Bradford Sue: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10705] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. It is with really mixed feelings that I speak to the second reading of my youth wages bill this afternoon. I have mixed feelings because on the one hand it is a significant step to get any member’s bill through its first reading and the select committee process and I welcome the statement of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee in the commentary on the bill that the majority of members believe the premise on which my bill is based is right. On the other hand however it is clear to all that the bill that has emerged from the select committee bears very little resemblance to the bill that went into it. 
The fundamental point of my original bill was to remove discrimination based on age from our minimum wage law with particular reference to 16 and 17-year-old workers. However the bill as amended which we are debating here this afternoon does not do that. It continues age discrimination for young workers albeit in lesser terms. Even the short title of the bill has been amended by the committee to reflect the fact that this is no longer a bill to remove discrimination; it is instead a bill that will allow a new form of discrimination. If we read clause 4 of the amended bill carefully we see that it continues to allow for minimum wages to be set on the basis of age and that it actually adds a further category of age discrimination in the form of the new entrants rate. This is certainly no longer an abolition of age discrimination bill. 
What is this new entrants rate likely to be and how long will it apply for? The amended bill states that the new entrants rate—something horribly redolent of people aged 5 starting school—must not be less than 80 percent of any rate that applies to workers who are 18 years of age. But the bill itself is silent as to the length of operation of this new entrants rate. Instead the select committee has chosen to make a recommendation to the Minister of Labour that she or he consider introducing a new entrants minimum rate that applies for the first 200 hours of employment on or after an employee’s birthday and that that rate would not apply to 16 and 17-year-olds employed in supervisory positions. In its current form we are therefore being asked to hand a blank cheque to the current Minister of Labour and—and this is more worrying—to a future Minister of Labour to set the length of the new entrants rate by regulation as she or he sees fit or not to have a new entrants rate at all and simply continue with complete age-based discrimination as currently occurs. 
The main argument that supporters of the new 200 hours new entrants rate are putting up is that young people aged 16 and 17 who are entering the workforce for the first time do not have the basic work skills or experience needed for the job and therefore need more supervision and training than workers aged 18 and over. This argument was backed by a handful of employer submitters including one from just south of Auckland who rather famously offered the committee the opinion that it took her some time to train her young workers to smile correctly for the customers. When I looked around the committee room that day and saw the many broad natural smiles on the faces of the young Pasifika Maori and Pakeha workers from Manukau and the rather dour looks gracing the countenances of a number of somewhat more mature submitters I could not help feeling that the training in how to smile correctly might be of benefit if it happened quite the other way around. 
This argument that young workers need orientation and training when they start a new job does of course have a basis in reality but that reality is the same for anyone of any age who starts a new job. All of us take time to learn the job itself and to learn the kawa of the particular workplace and the annoying little requirements essential to survival there. In fact when we are young our brains are sharper and our ability to learn and adapt is somewhat greater than when we are older. Even if one supports the idea of the new entrants rate surely 1 month would be long enough rather than 3 6 or even 9 months. 
The National Distribution Union one of the main unions representing young workers says: “Our numbers show that 50 percent of 16 and 17 year olds would take 5 months or more to qualify for the full minimum wage. Some of them will have turned 18 long before that. Others will have had many more than 200 hours work experience before turning 16 but that isn’t going to be counted.” Indeed many young people these days have already been in the workforce for a considerable period before they even turn 16. As most members of Parliament will know from their own experience with family members and friends a lot of young people have been working part-time in the local shop petrol station takeaway or elsewhere for some months if not years by the time they reach their 16th birthday. To then suppose that these experienced workers should be plunged back on to a lower wage if they start a new job after their 16th birthday shows contempt for the reality of the time and effort they have already put in to adapting as successful participants in the New Zealand workforce. It is simply a continuation of age-based discrimination by other means and is quite the opposite of what the original bill intended. 
I was very impressed with the level and quality of most of the submissions we heard at the select committee even the ones I did not agree with. A majority of submissions stated that all workers should receive equal pay for equal work regardless of age. I want especially to thank the Human Rights Commission the Human Rights Foundation and the Children’s Commissioner who along with a number of others called for the repeal of section 30 of the Human Rights Act which entitles employers to pay lower wages to those aged under 20 years. Unfortunately the committee did not give adequate consideration I feel to these points nor to our responsibilities under international human rights or International Labour Organization conventions. 
Instead it was swayed more by the anecdotal accounts of how the abolition of youth rates could act as a barrier to young people obtaining work or the negative effect it would have on young people’s education by encouraging them to leave school too early for so-called high-paying adult minimum wage jobs. These issues were mentioned in the National Party minority view and I understand were also behind the Labour and New Zealand First members of the committee sponsoring the amendments that have come through. These two concerns completely miss the point and are simply used as excuses to continue the discrimination against young people. 
Firstly most young workers aged 16 and 17 are actually in school or in other training. An increase in the minimum youth wage to the adult rate will have a positive effect for them not negative. It will mean they will be able to work less and study more for the same income. Will young people really be tempted away from school or other training into full-time work by the prospect of earning the princely sum of $450 a week—the adult minimum wage? I do not think so. If it is good enough for us to have stopped using these so-called positive wage discrimination arguments for Maori and women why should we be using them for young people? 
Then there is the issue of compliance costs. To implement a new entrants form of wage-based discrimination in the way that the amended bill proposes introduces yet more compliance costs for employers. A number of employers have already got rid of or would like to get rid of youth rates altogether. What stops others from doing this is the ability of their competitors down the road to continue to pay youth rates and therefore have a lower cost structure. 
This brings me finally to the elephant that sat in the select committee room right throughout the hearings—that of human rights. I am referring to legal advice to the Attorney-General on the consistency of my bill with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. That advice stated: “it is our view that the principal Act does not authorise the Governor-General to make orders that discriminate in a way that is prohibited by the Bill of Rights Act … Section 6 of the Bill of Rights Act requires that wherever an enactment can be given a meaning that is consistent with the rights and freedoms contained in the Bill of Rights Act that meaning must be preferred to any other meaning. … Based on this analysis the Bill appears superfluous.” What that opinion means is that the regulations allowing for youth rates that have been promulgated for many years under the Minimum Wage Act could be ultra vires when the principal Act is interpreted in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. 
My gravest concern with the bill as reported back is that it adds new forms of discrimination rather than removing them. We should not be passing law that is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The bill still needs a lot of work and there is still time to do this work before and when it reaches the Committee stage. I urge all parties to vote for the second reading to enable us during the Committee stage to undertake the work to bring this bill back more closely to its original kaupapa.