Harawira Hone: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Harawira Hone: Employment Relations Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5025] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou te Whare. In considering the Employment Relations Amendment Bill I note that this House has been considering a number of other proposals for better relations with Australia; I thought I would share a little story from over the ditch. 
Late last year 20 construction workers got sacked by D3 General Contracting without wages holiday pay or redundancy. D3 General Contracting was contracting to Northpac a company with sites all over the world. Those 20 workers were Maori. According to the union D3 General Contracting had not paid any of its workers their entitlements or superannuation since April 2005. Northpac however 
continued to build on the site where the workers were laid off but the effects of D3 General Contracting going into receivership were immediate and dramatic. 
One of the workers a whanaunga of mine from up north was evicted from his home and one of his mates a whanaunga of my colleague Mr Te Ururoa Flavell Rawiri Iti—52 years of age with four kids and six mokopuna—got dumped on the scrap heap. Iti later told the media: “ ’cause most of us are Maori we’ve been through it all before in New Zealand back in 1992. We know the effects this has on people and their families both physically and mentally.” 
During the course of the industrial action Northpac offered a one-off payment of $25000—one-tenth of what was owed—and tried to bribe one of the workers with a $5000 payment to move the picket line from in front of the office. 
Union spokesman Steve Keenan said the situation was the same as that caused by the industrial relations policies that had forced his family to leave New Zealand in the first place: “In New Zealand I was getting $19 an hour plus overtime rates but when the laws were changed in 1991 and we went onto individual bargaining contracts I ended up with $9 an hour and no overtime … and that’s after fourteen years’ service!”. 
This story is not just about 20 Maori workers fighting for their rights in Sydney. It should also be a warning to us here at home to be wary of legislation that results in vulnerable workers being threatened: workers made vulnerable when an employer sells or transfers his business; workers who lose a long-term contract to in-house employment; workers who face the loss of terms and conditions and loss of income as a result of changes that arise when a business gets sold. 
These are real problems—problems happening right now as low-paid workers lose their jobs every week. These problems are so current that as we speak unions representing 500 workers in supermarket centres all around the country are in mediation to prevent Progressive Enterprises from bringing in contractors to do the work of the locked out workers. The National Distribution Union and the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union are filing on behalf of workers who service up to 150 Countdown Foodtown and Woolworths stores—that is about half of all of our supermarkets. All this is going on despite the fact that engaging other workers to perform the work of union members involved in industrial action is supposed to be illegal under the Employment Relations Act. 
It is a fast and furious world out there and restructuring situations and contracting change-overs are becoming part of our employment reality. This bill aims to make it clear that under the Act workers have a right to transfer their employment terms and conditions. The recent decision of the Employment Court in  
Gibbs and others 
 v 
 Crest Commercial Cleaning  
showed that the provisions of the current Act were not clear enough. Hopefully this bill will tidy that up. 
Without this amendment vulnerable workers can lose their jobs or have changes imposed on them—such as changed hours of work or increased workloads with associated stress—when there is a contract change. The Maori Party believes that this bill will help the many Maori workers and their whanau who are regularly affected by changes in contract relationships. We should not need to be reminded that the impacts of these changes can have serious consequences for workers and their whanau. 
The Service and Food Workers Union reckons that changes in employment conditions impact hugely on workers with low incomes forcing them to juggle a whole series of other balls—like whanau commitments childcare shopping partners’ employment and other jobs. Workers faced with reduced income caused by changes to their employment conditions are being forced to take up more jobs just to pay the bills. Job stability goes on the line and relationships get strained at home and the Service and Food Workers Union says that people lose their jobs just because of the stress of trying to cope. 
Our support for this bill is also in line with our policy of supporting and where necessary improving the Employment Relations Act 2000 to safeguard the rights of workers. One of the recommendations from the select committee process that we took particular note of was the proposal to amend the Act so that employees could have the right to bargain for redundancy entitlements. That would enable workers to negotiate redundancy when the job ends or it is restructured or for other reasons. 
We also accept the proposal from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that although entitlements like parental leave and holidays can continue employment complaints should not carry over to a new employer. Workers have to move on and pick up the new job without the old hassles. 
Quite simply this is a sensible bill. It is about ensuring clarity transparency and fairness and on those grounds the Maori Party is happy to support it. 
I make just a little postscript to the story of the boys in Sydney. After 3 months of picketing and the suffering that goes with that the 20 workers won back their full entitlement—more than $250000 in wages holiday pay and severance pay—because the legislation was in place to ensure that their right to bargain for redundancy payments could be enforced. 
What will make an even happier ending to that story though is having the same legislation in place here so that we can ring them up and tell them to come on home because it is all good here in the hood as well. We can say that back home there are plenty of jobs and good employment conditions and the mighty Maori Party is in the House “defending Maori rights and advancing Maori interests for the benefit of the whole nation”. Well one out of three ain’t bad I suppose—a bit more work on the jobs and conditions of employment to go. Kia ora tatou.