Ogilvy Bernie: Holidays Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ogilvy Bernie: Holidays Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to support this bill going to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. Unlike the National Party whose members are now trying to say that they are holding the umbrella for the business community this amendment bill helps the business community; it does not hinder it. That is why we are in favour of this going to the select committee to be looked at. One or two things beyond what is in this amendment bill need to be looked at and I will allude to those as I go along. 
I cannot understand how the National Party would not want to help employers and businesses with this bill. Just for the record United Future voted against the Holidays Bill when it was passed last year. The main reason for that is still hanging in our minds and we will stick with that. We think that the provisions such as time and a half on a public holiday should be the result of negotiations between employers and employees rather than by Government fiat. My colleague Paul Adams I think was arguing along that line. If there is such a thing as the much-vaunted good-faith bargaining then we believe that it must occur in a context where both sides are relatively free or are free to trade accepting some minimal levels of statutory protection in that. But today we are not so dogmatic that we fail to recognise that this bill while maintaining time and a half for those who do work on public holidays at least swings the pendulum back a little bit the other way towards the employers. For that we are in favour of seeing this bill go to the select committee. 
The Act as amended last year theoretically allowed workers to claim time and a half we know on their normal pay plus any penal rates that they already possessed for working on such days. Those penal rates of course are a product of good-faith negotiations between the employer and the employee that I mentioned before. There is a danger that this good faith would have been undermined by legislation that delivers workers a potential windfall. This bill then ensures that there is also a kind of maximum amount that must be paid to those working on a public holiday and we are happy about that. 
The bill also deals with another unintended consequence as indicated in it of last year’s legislation—that is the problem of people taking sick leave on a public holiday and then claiming time and a half. So United Future has sensed that this leaves the potential for less scrupulous employees to call in sick on a public holiday so that they can have a long weekend and get paid time and a half on top. 
It is perverse that the very legislation designed to compensate employees who do work on a public holiday could actually give them a better reason for not working. Under this bill as we have it before us an employee who is sick on a public holiday will have that day treated as an unworked public holiday and not sick leave. 
We in United Future have a lingering concern—and others have alluded to this—that the new bill focuses on a thing called relevant daily pay which includes extras such as incentives overtime and other payments. Relevant daily pay as I see it here means that an employer cannot pay an employee more for working than for not working thereby creating a financial incentive for employees to throw a sickie on days when their pay is highest. I would like the select committee to look at that issue. It should definitely look into whether the replacement of ordinary pay with relevant pay under the holidays legislation can be continued or even justified to be continued. United Future members on that committee will ensure that that issue will be focused on. 
There is also the contentious issue of when the employer can ask for proof of illness if a worker calls in sick. The present 2003 Act initially sought to establish a minimum period of 5 days of sick leave before an employer could request a medical certificate until the select committee later reduced that to 3 days. This legislation makes a further amendment that we believe is in the right direction to allow employers to request that an employee produce proof of sickness or injury before 3 days are up. Contrary to one other speaker here we think that that is a step in the right direction. When the select committee does look at this legislation I would like it to take a closer look at those clauses. I am concerned that if employers are forced into a situation where they have to inform the employee of their suspicions then a culture of open mistrust in the workplace is inevitable. 
I end with the comment that we think it is a sign of maturity that this Government has at least admitted it has stuffed up. At this stage United Future is getting used to helping to pull the Government out of a hole into which it has dug itself. We do not mind if it results in better outcomes for New Zealand. We are pleased to see that the new Minister is taking a much more realistic approach to those matters than his predecessor. We are ever hopeful that that realism will find its way into other Labour legislation such as introducing a probationary personal grievance - free period into employment relations law reform legislation which I know the Minister’s colleague John Tamihere does support. On that note I make it known that we in United Future do support this legislation to a select committee for further investigation and improvement.