Woodhouse Michael: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:165. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety):Thank you Mr Chairman. As this is my first intervention of the 51st Parliament can I just take a little bit of time to welcome colleagues back to the Chamber and to congratulate you Mr Chair and acknowledge you as this Chamber’s Deputy Speaker for the 51st Parliament. Can I also welcome those new MPs particularly those who have had their maiden speeches this afternoon. I think colleagues will agree that the quality of the speeches and the calibre of our new intake on both sides of the Chamber are particularly impressive.I have the very good duty I think as the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to continue the excellent work of the Hon Simon Bridges the previous custodian of this bill. I want to acknowledge the very good work that he has done. I also want to acknowledge the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee of the 50th Parliament which considered this bill and of course reported it back with amendment. I acknowledge the chair of that committee David Bennett and want to congratulate him on his appointment today as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It is very well deserved after 6 years as the chairman of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee a committee I very much enjoyed being a member of in the 49th Parliament. It was a rather split-personality committee where we had such strong and collegial relationships on those things such as immigration and transport safety and then perhaps not quite the same level of collegiality around ACC and employment law. Nevertheless it was a very effective committee then and I am sure it will be under the able chairmanship of Jonathan Young in this Parliament.The Employment Relations Amendment Bill delivers on this Government’s manifestos in both the 2011 and 2014 election campaigns. It is designed to enhance and create a more flexible workplace relations environment. It continues this Government’s strong focus on reduction and compliance costs and unnecessary burdensome regulation. It does some very small but effective changes to flexibility in bargaining to entry into collective agreements and to the ability of employers to opt out of multi-employer collective agreements and it has a number of other technical changes. It adds some flexibility to an employee’s opportunity to request more flexible working arrangements. That ability is currently available to employers of people who have caregiving responsibilities. I note that 70 percent of employers have actively considered and allowed some form of flexibility under that. So this is something that I think will be appreciated by employers and employees alike as we extend that to a far wider range of reasons to have flexibility. It provides I think a very sensible opportunity for employees and employers to agree on flexibility in work breaks and meal breaks.I want to acknowledge the many people around the country who have emailed me this afternoon their views and their beliefs both in an email and on Facebook that this somehow is going to be the removal of the right of employees to take a tea break. Well nothing could be further from the truth—[Interruption]. The irrational rant from the meerkats on the other side at the mere sniff of this kind of exploitation that they claim is there is unfortunate and untrue. We know that there are situations in the workplace including workplaces that I have managed where there are sole-charge operations for which it is necessary and appropriate to have some flexibility in the rest and meal breaks whether it is the two registered nurses on night shift at the weekend at small surgical hospitals who for safety reasons cannot leave the ward at 2 o’clock in the morning. I as an employer gave them a meal a meal allowance and some extra time in recognition of that inability. Why you would want to leave and go downtown in Dunedin at 2 o’clock on a Monday morning is anybody’s guess but indeed that was the flexible arrangements we had before this law change. It is probably still there and probably in breach of the Employment Relations Act. It is unnecessary and this brings back some sense to thatThere is the sole-charge air traffic controller at small airports who again for safety reasons cannot leave. There is the night-shift supervisor at the 24-hour service station and the sole-charge person who for very good reasons want to have that flexibility. I think we patronise employees by pretending that they cannot negotiate with their employer for a fair outcome. It has to be done with the agreement of the employer and the employee together. That is the modern workplace not the cloth cap - wearing rhetoric that I think we are going to hear during the Committee stage of this bill.Very good improvements to the bill were made by the committee as it came out and they were confirmed at its second reading. But there are a couple of amendments that I will be introducing under Government Supplementary Order Papers. I want to acknowledge the Hon Peter Dunne for his suggestions around the cessation of bargaining the ending of bargaining and for ensuring—albeit that I think that the bill was pretty clear about this; it is certainly appropriate to strengthen and make absolutely clear—that the Employment Relations Authority needs to be satisfied that both parties to the ending of the negotiations have acted in good faith and that the cessation of the negotiations should not take place if one party has not acted in good faith. So the Hon Peter Dunne has proposed a Supplementary Order Paper. The Government is happy to see that in place.Part 6A has been a fairly contentious part of the Employment Relations Act for the last 9 or 10 years. There are some sensible amendments in my view to acknowledge the burden of Part 6A on very small businesses small to medium sized enterprises of 19 staff or fewer and to provide clarity around the obligations on the outgoing employer and the incoming employer under a restructure so that employees have enough time to consider their options and the incoming employer has a clear understanding of the time frame for the getting of the information and an understanding of what employees he or she is taking on.The last amendment under a Supplementary Order Paper is to the provisions under the Employment Relations Authority and the ability for the powers of the chief of the Employment Relations Authority to be delegated. In the absence of this and in the absence of the chief of the authority if it were to occur that could cause some problems with decisions that are required to be made by that chief. I think that is a sensible and pragmatic change.This is a good bill. This is a bill that delivers on the promises this Government has made in the last two election campaigns. We have the mandate to pass it. We have the numbers to pass. It will improve the workplace by providing flexibility for both employers and employees. I expect that to be robustly debated this evening and I look forward to it.