Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and a real pleasure to take a call in this third reading of the Fair Pay Agreements Bill. Our COVID-19 recovery plan is about investing in our people and fair pay agreements are of course part of that. As we have said often we are building back better and in fact what Minister Grant Robertson usually says is that there is a silver lining on the darkest of clouds when COVID hit us. And at this moment in time we are at that silver lining where we are building back better.Things have to get better because for too long New Zealanders working in critical roles like our bus drivers our cleaners our supermarket workers our aged-care workers our security guards and all those people who worked very hard during a pandemic to keep our country going and to keep us safe haven't had the bargaining power to ensure that they had better wages and conditions. So we've had very long periods in New Zealand where workers did get their fair share but over the last three decades those workers have fallen behind. We heard that very clearly before from Minister Meka Whaitiri—the human cost the cost to our communities—when she spoke about what happened with the workers in the freezing works.I spoke in the second reading about that particular problem. It's a pattern that developed in New Zealand after the start of the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) 1991 and within a few years of the ECA starting New Zealand saw wages and conditions for workers across many industries falling down and reduced significantly and the freezing works were but one example that we heard about today. Opposition MPs shout about the good old times and how well we fared under the previous system. Wasn't it them who invented the term rock star economy" when we in fact had people starving and living under bridges? So that was their rock star economy under the current settings.But one of the consequences of New Zealand's very weak employment protection was that the share of the economic growth went not to the workers; we actually became one of the countries in the OECD that had the lowest share of the pay in 2014. What happened is that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer—actually the poor had to work harder to even stand still. It's actually important to note that even at the time the IMF and the OECD have actually come out and recognised that inequality is bad for social stability and even bad for economic growth. In fact papers were published after the global financial crisis that argued for strengthening of bargaining because it would also strengthen people's terms and conditions. So fair pay agreements (FPAs) will be part of that mahi. FPAs will ensure that parties unions and companies will be able to negotiate a set of industry standards below which it can't be negotiated. So the FPA legislation is going to change things significantly for workers and make sure that workers have fair decent conditions and a voice in the workplace. Over the years that I've been a delegate and a union president and an organiser in the union I've met many people who felt that they didn't have a voice. Now we heard about Opposition MPs who've said that everybody is the same everybody can negotiate a contract and I know we're going to hear more about that. But what they do forget is a fundamental aspect of the Employment Relations Act 2000 is where it's acknowledged that there's an inequality in the power in the employment relationship. That's why we have employment legislation and that's why we need fair pay agreements because the inequality most affects the workers that are more vulnerable and that's especially the case for our Māori for our Pacific peoples for our young people and people with disabilities. They are overrepresented in the occupations that could actually benefit from these FPAs.One of our submitters—Council of Trade Unions Runanga—noted the disproportionate benefits that Māori would receive from FPAs and said that "Given they are particularly affected by a lack of standards they would benefit from a system of better wage fixing than the one we have which has failed them." We heard similar sentiment from the Council of Trade Unions Komiti Pasefika for Pacific peoples.Well workers are mentioned in my very first speech on this important piece of legislation workers like Leava Jess Sui and Gadi. They have suffered under our current system. They don't feel empowered to speak up and they also don't feel they have a say in their working conditions. So the workers are at the centre of this legislation and that's why I want to mention a couple of their stories here in this third reading speech; I'm sure they will be listening.Leava came to us talking about working in excess of 70 hours but after three years in the same job she is still on that casual contract earning not more than minimum wage. She hardly ever sees her family because she works night shifts so when she works her kids sleep and when she sleeps her kids are awake. But it also means she can never help them with their homework she can never help them with their activities she can't take them to church. She is basically never there for them. The company she works for recently lost its tender and they had a different contractor come in. Leava remained with the different contractor but her hours got cut; the workload stayed the same. So again she can't speak up because she has seen with other colleagues what happens when she speaks up.One of her colleagues is Gadi. She is a security guard. She has real mental health issues due to feeling that she has failed as a mother. This is the human cost that we heard Minister Meka Whaitiri talk about. Gadi started to think about suicide and she went to her doctor. She works 12 hours a day five days a week on the minimum wage. It's a rotation. She either works 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. or 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. but there's no training there's no career progression and she describes her life as just being in survival mode.Sui is a security guard who works alone at carparks at railway stations and often she doesn't feel safe. She's casual and it means her roster can change at any moment in time. She may work three hours at the library in Mount Roskill and then she works three hours in Māngere but if the distances are too far and she can't use public transport she basically has to decline the job because she doesn't have a car. She said she can't plan anything in her life because of the uncertainty of her work and always having to be ready because she may be called to work at very short notice. Now all those workers have one thing in common: they work in industries that are trapped in what has been called a race to the bottom. So many of their employers would probably like to pay better and would like to look after them and give them better terms and conditions but they are unable to do so because their competitor offers less and as soon as they offer more they will be out of a job. So in the case of Sui Jess Leava and Gadi their employer ends up cutting costs by cutting their hours but not the amount of work. They make them pay for their own uniforms they take away training opportunities but they are required to do the same workload when their hours are cut. That means the quality of their work suffers and health and safety suffers as well.Now the Minister spoke about our friend Helen Kelly and I once heard Helen Kelly describe this particular problem as a "jobs narrative that is being driven up to hammer any worker who might want to have a voice in the economy or world of work." She told her story like this: "work is a benefit business is the benefactor and workers are merely the beneficiaries. Workers should be grateful for a job; a job is a privilege." Employers should be lauded for the contribution they make to growing economic wealth. But as the Minister has said both parties in this working relationship should be able to reap the benefits of their hard work.So FPAs will help good employers by stopping the race to the bottom and getting undercut by the bad employers. So in the case of Leava the cleaner on 70 hours a week on minimum wage her employer actually wants to do the right thing and like many good employers they want to offer better pay but of course if they do that under the current setting they would be disadvantaged. Without a floor an employer who wants to do the right thing can't do so because to be successful they need to drive down terms and conditions of their workers. I spoke about this in the second reading because it's exactly what happened with the bus tendering process.So FPAs are really common overseas. We see it in Scandinavian countries. Germany and Denmark are examples of countries that have really successfully worked with sector-wide agreements in place and of course did I mention Australia? The Opposition frequently mentioned that the wages are better there. Well Australia has been operating with this system for as long as I can remember.So on flexibility—I googled this term because it's been used frequently by the Opposition. Flexibility says "reduce minimum wages reduce the power of trade unions make it easier to hire and fire workers and support zero-hour contracts in legislation." That's where we would be heading if they were to get another go at it. So I'd like to thank the Minister for taking this important legislation to the House; our officials advisers the Parliamentary Counsel Office and Office of the Clerk for their advice and support; the members on the Education and Workforce Committee; the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group; and all the submitters and all the unions who for so long held the tide back and worked so hard to get us to this point. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Madam Speaker."