King Annette: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9012. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I am very pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of this very important bill the Home and Community Support (Payment for Travel Between Clients) Settlement Bill. This is a bill that has been in gestation for quite some time. It arises from work that the Human Rights Commission did in a ruling it gave some years ago saying that the time spent travelling between clients by home and community support workers should be remunerated. This happened as I said several years ago. But it all really started when a member of the New Zealand Public Service Association (PSA) Jenny Goodman and the PSA took a test case to claim on behalf of hundreds of fellow home-care workers.So the genesis of the settlement came from a brave woman standing up and being prepared to say: “I will take this case with the backing of my union.” I commend the PSA for backing Jenny and taking this case. So when you hear criticisms of unions you have to say that they are misinformed because this really shows the power of a union backing its workers to get justice and to get the right outcome for very vulnerable workers. You cannot get much more vulnerable workers than those who work in this area.So what has happened in this settlement is that the unions and the employers sat down and they worked together. It is an agreement between the Crown the district health boards the providers of the home and community-based care and support services and certain unions. They came up with the settlement. They worked through this settlement to address what is now a historic underpayment of home and community support workers. It was not an easy process for them because they had to come to an agreement and come forward with what they believed would be a satisfactory resolution to this issue. What they have arrived at in this bill has been supported by the employers and in my second reading speech I read out a number of the submissions provided by those employers who said that they totally support this bill. It has been arrived at by the unions who were involved by the district health boards and by the Crown and I give credit to all of them for the work that they have done in coming to this settlement.The objective of this legislation is to ensure that these employees will be compensated in accordance with this bill at the minimum wage for qualifying travel time from 1 March 2016; that they will compensated at no less than 50c per kilometre for qualifying travel costs as prescribed by regulation; that the employees will abandon any claim under the Minimum Wage Act 1983 for payment for travel between clients undertaken by them before the enactment of this bill and after its commencement are prevented from bringing a claim that travel between clients is work under the Minimum Wage Act; and that following the commencement of the bill any prior agreement between the employees and the employer relating to travel by the employee would be unenforceable.So really this is a settlement to deal with this particular issue these particular workers and these particular companies. What it does is ensure that when these workers—and they are overwhelmingly women—go out and perform their role in the home and the community they are paid when they travel between one client and the next and I have already set out the arrangement for paying them. But when you think about it why should these women—nearly all of them on the minimum wage—then pay for their travel to go and provide that service that vital service to vulnerable New Zealanders mainly older New Zealanders wanting to stay and live in their homes?What we heard about at the select committee and debated here in the House with the first and the second readings is that we have other workers who go out and provide services to clients—they could be the local electrician or the local plumber—and they include in their costs the cost of travel between clients. But not for these employees and it just seems shameful to me that in their old cars using their petrol they were expected to pay to go and provide this service on the minimum wage. I do not believe that there are many New Zealanders out there who have been the beneficiaries—or their parents or their grandparents have been the beneficiaries—of home care and community support who would not have supported such an approach to ensure that those workers are funded and that they are provided with the appropriate travel for this very important role.But I have to say that it is not the end of the work that needs to be done. This is a settlement that deals with this particular issue but it does not deal—and it has been said in the second reading and I have said it myself—with the historic underpayment of these workers in terms of what wages they are paid. I do not believe that the minimum wage—and this is based on payment of the minimum wage—is good enough for this work. We are going to need literally tens of thousands of home and community workers to provide our health services within the community over the next few years.As our population ages as more old people want to stay in their homes and have their health care provided very close to where they live—if not where they have lived for many years—then we are going to need more of these workers. They are a very valuable workforce for us and we are going to need thousands of them. This settlement deals with part of what we want to do but it does not address the need for us to have a better agreement in terms of what happens to these people in the future in terms of their wages. In fact this bill does not deal with what is called Part B of the settlement. That has not been dealt with at all.Part B of the settlement agreement is about the establishment of a regularised workforce and a review of the home and community health sector. That is not included in it but it is raised and I notice that we have officials who came to the Health Committee and we questioned them on this issue and the need to have a well-trained workforce. That work I know is now under way and is going to be very important in the future.The other thing I wanted to mention is something that was actually added by the select committee. This was a select committee that worked very very hard on this bill and worked across all parties. We wanted to do it as quickly as possible. We have brought this bill back to the House in very quick time so that we can get this settlement in place knowing how important it is. So working very closely together we agreed on all the amendments and one of them was to include the Accident Compensation Corporation in the bill.ACC is included in the bill because the home and community support workforce provides services under contract to ACC. So it is mentioned in this bill and as part of the settlement a similar arrangement between the home-care support employees and the ACC will be negotiated. I think that was a very good inclusion in the bill by the select committee. Otherwise we would have continued with what we often do in New Zealand—have a two-tier system. Those who are covered by ACC often get a much better deal than those who are covered by Vote Health. This is helpful in sorting that out because they are now included in it.The Labour Party fully supports this bill. I am glad it is being taken as one question. The main part of this bill is in the second part and by including it all together we are able to have this wide-ranging debate. We fully support it and look forward to its implementation as soon as possible.