Kedgley Sue: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19669] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Hours) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.  
At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The tension of trying to juggle paid work and family responsibilities is taking a huge toll on families today. As dual-income families become the norm and as more and more parents are in the workforce even when their children are young employees are feeling overloaded tired and chronically stressed from trying to juggle full-time work and care for their children at the same time. The problem is especially acute here in New Zealand where we have a long working hours ethic in our culture and one of the highest proportions of workers putting in long hours of paid work of any country in the OECD. 
In recent surveys a majority of employees said they were working longer hours than previously that they were feeling under constant stress that their lives were out of balance and that the relentless pressure was having a debilitating effect on their lives and those of their families. Employees said that they were able to spend less and less time with their families that the limited time they were able to spend at home was corroding their relationships with their partners and children and that they were missing out on crucial stepping stones and key milestones in their children’s development. 
Clearly that sort of long working hours culture discriminates against employees with families who want to work more flexible working hours that better suit the needs of their families. It is no wonder that so many employees with children simply give up the struggle and drop out of the labour market because they cannot find ways to combine paid work and the demands of looking after young children. It is interesting that one in three mothers do not come back into the workforce after having children when their children are young. Some employers have responded to the call for better work-life balance and more flexible working patterns and they do offer their employees flexible working options. Treasury the Buller District Council EDS (New Zealand) Ltd and Deloitte are very good examples of that. Despite all the rhetoric we have heard in recent years about work-life balance those employers are the exception rather than the rule. Not nearly enough is being done to encourage and support parents who want to work flexibly when their children are young. 
It is interesting—and Mr Mapp may be interested to know this—that a Department of Labour survey of work-life balance found that most New Zealanders it surveyed felt reluctant even to broach the subject of flexible working hours with their employers because they were afraid that they would be penalised for doing so. That is why Governments are stepping in to protect employees who want to have choice about how they balance work and family life especially when their children are young. Germany Italy Belgium and the Netherlands all provide employees with a legal right to request more flexible working arrangements or to reduce their working hours. The United Kingdom has introduced legislation that gives employees with young or disabled children the right to request flexible working hours and this bill is based on that. Other Governments are actively promoting flexible working hours. Clearly New Zealand is lagging behind in failing to encourage more flexible working conditions for employees especially when their children are young and that is why I have drafted this bill. 
The aim of the bill is modest: to change workplace culture so that employers more readily accommodate the needs of parents with young children to work more flexible working hours by giving employees with children under 5 or with disabled children under 18 a statutory right to request flexible working arrangements. It places a legal duty on employers to consider any such request seriously. It also enables employers to refuse a request under certain circumstances such as the inability of an organisation to reorganise itself or to recruit additional staff. Mothers fathers guardians and foster parents will all be eligible to apply provided that they have worked for an employer for 6 months. They can apply to change the hours they work and the times of day they are required to work. They can apply to work part-time work compressed hours work a 4-day working week and so on. 
The right to work flexibly as enshrined in this bill is designed to meet the needs of employers as well as employees. Far from dictating to employers as Wayne Mapp suggested in a press release last week its intention is to provide a framework to negotiate reduced working hours that are mutually agreed to and to find a solution that works for both the employer and employee. The employee will make a written request pointing out the working pattern that he or she wants to work. He or she will then meet the employer discuss it and consider alternatives if the request cannot be met. Employers will have a statutory duty to make a formal business assessment of the request and will only be able to refuse a request where there are clear business reasons for doing so based on designated criteria. An employee whose request is turned down can challenge that through an appeals procedure. But hopefully recourse to mediation will be rare because studies show that flexible working arrangements not only make life easier for parents and children but have significant benefits for employers and the economy as a whole. 
Numerous studies have shown that flexible working arrangements make employees more satisfied more motivated and more productive and that they reduce absenteeism stress-related health problems workplace accidents staff turnover and therefore recruitment costs. They enable employers to attract and retain employees with valuable skills and knowledge who would otherwise leave the workplace to care full-time for their families. A recent review of the British legislation that this bill is based on found that it has been very successful in changing workplace culture and making it more family-friendly for employees with young children. The British legislation is so successful that the Labour Government there has promised to review it and to extend it to cover parents with children under 12 and employees with elderly and other dependents. We would welcome an extension of the provisions of this bill and I hope that that will be considered in the select committee. In England since the legislation has been introduced about one million British parents have made a request to work flexibly. Eight out of 10 requests have been granted and a compromise has been reached in a further one out of 10 requests. 
Both the nurses union and the Council of Trade Unions have come out in support of this bill. They say that the pressure to balance work and family life is a major problem for many workers and that flexible working arrangements would overcome one of the key barriers to women pursuing a career. The Prime Minister announced recently that she wants there to be more women in the paid workforce. Making paid work more flexible and enabling parents with children to work more flexibly or part-time would help to achieve that goal. 
National has suggested that the bill could create an environment whereby employers would not hire women because they would be more likely to require flexible working hours. That is a nonsensical suggestion. It is precisely the argument that was used against equal pay against pay equity and against paid parental leave and it has not come to pass. It has not happened in the United Kingdom and it will not happen here because the entitlement applies equally to men and women and—this will be a surprise for Wayne Mapp—as many men want to spend more time with their families as there are women who want to do that. I am confident that those fears will not be realised and that employers will find that flexible working hours are something to embrace—that they will enhance workplace productivity and make workplaces more attractive to employees. 
Flexible working hours make sense for individual families for employers and for society as a whole. As a society it makes sense that we help parents to spend more time with their families when children are young. It makes sense that we modernise our workplaces and change our workplace culture so that it is a results-driven not a work-to-clock culture. It makes sense that we redesign work in a way that responds to employees’ needs and gives employees some choice over the actual time they work. That makes sense in terms of the health of families the health of children and the health of the nation. As I have said the aim of the bill is a modest one and we would like to see the bill extended in the select committee. We are astonished that parties that claim to be family-friendly such as United Future and National would turn down such a modest simple request to establish a right for parents with children to work more flexibly and to work part-time. I think that many New Zealanders would be utterly astonished at why those parties should be opposing this bill.