I also begin my contribution with some acknowledgments. I am not a person who has been on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee or been close to this bill but I do want to acknowledge my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway for the work that he has done from our point of view on the Opposition benches on this issue.We went into this discussion deeply worried that we had a piece of legislation that was going to entrench what all of us know have been some of the most discriminatory and exploitative practices that I have seen after hearing from people coming into my office and I am going to return to a couple of cases in a moment. To now be sitting here tonight with a piece of legislation that will effectively outlaw those contracts I think is a real achievement and I want from our side to acknowledge Iain Lees-Galloway for that.I also want to acknowledge the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for that because I think the Minister has entered into this in the spirit of trying to find a way through getting rid of those most exploitative of practices. So I want to acknowledge the Minister for doing that as well. As he has noted what is big and what is small is often in the eye of the beholder—maybe a topic the member knows about; I do not know—but it is a change that we think is important and valuable on this side of the Chamber.I want to talk about the same clauses and I do not think there is going be any difficulty in a number of members talking about these same clauses because they are the critical clauses within the bill. It is within clause 87 around the topics of availability and cancellation of shifts. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway said that his definition of zero-hour contracts was “a permanent part-time position with no fixed hours”. I think that is a nice clear concise definition. But for me it is the people I have met who have been in these circumstances who define what a zero-hour contract is. I have two cases that I have dealt with and I want to use them to explain what I think is being changed here and why I think it is important particularly in new section 67E(2) set out in clause 87 around availability of hours.A young woman who is a retail worker—or who is actually a student but was a retail worker over the last two summers—found herself in the position of being on call. It was precisely like the point that Mr Woodhouse made just before where the reasonable assumption of her employer was: “I might be busy or I might not be busy but I want you to be ready at a moment’s notice for me.” This person who wanted work over the summer period who needed work over the summer period and was struggling to find it accepted a contract that quite frankly she should not have. Had she had advice from a union right off the bat she probably would not have either but she did—this woman did do that.She found herself in almost exactly the position we have just been discussing in the last two interventions of being told to come in the employer would let her stay for about an hour sometimes if it was not busy and—this is literally true—if it was raining or if there was a forecast of rain she would be told to go home because people would not be coming out to shop. That is as bad and as ridiculous as it got for that worker.My understanding of reading the availability provision here is of the vital importance of the linkage between availability and guaranteed hours. Agreed hours of work and guaranteed hours—that is the absolutely critical connection that has been missing. The ability of an employer to exploit a clause that did not link those two things together is the concern that we have had on our side of the Chamber. I take the point that there will be some employers who have just been a bit slack. They have not really tightened up on how to do this. That is a fair comment. Unfortunately as we always find in employment legislation there is that very small minority of employers who actually do this deliberately. They go out of their way to find the loopholes and exploit them and exploit the employees who work for them. We have to have law that stops that.It is not about judging all employers as being bad—it is not; most employers want to do the best by the workers in their firms—but we have to make law that deals with those who have the worst intent. It is the sad thing. It is about what we have to do in this House from time to time and tonight is one of those examples.So new section 67E(2) in clause 87 is the provision—I do agree with my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway—that makes that connection and makes it understandable I think for people. I do take the point the Minister has just made which is that the employer has got to have a good reason—[Bell rung] Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Grant Robertson.Hon Ruth Dyson: Mr Grant Robertson.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ha ha! That is good. There was so much competition I am so pleased you chose me Mr Chair. The employer must have a good reason for requiring the employee to be available for work and I do respect the fact that those two things go together. So the availability clause is not only about linking the guaranteed hours and the availability provision but also about making sure that the employer has that good reason.That will be tested I suspect in time but I think we have heard already in the debate tonight from the Minister and my colleague that the intent of what is being put on the table here is that it is quite a high threshold. I just want to reiterate that the point the Minister made is a very accurate one about—you know the employer says: “I might not be busy.” I think we have got to make the point that that is actually not going to be acceptable in the future and that is a very very good thing.I want to talk in the second part of my call about the question of cancellation of shifts. This relates to a different area of where someone came to see me which is around the area of home care and those people who have contracts to do home care. The example that was given to me was around what happens to a home-care worker when the person whom they are looking after spends time in hospital and what are they contracted for. This will be an interesting case to follow through over time with this new law because the current status of the home-care worker if the person whom they look after is taken into hospital under emergency circumstances is that that worker is not paid. That is actually a direct result of the contract that is awarded to the provider who then passes it on to the person who delivers that care.The person who came and saw me about that really was struggling to make ends meet because our home-care workers are paid so poorly but she was finding that the inconsistency of income and the cost on her was very very high and what that fundamentally comes down to is a question around the cancellation of shifts. I am not pretending today to say I know exactly what the outcome will be for that worker but what I can see in the new section 67G in clause 87 and the various amendments to it from both the Minister and Iain Lees-Galloway is that there is now a much more clear process and a series of steps that should in most good contracts—and that will be the critical element for the case of the person I was dealing with—be able to eliminate people being exploited by cancellation of shift issues.So let us be clear: we have not gone through this yet so far. The new section 67G now reads that “(2) The employer must not cancel a shift of the employee unless the employee’s employment agreement specifies—(a) a reasonable period of notice that must be given before the cancellation of a shift; and (b) reasonable compensation that must be paid to the employee if the employer cancels a shift of the employee without giving the specified notice. (3) In cancelling a shift of the employee the employer must—(a) give the employee the notice specified in the … agreement …; or (b) if that notice is not given pay the employee the [specified compensation].” That is a critical change. It is a change that puts in place a regime that means there can be none of the last-minute cancellations because the weather changes or whatever else it is. We will find that as this goes through I am sure in the cases that will come we will understand what “reasonable period of notice” is and what “reasonable compensation” is but those words are critical in avoiding those problems.So when we put together the availability provisions and the issues around cancellation of shifts we cut to the heart of the big problems that the Labour Party had when this legislation came forward and that was why we were concerned that it had actually become a charter for zero-hour contracts rather than the other way round. I respect the Minister’s different point of view on that but that is certainly how it felt from our side.These provisions mean that as a Parliament we are making a very important statement tonight about what constitutes decent work in our country and that means a lot to those people who work in the hospitality industry and the service industry in particular. They do important work for us. We hear a lot from the Government at the moment about the importance of tourism and about how important tourism is. These are the people whom tourists see. If they feel that they are valued—if they feel that they have got decent work that they have got guarantees that they will be valued and their contribution will be valued and that they will be paid properly—they will be even better ambassadors for our country. In the same way those who work in the service industry looking after older people and looking after the disabled—these are the people whom we charge with looking after the most vulnerable in our society and we are giving them a chance at decent work tonight.