Roche Denise: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionRoche Denise: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9401. Text is subject to correction.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take the first call for the Greens on this the second reading of the Employment Standards Legislation Bill. The bill as it has been reported back to the House is quite a different beast to the one that was introduced to the House in its first reading and by the time we get to the third reading it may well be a different beast again. As I understand from previous speakers from Labour and from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety there are discussions under way to strengthen the bill particularly in the area of zero-hour contracts.At this stage the Greens will be voting against the bill in the second reading because the devil is always in the detail. Although we have had some communication with the Minister’s office our caucus maintains a strong and unwavering opposition to legislation that enables the exploitation of ordinary working New Zealanders and this bill as it is reported back risks enshrining zero-hour contracts in the law. If during the Committee stage during the passage of this bill the Minister does introduce amendments through Supplementary Order Papers that outlaw zero-hour contracts then we will of course support the bill through to the third reading but as I said we have to see the detail first. Although I note that some Supplementary Order Papers are being developed we have not seen one from the Minister.I am going to just talk a bit about the submission process because this was a very complicated omnibus bill. There were over 12000—12200—written submissions the vast majority of them from ordinary working New Zealanders: union members on the whole who were concerned about the potential to enable zero-hour contracts. I want to congratulate those people particularly those who are union members on participating in the democratic process and adding their voice to this issue. I have no doubt that it is the deep unpopularity of the provisions in the bill that is triggering the change of heart in the Minister which just goes to show that people power does work.We also heard from employers and from peak bodies of employers. We heard a significant amount of comment about rostering and part-time workers. I have to say that there was no real appetite to liberalise employment law to enable zero-hour contracts as many employers can already manage the peaks and flows of their businesses with part-time fixed-term casual and permanent staff. We acknowledge that the bill as reported back has tried to address some of the issues around zero-hour contracts like availability clauses and cancellation of shifts.These were issues that I had developed solutions to in a member’s bill that I launched over a year ago. But I pulled it when the Minister announced that he was going to act on the issue because I thought that we would get to a place where we would end these unfair employment practices. But this bill as reported back requires reasonable notice of shift cancellation and reasonable compensation if employees have to be available which is much better than what the first iteration of the bill was. Having said that it also includes tests about what reasonable is which are really guidelines to the Employment Court to take into consideration when deciding what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.I have a difficulty with making laws that need to be tested after a problem with the exploitation of a worker when we should be making laws that prevent exploitation in the first place. These days it is basically left to a handful of brave workers and their unions to take legal cases to test our industrial relations law. In the casual workforce accessing legal remedies is basically left up to labour inspectors. I have heard anecdotally that unless there are lots of workers who are impacted there is not a lot of likelihood of labour inspectors being able to get out there and actually do the enforcement. You would need a huge army of them to have a look at every single one. Really we should be looking at the ability of workers to understand and to be able to speak up for their rights. As an individual though—as an individual waiting at the end of the phone for a call for some hours of work—it is not likely you are going to stand up for them. By the time a casual employee who is waiting at the end of the phone for a call on a zero-hour contract takes any type of legal action to test the parameters of the availability or cancellation of shifts the employment relationship is basically over.We have heard ways in which we could end zero-hour contracts from some submitters. Some of them are just as simple as ensuring that there is a guarantee of minimum hours to be worked in every employment agreement. That would be a very good start. Incentivising permanent and regular employment is another way and we can do that by adding a casual loading to those who are employed on an on-call basis. That is the basis of Supplementary Order Paper 150 that Clayton Mitchell from New Zealand First is putting forward. His Supplementary Order Paper essentially will load about 19 percent on to the hourly rate which is similar to what happens in Australia. That is to cover the fact that casual employees do not get access to some of the other rights that workers have like holidays bereavement leave and sick leave.Although we do actually support some aspects of the bill that deal with the enforcement of labour standards—we think that the increase in fines is great—we are still concerned with the lack of resourcing for the agency charged with doing that enforcement. The labour inspectorate does a great job but it is under-resourced and one just has to look at the lack of compliance with some of the basic employment standards like time and wage records in the dairy farming sector which has been widely reported in the media to get an idea of the scope of the problems that they have to deal with.We oppose the provisions in the bill as reported back around time and wage records for salaried workers. Yes we need good strong laws around keeping time and wage records but we are concerned that—with the way it is reported back—salaried workers will lose protection. We think there is an ill-thought-out recommended change that came through from the select committee and we did not see that there was any reason to have this dangerous provision in there. I will be putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to address that issue when it comes to the Committee of the whole House.There are certain parts of this omnibus bill that we support wholeheartedly. Extending paid parental leave is one of them and extending paid parental leave to the carers after the birth of a pre-term baby is also supported. I want to recognise the work that Sue Moroney has done in this area. The Greens believe that we should be making laws that support the most vulnerable in our society. In this case those who are vulnerable are those with no guarantee of basic working hours who are desperate for paid work and who are on the losing side of the power imbalance inherent in the employment relationship and that power imbalance is outlined in the Employment Relations Act preamble. On these grounds we will not be supporting the bill at this reading but we will consider it later down the track.