Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. It's with great pleasure that I take a call on this Employment Relations Amendment Bill. A previous speaker mentioned the word humiliation". What I think is utter humiliation is the fact that the National Party so clearly shows in their speeches and in fact with all of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) on the Table that they have no idea about modern union movements and modern workplaces working together. It's an absolute embarrassment—Dan Bidois: Tell us about it.MARJA LUBECK: —and I'll tell you about it exactly. I remember that Dan Bidois made a comment in his speech and it was repeated by the member for the Coromandel about unions being the winners and there being nothing in this for working people. What a bizarre statement. It's as if they have no idea that unions are the voices of the working people. They are all one; you can't disconnect them.Most of these changes in this bill are simply rolling back the undermining changes made by consecutive National Governments over the last 10 years and what these changes have done is actually hurt New Zealand people. They've hurt their families. They've created the working poor. The National Government turned their backs on workers. They locked New Zealand and their workers and their families into a low-wage economy. Now lifting wages is a very important part of growing productivity and unions are a crucial part to this growth. In New Zealand as well as internationally the decline of unions and collective bargaining has been strongly linked to the growth in inequality and that is what we have seen over the years.Now I'd like to have a look at some of these SOPs. They are actually really quite pathetic. There's one here—I don't know; it must have a number. I've never talked about one. It says "Hon Scott Simpson in Committee to move" the issue about paid time for delegates—oh it's SOP 111. Now that's a very clear example of the utter ignorance about what the role of a delegate is and what the role of a delegate is in a modern union working with businesses. Have a look for example at the delegates at Air New Zealand. They play and are playing at the moment an absolutely crucial role in coming to a good concluded bargaining that ensures that both sides of the party win out of this bargaining round.What delegates do every day is they make the work better for everyone. We hear it from union members—Hon Members: Ha ha!MARJA LUBECK: —and we hear it from union organisers. Whilst the Opposition can laugh it is very clear that they absolutely do not have that conversation with unions. They don't talk to businesses that encourage union membership they don't talk to delegates and they don't talk to organisers because what they would hear is that the delegates absolutely play a crucial role in ensuring that issues are addressed before they become bigger than Texas. And how would some of these employers deal with all of the issues in the workplace if they had to individually deal with not only the issues but also the negotiations?So the SOP states "rather than the employer being responsible for compensation for activities that do not directly affect their business." Again that shows very clearly that the delegates dealing with issues completely affect that business. The other one is about union access. Now we've heard a lot of scaremongering over the last few months about this "unfettered access"—never mind that it has been explained very clearly and eloquently by organisers that you can compare the role of a union official to a contractor. They don't just wander in and do their business; no they are usually very respectful because they've built up that relationship with the businesses where they come in they sign in and if there is a health and safety induction they have gone through it. They report they sign in they do anything that a contractor does as well and that has a very important place in a workplace because working people should have the right to access the support and the advice from their representatives without it being restricted.So it is very ancient—I'm trying to find a word that is appropriate. But it's an absolutely—Hon Clare Curran: Out of date.MARJA LUBECK: —out-of-date undermining change that the National Government made—Hon Clare Curran: Backward-thinking.MARJA LUBECK: —backward-thinking; there's a few good words there—between the period of 2011 and 2015 because that's all it is. These changes only go back such a short amount of time.So like I said there are lots of examples that we have from union officials being unreasonably blocked from access because of bad employers. Let's face it: there's only a few of them but still these bad employers would try to block people having access to fair representation. So this bill is changing that and I see I've run out of time. I'll take another call. Thank you."