Kedgley Sue: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. This bill addresses a huge but largely invisible and unspoken problem in our society—namely the constant stress that many people experience as they try to cope with the competing claims of paid employment raising a family and other demands in their lives. Nobody is out in the streets marching about it yet—they are probably too exhausted—but the fact is that the chronic pressure many people experience as they seek to combine paid work and parenting has become one of the greatest sources of stress on families today. 
Only a few decades ago just one parent in a family was typically in the workforce working a regular 40-hour week but these days it has become the norm for both parents to be in paid work in order to provide an income for their family and many couples are each working 45 or more hours a week. New Zealand has one of the longest and most inflexible working hours cultures in the world. We work longer than the Japanese for heaven’s sake and we are on a par with Australia and America. Forty percent of us work more than 45 hours a week 21 percent work more than 50 hours a week and all of us on average work far longer than European workers. It is no wonder that many New Zealanders are suffering from chronic stress chronic fatigue and overload and that this is having a debilitating effect on family life. 
 A recent Australian study found that Australia’s long and inflexible working hours culture is causing relationship breakdown family dysfunction hostile and ineffective parenting and reduced child well-being. I am sure we would find exactly the same situation here. So that is why so many employees are calling for more flexible working arrangements that give them more say over where and when they work and allow them to adjust their paid work to better suit their family and their other responsibilities while still getting the job done. 
The aim of the bill is to help to make this happen and to encourage flexible working practices that help people strike a balance between work and family life. It will enshrine in law the right of employees with caring responsibilities to request flexible working hours to place an obligation on employers to consider any such request seriously and to provide a framework for negotiating that request in a way that does not undermine a business. Under the bill fathers mothers guardians grandparents and people looking after a dependent adult will be able to apply for flexible working hours. They can apply to change the hours the times or the days they are required to work—to work part-time or compressed hours or to just have some say over start and finishing times. 
The bill is unashamedly based on UK legislation that has been so successful that it is supported by parties across the political spectrum. Eighty percent of requests made under the UK law have been granted and a compromise has been reached in a further 10 percent of cases. The UK Children’s Minister is calling for the right to be extended to all employees and the Conservative leader David Cameron is calling for it to be extended to all parents and eventually even wider. 
It speaks volumes that the Conservative Party in the UK in stark contrast to the National Party here strongly supports this legislation. Indeed David Cameron is one of the leading champions of the legislation in the United Kingdom and he argues that flexible working is good not only for employees and families but for business and that this is the key to increasing productivity and modernising workplaces. He says: “The vital thing to understand is that flexible working should not be seen as a burden on business but as a powerful tool which used intelligently offers a route to competitive advantage and commercial success. Far from being a threat or some new corporate fad it’s a hard headed response to new realities.” 
Before the legislation was introduced in the United Kingdom it was vehemently opposed by the business community for the same reason that some employers are opposing it here. They were worried it would be difficult to implement and would cause additional compliance costs. But in a recent survey 90 percent of employers reported no significant problems in complying with the new right. 
I will quote from a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development an organisation with 127000 members representing employers involved in management and personnel. The report states: “The existing right to request flexible working has been well received by employers and has successfully encouraged rather than compelled employers to experiment with flexible working practices. Employers who are willing to accommodate … the lives their employees lead outside work … are finding they can fish in a wider pool for labour”. Indeed the institute is finding that the people they recruit are more motivated and stay longer. The report goes on to state: “Our research shows that most employers are happy to agree to the majority of such requests and that two in five employers have already extended the right to request further than the legislation requires.” As a result of that even the employers are supporting an extension to what they call the “light touch” approach to employment law. 
It is not just the United Kingdom that has embraced flexible working. Germany Italy Belgium and the Netherlands all provide employees with a legal right to request flexible working or to reduce their working hours and 90 percent of the 8000 companies surveyed in Europe recently said that flexitime was available to their employees. The reason so many overseas companies are embracing this is that the benefits to business are tangible and real. Employees who are treated with respect and given more control over their hours of work are more motivated and productive. All the research bears this out. It shows that workplaces that offer flexibility are more attractive to employees so it is easier to recruit and retain staff. There is less absenteeism sick leave and staff turnover and of course there are reduced recruitment and training costs. Also the recruitment pool is widened particularly the return rate of employees with young children which helps to ease skill shortages. 
There are conflicting reports on how widely available flexible working arrangements are in New Zealand. Some say these arrangements are widely available but most employees will say that despite all the rhetoric and lip-service little has changed. Some organisations such as EziBuy and Harrison Grierson genuinely offer flexible working arrangements to their staff and I say good on them. But in many cases claimed flexible working arrangements turn out to be little more than the ability to sometimes adjust a lunch break or go to the dentist. 
Paul Callister an employment expert sums up the situation when he says: “Employers say they’re family friendly and they probably believe it but employees are grinding their teeth.” Many workers are reluctant even to broach the subject with employers for fear of being penalised in some way. As the Families Commission has pointed out flexible working arrangements where they do exist are more common among white-collar workers and managers than they are for ordinary low-paid workers. That is why we need legislation to ensure that the right to request flexible working practices is extended to all workers with caring responsibilities not just to a privileged few. 
In supporting this bill we are making it clear that we believe that a request to adjust a work schedule to accommodate family or other requests is a legitimate request that a business should seek to accommodate providing it will not be to the detriment of the business. We are also sending a signal that we want to reduce the stress and pressure on families and encourage innovative workplaces that are more responsive to their employees’ needs. 
Consensus is building around the need for more flexible working hours. Ninety percent of submissions to the Department of Labour called for more flexible working arrangements. A coalition comprising more than 50 legal community professional and union organisations support the bill. Grey Power the International Federation of Business and Professional Women women lawyers associations and the Council of Trade Unions all want the right to request that flexible working be extended to all parents with children under 18—rather than to parents with children under 5 as it states in the bill at present—and to all employees and I do too. That is where things are heading in the UK and we should be heading there too. 
I want to thank Mark Gosche the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee Peter Brown Darien Fenton and Sue Moroney for their work and for the positive changes they have made to the bill. In particular I thank the Minister of Labour Ruth Dyson for her support and indeed for her leadership on the bill. She proposed laying the bill on the Table while we conducted further research which was an extremely positive initiative. That has been invaluable. I want to thank Labour New Zealand First United Future the Maori Party the Progressive party Taito Phillip Field and Gordon Copeland for supporting the bill. 
I am confident that the bill will help employees find working arrangements that make striking a balance between work and life less stressful and in so doing will address a major social problem in New Zealand. I am confident too that employers in New Zealand as in the United Kingdom will find that flexible working patterns are not something to fear or avoid but rather something to embrace because flexible working will make them more attractive to employees and enhance their workplaces. This of course will help to relieve congestion on our roads because every person who has a flexible start time helps to reduce congestion. Thank you very much and thank you to all the parties that are supporting the bill.