Bradford Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1481] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supports this Employment Relations Amendment Bill and hopes that it will work its way very quickly through the necessary processes. We fought hard for the transfer of undertakings provisions in the Employment Relations Act in 2000—the committee process that Dr Mapp remembers so well—and we were really disappointed when the Labour Government of the time felt obliged to remove this clause from the bill before it ever came back to the House. We were delighted then that the Government made a second more serious attempt at dealing with this thorny issue with the inclusion of Part 6A in the Employment Relations Amendment Act in 2004. We now support the clarification of that legislation so that it achieves what we intended to do all along—protect those who were most vulnerable in the workplace when their jobs are sold out from under them. 
The intention of the bill in front of us today is not new at all. Parliament already agreed to it when it passed the Employment Relations Amendment Act in 2004. I am well aware that it is simply an unintentional drafting error that has given rise to this situation. We are here because the Employment Court decided in  
Gibbs and others 
 v  
Crest Commercial Cleaning Ltd  
that the law as currently written did not apply to them. The matter that went to the Employment Court was around cleaners who had been cleaning premises belonging to the Dunedin Kindergarten Association. The cleaning contract was re-tendered and the previous employer Southern Cleaning Services lost the contract to another firm Crest Commercial Cleaning. 
As soon as Crest Commercial Cleaning won the contract it gave notice that it did not intend to employ any of the current cleaners but were going to subcontract to independent franchisees. There can be no doubt that those workers were in a vulnerable situation. There can be no doubt that this situation was similar to that described by many of the submitters to the select committee when we heard evidence on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill. There can be no doubt that the select committee thought that it had drafted a bill that supported vulnerable workers in this situation. As a member of the committee I was there and I have no doubt that that was our intention. It is for this reason that I believe forlornly I know that the bill should be supported by all parties in the House. It simply reinforces the intention we had when we passed that Act in 2004. 
The Employment Court case that led to the need for this bill also touches on a number of other aspects of worker vulnerability that are of concern to myself and my Green Party colleagues. One of the issues is the claim by the new contractor Crest Commercial Cleaning that it was not going to be employing staff but was going to engage independent franchisees. Whether those independent franchisees were employees by another name I do not know but I have my suspicions. However I am concerned about the growing use of so-called independent subcontractors and the way in which corporations and larger employers use them to reduce their costs. 
 We have seen it clearly in the care service industry and I think that every party—except perhaps ACT—has spoken out about the need for the health industry to look at how it employs and pays its carers who in many cases have to pay for their own transport from job to job. As MPs we get paid for our travel. It is totally outrageous that workers disguised as subcontractors or independent franchisees earning as little as the minimum wage of $9.50 an hour or less if they are under 18 are having to pay for their travel between clients. In other cases they even pay for their own cleaning equipment. It is no wonder that the provision of home-based age and disability care is in almost total meltdown in some parts of the country. 
In the 2001 census there were over 12000 people working in cleaning services. The Service and Food Workers Union says that the average wage of a cleaner on a collective agreement is $10.40 to $10.60 an hour. That is the rate for a collective. We can safely assume that there are many workers who are on less than that especially those who are not in a union. They will be on the minimum wage of $9.50 an hour or even lower if they are unlucky enough to be under 18. Many of those cleaners are doing two to three jobs just to make money to pay the bills and to keep themselves and their families going. 
Commercial cleaning is still one of the most undervalued and underpaid occupations in the country. I hope like Mark Gosche that all of us here spare a thought from time to time for those invisible workers who leave their families in the middle of the night to come here and make our offices habitable once again. 
The bill before us this afternoon does not and cannot address all the problems that surround vulnerable workers but I hope that perhaps later in the term we will see more legislation that will offer them greater protection and support. Meanwhile the Green Party is right behind the bill and I hope it will progress with considerable speed through the necessary processes.