Lees-Galloway Iain: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Health and Safety Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6105. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Part 5 of the Health and Safety Reform Bill is rather innocuously titled “Miscellaneous provisions”. It certainly does contain miscellaneous provisions of quite a varied nature but many of them are quite substantive and I expect there will be quite a lot of debate about a number of the clauses contained in this part.I would like to direct my first contribution towards clause 224 “Regulations relating to worker engagement participation and representation”. This deals with a number of aspects of worker engagement and the first of those is the requirements for determining a work group. Work groups are the way the employer can structure their workplace for the purposes of worker representation and we have certainly had some discussion about the fact that health and safety representatives actually represent only the workers in their work group. It may be that an entire workplace or an entire worksite is one whole work group or it may be that the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) decides to separate out different parts of the workplace or their business into different work groups. This is an important part of this piece of legislation. It is possible—and this is referred to under clause 224(a)(i)—to have work groups for workers carrying out work for two or more PCBUs.This is a really important concept—the idea that in one workplace there may be multiple PCBUs—and it does actually make sense sometimes to structure the workplace in a fashion so that you have workers from different PCBUs in the one work group potentially with one or more health and safety representatives representing those members of that work group. It may be that despite the fact that they come from a number of different PCBUs—a number of different employers—they might be doing similar work and their interests are shared and it makes sense for those workers to be represented by a health and safety representative representing all of their shared interests. What clause 224 does is it allows the Governor-General by Order in Council to make on the recommendation of the Minister regulations relating to the requirements for determining a work group and the agreements or variations of agreements relating to the determination of work groups.We have expressed some concern on this side of the Chamber about the nature of the agreements around work groups. We have expressed some concern about the fact that work groups could be structured in a fashion so as to limit the influence of health and safety representatives and to limit the number of people working on a worksite or for an employer who has access to a health and safety representative. So in fact the regulations that can be made under clause 224 are going to be very important I think for ensuring that there is appropriate agreement between the workers and the PCBU around the structure of those work groups. We want to have a bit more clarity around the nature of that agreement included in the law but obviously this is part of the regulation-making power as well.It will be important to get that right. We do not want to see work groups being used as a tool to limit the authority and the influence of health and safety representatives. We totally understand why it is appropriate to have work groups. It certainly will be appropriate for businesses that have work of quite a different nature to have work groups. You might have some people working in an office and then some people working in a distribution centre and their needs as far as health and safety are concerned are going to be quite different and it makes sense to separate them into separate work groups and for them to be represented appropriately.Again perhaps for some of the chain stores that have a store in every city it makes sense for the health and safety representative to represent the workers in a particular store not necessarily the workers across the whole business—so that makes sense. But the concern we had was that in the way the law was written it was possible for the small number of fringe employers—and I think some of us in this Chamber know the types of people we are talking about and the types of industries we are talking about—to use that ability to structure those work groups in a fashion that deliberately undermines health and safety representatives because they just do not believe in health and safety representatives. So we think the regulation-making power in clause 224 is actually going to be quite important and we would like to see the Government ensure through regulation that there is genuine agreement between the workers and the PCBU about that work group structure.Clause 224(b) relates to “prescribing matters relating to health and safety representatives including—(i) the eligibility criteria for election as a health and safety representative: (ii) the procedure for electing or removing a health and safety representative:”. Again this is going to be very important. If the health and safety representative system is going to work appropriately yes we do need people who are appropriately qualified to discharge their duties. We also need to make sure again that this is not used to unnecessarily limit who is able to put their name forward to be a health and safety representative. Ultimately of course we are talking about elected health and safety representatives who have to have the confidence of the people who are working around them and the people working around them will know whether or not that person is likely to be able to discharge their duties well.So the first eligibility criterion and I think the most important eligibility criterion is the confidence of their workmates and that is of course what the democratic process is all about—that the person who should be elected to that position should be someone who does have the confidence of their workmates. But obviously it is important that we ensure that people have the right skills and the right ability to carry out the functions of that task. As for the procedure for electing or removing a health and safety representative in terms of electing a health and safety representative my view is that it should be over to the workers as to what process they want to use and what process they want to conduct to elect a health and safety representative.When it comes to removing a health and safety representative well we have some concerns about the fact that a PCBU can now actually ask WorkSafe to remove a health and safety representative and if WorkSafe says “No that health and safety representative is doing their job just fine.” then the PCBU can now refer that to the District Court. That I believe will definitely be used by some employers as a threat against people who put their names forward as health and safety representatives—that they will end up tied up in lengthy litigation and they will end up in the District Court simply because those employers are ideologically opposed to health and safety representatives and they want to make life as difficult as possible.The next regulation-making power in clause 224(b)(iii) is “the eligibility criteria to vote for a health and safety representative:”. Again we have to be very very careful to make sure that this is not too restrictive. The people who should be able to vote for a health and safety representative are anybody in the work group that that health and safety representative will be representing. Representatives hold that position because they are given that mandate by the people who work around them. They should have the confidence of the people who work around them and that should be everybody who works around them.I do not want to see this regulation-making power being used to exclude some people from being able to elect a health and safety representative. I would like to have some assurances from the Minister in the chair the Hon Nicky Wagner that none of those issues that we have raised around eligibility criteria for being a health and safety representative the eligibility criteria for electing a health and safety representative and the way in which regulations are going to be made about the structure of work groups are going to be used to undermine the health and safety representative system and that none of those are going to be used to limit the influence and the authority of health and safety representatives. Ultimately we as Parliament are handing that over to the Government and we are trusting that it will get it right. We need some assurances from the Minister in the chair during the Committee stage.