Roche Denise: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:8953. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It is my pleasure to rise to take the first call for the Green Party in the second reading of the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill.I am the industrial relations spokesperson for the Greens and I have to say that it was an absolute pleasure and a privilege to be part of the Health Committee which heard the submissions on this bill. This is a bill that actually seeks to fix some problems. It is quite unusual in my role as the industrial relations spokesperson during the term of this Government to be able to agree with the Government on anything pertaining to the rights of workers particularly low-paid workers.I want to thank the select committee and in particular I want to thank the chair for his role in ushering this bill through that process. The bill comes back to the House with minor amendments that are reasonably just technical but also small changes that as the previous speaker Simon O’Connor noted were actually agreed to by the unions representing the workers in the care sector who had been negotiating with the Crown to get the settlement.To recap the legislation legalises the negotiated settlement that followed after a court case that was taken by the New Zealand Public Service Association and E tū union for home-care support workers to say that there was a breach of the Minimum Wage Act because they were not being paid for the time spent travelling between clients. The reason it is a breach of the Minimum Wage Act is that generally the wages are so low that when you take the travel time into account and add that to their gross wage basically it slips below the minimum wage. That is why they took the case.As a result of this court case—and I want to thank both the unions and the members for taking it—the Crown entered into some negotiations with the sector both the industry and employers with the unions and with the officials from the Ministry of Health. They sought to find a way forward to deal with the fact that winning the case for payment for travel time between clients would mean a back payment for about 28000 workers who work in the sector. Most of them are women. But as a pragmatic approach the unions and the members they are representing said that they would sit down and negotiate. I think we need to kind of respect that and show the unions a debt of gratitude essentially for getting into the situation where they would negotiate on this because otherwise it could have the consequence of basically making the health sector go broke particularly if a back payment was determined by the Employment Relations Court.This bill does not actually offer back-pay. Those workers will not get back-pay. However the quid pro quo—and in any good negotiation there usually is one—is that the benefits outweigh that. Those benefits are—and it is outlined in the legislation—a payment of 50c per kilometre from March this year and 60c per kilometre from July this year which is up from an average of 33c per kilometre.There is a transition to guaranteed hours of work which is really really important in the sector. Frequently home-care workers are in the precarious position of having shifts changed at very short notice. The deal also includes training for carers to a level 3 qualification within the first 2 years on the job and this benefits both workers and employers as a skilled and trained and qualified workforce provides exceptionally good care for those who need it most—their clients.The other part of the deal they have been negotiating is the discussion around pay rates that are better than the minimum wage where qualifications are recognised in the pay scale. It was agreed between the employers in the sector and the workers—represented by the unions and the Crown and the ministries—that this would be where they would negotiate further. It is a transition that I think we need to see come to fruition given that our population is ageing and home care is going to be more and more the way people are looked after in the future. So we need to ensure that people are looked after with the best possible care those workers can give.During the select committee process there were only seven submissions which I guess indicates that the legislation was well received. But it was interesting to see who those submitters were. Two of them were from the industry itself—they were people who employ home-care workers—and one was from the organisation that represents the home-care organisations the support services themselves. All of them were in agreement that upskilling their workforce is a way to ensure a better service. They were also very clear that they supported the bill and they supported the whole issue of payment for travel time.The other organisations that submitted of those seven were women’s organisations and I found that particularly interesting. So we had submissions from the Federation of Business and Professional Women Inc. In its submission it said that it had a mandate from the annual conference that was contained in a resolution from May last year. It said: “That the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women … urge the Minister of Health: a) To increase funding to Age Care Providers to provide pay equity for all aged care workers in accordance with the Equal Pay Act 1972. b) To change the funding model for Aged Care Providers to ensure any funding increases include ring fencing for pay increases and accountability.”So essentially this is to ensure any money that is transferred to service providers does make its way into the wage packets of the low-paid women workers themselves. I guess this is highlighting the fact that for decades—for decades—women working in the aged-care sector have been underpaid and basically their exploitation has been what has been keeping the whole sector going. It is time we recognised that and this piece of legislation is one way of fixing the first piece of exploitation around the breaches of the minimum wage.I also want to read a small piece from the one submitter who was just an ordinary citizen and her name was Mrs Dalziel. She actually submitted basically to reinforce the fact that home carers provide a huge and essential service that benefits not only the client but the families themselves. She said: “I remember the first time a lady arrived and with a big smile and happy attitude dealt with personal health care tasks for my elderly parent. This relieved the stress I was experiencing of being forced to intrude on my parent’s privacy …”. She goes on and I actually thought it was a wonderful piece of the democratic process to hear this the firsthand account of the difference home-care workers make in people’s lives. We will be supporting this bill. It is a good bill. It does actually start to fix some of the problems of the exploitation of women carers in the home-care sector. Thank you.