Beaumont Carol: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Holidays Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:15468] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I am almost at a loss for words—but before people get too excited I did say “almost”. I have heard so much absolute drivel in the last couple of contributions to this debate on the Holidays Amendment Bill. They have been factually incorrect and have absolutely attributed views to this side of the House that bear no resemblance to reality. I will start by saying that comments that Labour is anti-business are completely wrong. In fact sitting behind me is the Hon Lianne Dalziel who as a Minister did more for regulatory reform than any Minister for quite some time. If the Labour Party was anti-business I do not know why she would have bothered to do that. 
I stand to say that this Holidays Amendment Bill is another bill that is unjustified unnecessary unbalanced and unfair. Somebody from the other side of the House talked earlier about the fact that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Holidays Amendment Bill go together. On that point I quite agree they do because underlying them are the same sort of principles of being backward-looking taking away rights from people and removing the opportunity to move forward in our workplaces. Contrary to what Heather Roy said the quality of workplace relations and the building of workplace productivity is something that this side of the House cares about very much. Our view is that they should be built on workers’ rights high trust lifting wages rather than reducing them and improving conditions not reducing them. There should be a collective voice so that people can genuinely have a say and contribute at work. Some of the better employers in this country—not the mates of ACT—tell us that having a highly engaged workforce and having a vehicle where the workforce’s concerns and views can be put on the table and worked through jointly with the employer is how to lift workplace performance. I wanted to put those things on the table because I have heard a lot of rubbish from the other side of the House about Labour’s perspective that is just untrue. 
I will talk about what the Holidays Amendment Bill means for both the quality of working life and the quality of lifestyle. Basically this bill undermines the chances of having work-life balance and improving the quality of not only working life but also life outside of work. Before I get into that I reinforce the points made about the regulatory impact statement. I thought it was quite telling that Trevor Mallard’s whole speech was able to be built around all of the negative things that are in the regulatory impact statement. It is absolutely extraordinary that we are dealing with a bill that is flawed from one end to the other. Even the Department of Labour the Government agency dealing with this bill has put that clearly in the regulatory impact statement. It says: “The analysis of the policy options under consideration is constrained by the limited availability of objective evidence of problems with the current holidays legislation both on the type and extent of any problems. There is a lack of robust data available to quantify the potential impacts of the policy options considered.” I know that probably doesn’t matter to some members across the House because why should we let the facts stand in the way of making changes? But it is pretty important if the Government’s own department that deals with this legislation tells it things like that. I would have thought that generally it would be worth thinking about. 
There are three areas that I will particularly focus on. They are three areas that I think will have a negative impact on work-life balance for the New Zealand workforce and our families. The first of these areas is a backwards and cynical policy shift. It is a backward-looking and cynical shift because it is happening at a time when people are under a lot of financial pressure. Wages are barely moving; in fact in some cases household incomes are going down. Costs are rising and there is high unemployment yet we are saying that giving people the opportunity to sell their statutory minimum holidays in that environment is a free choice. Actually I think it is a misguided policy at a time when what we really need to see is wages shifting. We have a low-wage economy where we are 30 percent behind Australia and that gap is getting wider under this National Government. 
This is a proxy for shifting wages. Leave has absolute value for individuals and the community. It cannot just be compensated for by money. Why stop at one week? If the choice to sell holidays is such a good free choice and it should all be up to the individual why do we not say that all 4 weeks could be sold? That could be an individual choice as well. The reality is that leave has value. It has value for rest and recreation for the worker but it has wider community value too. It has value for families. In my previous role I did a lot of work on the issue of work-life balance. We had a lot of research done. We looked at various research from around the world and we looked at what mattered to people. There was a very interesting piece of research done in Australia by a woman called Barbara Pocock where she talked to a lot of teenagers. She was trying to find out what they valued and wanted more of. Do members know what it was? It was not money and it was the not the latest technological device; it was time with their parents. That was the thing those teenagers wanted more of—time with their parents. Like New Zealand workers the people in the study were working very long hours. In fact New Zealand has one of the longest working hours cultures in the OECD. The recession has probably impacted on that a bit with less overtime— 
Colin King 
: By how much? 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: By a lot and I can get the member those figures. 
I go back to my point about families. We in this Chamber all know people who on reaching retirement age and reflecting on their working lives do not say that they wished they could have worked more hours. A lot of those people will reflect on the fact that they wished they had spent more time with their families. Holidays have real implications for family time as well as for the rest and recreation of the worker concerned. This so-called option will inevitably be forced on to low-income workers and the most vulnerable workers. In some cases it will be used as a proxy or an alternative for a real wage increase. A way for workers to get a 2 percent wage increase will be to just sell a week’s holiday. 
I conclude my comments on the fourth week’s leave by saying that there has been a lot of rhetoric from the other side of the House about it being a choice that people do not have to do it and all of those things. Actually it is an example of the imbalance I mentioned at the start because ultimately it is up to the employer. The employer can have an absolute policy that says that no holidays will be sold in that workplace full stop. So much for the great choice with the two parties sitting down together to work it out but no it is the employer who can absolutely determine that matter. That is the point I want to make on holidays. 
I say that the second thing is the most mean-spirited and unnecessary part of the bill in my opinion. It is the changes to alternative holidays which are widely known as time in lieu. This is the time workers get when they work on a public holiday that would normally be a working day for them. The changes in this bill are so mean-spirited they defy logic. Now if agreement cannot be reached the worker can determine when they will have their time in lieu. After all they have worked on a day of great significance on Christmas Day maybe or Good Friday or one of the public holidays when lots of their family and friends have time off. Often employers need people to work on those days. Employees work on that day they are entitled to a day in lieu and currently if agreement cannot be reached they get to choose. The worker can choose another day that might have some value or significance for them. The balance in this regard is also changed. So I ask members: if agreement cannot be reached who will make decision about when the day in lieu will be? It is no surprise; it will be the employer. 
The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee received a very very good submission made by an individual. Dennis Hickey is his name and he is a bus driver for Howick and Eastern Buses in Auckland. He talked about this passionately. He absolutely understands that as a bus driver he needs to work on public holidays because people need to catch the bus. He absolutely accepts that that is part of his job and he does it in good spirit but Mr Hickey said that if he works Christmas Day why on earth if they cannot reach agreement should the employer be able to tell him that he might have a Wednesday off some time in March when his wife is at work and his children are at school? That is how mean-spirited this bill is.