Roche Denise: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9502. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I want to talk to Part 3 of the bill and in particular to Supplementary Order Paper 150 from Clayton Mitchell which I thoroughly agree with and the Greens will be supporting. The reason we will be supporting it is that earlier in a different part of the debate the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety talked about mutual obligations and mutuality between employer and employee. One of the concerns that we see arising around the casual workforce is the overuse of casuals and the undercutting of permanent paid staff in the workplace because casuals are being used. That was the concern with zero-hour contracts as well before we eliminated them tonight.The effect of this Supplementary Order Paper would be that anybody who is employed as a casual would actually have a loading on top of around 19 percent. In my original member’s bill where I talked about this I actually talked about a loading of time and a half which is a substantial increase. It is probably more than what is actually prevalent in the Australian workforce of casual workers where they do frequently have a loading of 25 percent or more.Clayton Mitchell’s Supplementary Order Paper actually says that if you are a casual you do not get bereavement leave you do not get holiday pay you do not get sick pay you do not get KiwiSaver—there is a whole range of rights that other workers get that are basically stripped away from these workers which essentially puts them into a cheaper category of work. That is another incentive if you like for employers who may be unscrupulous to want to overuse those casual workers. If you put a loading on their hourly rate and have that defined in legislation then what you have is a disincentive to use casuals.I think that if we are looking at wanting to create a society where everybody gets a fair go where people can earn enough to live on then we need to be looking at the hours of work and how those hours of work for ordinary working New Zealanders play out. Casual work although it is obviously useful particularly in those peaks—and I think previous speakers on this side of the Chamber particularly Sue Moroney have talked about the ability for most industries and most workplaces to be able to predict the amount of work that is happening and so you can top that up with casual workers. That has been the standard practice for decades and decades. What we have now though is a situation where the overuse of casuals can actually undermine and does undermine permanent employment.The casual workers themselves are worse off than any other worker. It is also harder for them to actually fight for their entitlements because of the very nature of being casual. These are the vulnerable workers whom I think we should talk about. Thank you.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 154 in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse to Part 3 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.