Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:15448] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I have a slightly different view from my colleagues Trevor Mallard and Darien Fenton which may be because I am a newer MP and just do not understand the issue. Clause 3 “Principal Act amended” of course amends the Employment Relations Act so I guess it is right. To me the changes in the bill are so fundamental in several respects that I think it undermines the Employment Relations Act. I do not think the bill amends the Act; “amend” sounds quite normal and quite moderate. The bill fundamentally undermines a number of the key objectives of the Employment Relations Act. That Act was designed to build productive employment relationships. The fundamental objective of the Employment Relations Act is to build productive employment relationships through the promotion of good faith in all aspects of the employment environment and the employment relationship. 
There are a number of elements in this amendment bill that fundamentally alter the balance of power in the employment relationship. As my colleague Stuart Nash said the bill does not deal with things like dignity and respect. When employers can dismiss employees for any reason they can come up with and employees have no right even to know why they were dismissed let alone challenge the dismissal if it is not fair—no right of redress—then I do not think that is about a relationship. That provision fundamentally alters the Employment Relations Act. 
The objects of the Act talk about good-faith behaviour as I have said but also explicitly acknowledge and address the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships. I think that point has been completely ignored by the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). Members opposite seem to think there is no inequality in the employment relationship. Many of the people who will immediately be hit by the 90-day trial period extension to all workplaces will be young people entering a job for the first time assuming of course they can get one which in the current environment is very difficult. But let us say they do get a job; they are then immediately placed in the situation of having no rights at work. 
No one can tell me that in a situation of high unemployment those employees who do not know their rights and are not union members will be able to get advice on whether they should accept this 90-day trial which has no rights. In fact it would seem that the intention of members opposite is that the normal course of events will be “take it or leave it” employment agreements whereby it will be perfectly legitimate to advertise a job as having a 90-day rights-free period and present the person with the option of either accepting the employment agreement which has no rights for the first 90 days of employment or not accepting it which means not having a job. That is not a free choice and it is not an equal power relationship. 
As I say I am a little concerned about the amendment to the principal Act. It worries me because I think it is more than a minor amendment to the Employment Relations Act; I think it is a fundamental undermining of it. I could understand it more if it were the Employment Contracts Act being amended. Then we might say that OK the principal Act the Employment Contracts Act—if it had not been repealed and that repeal was a very good thing I might add—is being amended by things like the change to the access provisions which would be not as bad as what was in the Employment Contracts Act. We could say that that was an amendment. But I tell members that the 90-day issue is way worse than what existed under the Employment Contracts Act under the previous National Government. Under that Act workers had rights to challenge unfair dismissals within the first 90 days of employment but under this amending legislation they will not. 
It worries me as Mr Nash said at the end of his contribution that we are not building the productive employment relationships that are envisaged by and are the fundamental objective of the Employment Relations Act. Productive employment relationships are what we need. We need those productive employment relationships to change the nature of work to lift workplace productivity and to achieve the economic growth that this country needs. That outcome will rest on a well-informed workforce a workforce treated with respect and a workforce that has a collective voice.