Lees-Galloway Iain: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Employment Standards Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 08 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9495. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It has been a while—thank you Mr Chairman. I would like to speak to a clause that I actually do not think has been addressed in the debate at all so far this evening and that is clause 86A of the bill—not something that is going to be amended by any of the Supplementary Order Papers this evening. What clause 86A does is it amends section 65 of the Employment Relations Act which relates to the form and content of individual employment agreements. It amends section 65(2)(a)(iv) which says that an individual employment agreement must include “an indication of the arrangements relating to the times the employee is to work;”. That is a very weak statement about having the actual hours that the employee is going to work included in their employment agreement.Going back to when we first were trying to think of ways to address the issue of zero-hour contracts some amendments around that particular clause of this bill were actually what we initially started working with. What clause 86A does is it actually adds some new words to that clause so it will now read that the individual employment agreement must include “any agreed hours of work specified in accordance with section 67C or if no hours of work are agreedan indication of the arrangements relating to the times the employee is to work;”. That is considerably stronger than what we have in the current legislation although if I had my way we would probably strengthen it a bit more than what we have got.What we have now got is a much stronger indication—really a much stronger hint to employers—that the default position in employment agreements ought to be that hours of work are included. The hours of work should be agreed between the employer and the employee and those hours of work should be included. Later in the bill new section 67C(2) in clause 87 says that “hours of work includes any or all of the following: (a) the number of guaranteed hours of work: (b) the days of the week on which work is to be performed: (c) the start and finish times of work: (d) any flexibility in the matters referred to in paragraph (b) or (c).”I think about the dispute that is going on between Bunnings and its employees who are members of the FIRST Union and that is all around this matter. It is something I guess finer than the zero-hour contract issue: it is the issue of being able to mutually agree what their days and hours of work and their start and finish times should be. What Bunnings wants to do is basically to be able to dictate what those are. At the moment that is mutually agreed between the employer and the employee; Bunnings wants to shift that balance of power to the employer and away from the employee.Although these changes in the legislation certainly take us in the right direction and give a much clearer indication to the employer that those hours of work—those start and finish times—and the days of work ought to be in the employment agreement it does not say that they must be. In fact actually the amendment that I would have liked to see would not have said that they must be but that where practicable they should be to make it absolutely clear that that is the default position for employment agreements particularly individual employment agreements. Collective employment agreements will have this sorted because unions will bargain that for their members. It is the individual employment agreements where people are having to bargain for themselves that really concern me. Although this is stronger—and I am pleased to see any strengthening no matter how incremental it is—we could have gone further.I will be watching very closely to see what the impact of the changes introduced by clause 86A will be: how those actually work out in practical terms and how they are implemented. Certainly if we do not see the response from employers that I am sure the Government also hopes to see from these changes then we need to look at something a little bit stronger than what we have in there.I would also like to just briefly speak to Denise Roche’s Supplementary Order Paper 151 because I think Denise Roche is the only person who has spoken to her Supplementary Order Paper so far.