Gosche Mark: Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15528] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It is interesting to follow Heather Roy’s speech. I suggest that the ACT party will vote one for one against the bill because the so-called leader of that party has been on a rest break for most of the last year or two and hardly ever attends Parliament. I think he is confused. He thinks we work for 30 minutes and have the rest of the day off. That is not what the bill proposes but I suppose the previous speaker at least appears in the House and in select committee from time to time so she would have to vote against the bill in due conscience. 
The bill is interesting because it follows on from some important moves by this Government last week—the increase in the minimum adult wage to $12 an hour and the change in the youth rates so that we now have a new entrant rate whereby after 200 hours young people will move on to the minimum adult wage of $12. The bill comes also the week after the contribution to KiwiSaver for employees by their employer. It comes about a year after people received the extra week’s leave. 
Also the bill follows other important changes to industrial law like the vulnerable workers legislation that we put through as an amendment to the Employment Relations Act which fortunately is there at a time when some of those people out there—not imaginary people as the ACT party would have it but real employers—are doing terrible things to workers in our hospitals. Spotless Healthcare Services is the company I am talking about on this occasion. It cannot honour a deal to pay workers $14.25 an hour to work in our hospitals to clean cook and do orderlies’ duties. Although that ACT member down the back of the Chamber speaks with some honesty in saying she is against unions and workers having rights that is the sort of thing that is happening out there and it is not imaginary. Those workers were locked out by their employer for 9 days last year. They are due a pay increase that has been funded by the Government but their employer is still to pay up. Their employer is still refusing to give those workers what they are due and the ACT party wonders why we have to have legislation that would give minimum rights to workers to have a break during their working day for a meal and a break in-between to have a cup of tea or a rest. It is just common sense. It is just sensible to have minimum codes within employment to make sure that those bad employers—and sadly there are some of which Spotless would be one of the worst out there—actually know there is a law and if they break it there will be some penalties for breaking it. 
My colleague Sue Moroney talked of such matters and I congratulate her and the Hon Steve Chadwick on the work they put in to make sure that this type of legislation comes into place. There are examples out there every day of the week coming to the attention of MPs and unions which represent a percentage of the workforce but certainly not the majority of it where employers either knowingly or unknowingly refuse to allow people to take a break. Those breaks are necessary for health and safety purposes. Also as we have a shortage of labour in this country it is necessary that employers offer proper working conditions to members of the workforce if they want to retain them. 
We are very familiar with the arguments that some industries have about workers having a break of this sort. The bus industry as an example has argued long and hard not only against this type of legislation but against driving hours legislation which was put into place in transport legislation to ensure the safety of the person who is driving and the other people on the road. It is not an imagined problem. It is not something that occurs just because it is election year as members opposite have said it does. This bill has been thought about and put together over a very long period of time. It actually became a Government bill because it had not made it through the ballot process of members’ bills. It is also a manifesto promise made by the Labour Party and we deliver on them. We do not break those promises. We do not ignore them; we take them seriously. 
In terms of the bill providing facilities and breaks for employees who wish to breastfeed or express milk I recall before I came into Parliament if my memory serves me right in Samoa in the mid-1990s the Samoan Government had a very large overseas company coming in to set up manufacturing and it saw fit to say that one of the conditions the company would have to comply with was the ability for employees to have proper facilities and time for breastfeeding. A country like Samoa which in terms of development is a long way down the track before it catches up to New Zealand saw fit to do that. It was not that there was a shortage of labour and therefore it had to do this to make sure that people would work; far from it. Its health Minister at the time told me he saw this as a hugely important aspect for the health of babies in Samoa. So if it is good enough for Samoans certainly it is good enough for New Zealand workers for New Zealand babies and for New Zealand families. 
Again this bill is about this Government looking to the future for our families. We are now very much a country that relies on both parents working. Once upon a time in my days of growing up in New Zealand one could almost guarantee that dad was out at work mum was at home and the question of breastfeeding babies was irrelevant in that respect. Nowadays in the community that I represent there is a huge number of women who have their babies and very shortly afterwards go back to work—for all sorts of reasons. For many of them in low-paid work it is economic reality economic necessity. If we want to have those women’s children and families brought up properly with the best possible outcomes in terms of health it just makes sense that these types of minimum requirements are placed in the law. 
I am looking forward to the ACT party putting forward an amendment that says that 10 minutes is not long enough. We will see whether ACT actually is serious with its words because it has the opportunity to do that; if not on the select committee it could get one of its mates to make a submission along those lines. If its members cannot even be bothered doing that then when the bill is reported back and also in the Committee of the whole House they can get up and make an impassioned speech to say that 10 minutes is not long enough and that it should be 30 minutes because that is what I heard the ACT member say. 
This bill is about making sure that the gaps in the law that were created by the previous National Government back in those days in 1981 and 1991 when it ripped out the legislation that put these things in place are being restored. There has been ample time for employers to say they would take a voluntarist approach to this issue. Nobody has stopped them putting it into their individual contracts which the vast majority of New Zealand workers are employed under. Who said they could not? Why have they not done that? Education and voluntarism are things that I know we will hear a lot about on the select committee from employer organisations and no doubt from Opposition members. My question is this. If in 1991 the law was changed and people have been able to have these things in their collective or employment agreements ever since then why have they not done that? If it is good common sense why have they not done it? 
I have seen far too many young people come to me and show me their contracts of employment. I have looked through those contracts and there is no mention of rest breaks or meal breaks. Employers have been given 8 9 or in this case many more years than that because it is 2008 and it is a long time since 1991 or 1981 when the laws were changed the award system was taken away and the Factories and Commercial Premises Act which previously allowed for breaks was taken away. It is a very long time for the voluntarist approach to have worked. It has not worked in many many cases so we have put into law a minimum code that will give workers a condition that most New Zealanders would say is proper and very few people would be against. I see no harm at all in having those provisions in a law as this bill proposes.