Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe Madam Deputy Speaker. It is with immense privilege that I stand here to take a call on the Employment Relations Amendment Bill—Hon Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I do apologise to the member for interrupting her as she's getting under way but could we just clarify that this is a split call?DEPUTY SPEAKER: I beg your pardon. It is a split call. It's a five-minute call with a bell at one minute and a National call for the second five minutes.MARJA LUBECK: In 2011 I was halfway through my employment law papers and at the same time the then National Government introduced some changes to the Employment Relations Act. I remember at the time thinking they were a real attack on working people and also as a second-year law student I felt that they were completely disregarding the object of that Act which actually states that you should recognise and also address the imbalance in the employment relationship—the power of it. So I never would have thought that six years later I would be standing here talking about a bill that is going to make such a huge difference in the lives of working people and not just working people but their families their communities their representatives indeed and their employers as well.Now I know there's been a lot of scaremongering going on about how these changes are going to take us back to the 1970s but actually these changes are a sign of us being a very modern Government because they will give us an opportunity to improve modernise and innovate the workplace. In effect the good employers won't even notice any difference because they are already doing all these things. They will actually find that these changes will benefit them because what it will do is it'll make it much harder for bad employers to go into unfair competition. But the bad employers the ones who have boosted their incomes and profits by raiding the pay packages of their workforce they are the ones who are going to feel the impact of these changes. So this bill is the first step in righting a lot of these wrongs. This bill is about restoring some basic human rights of workers: the right to be treated fairly and with dignity and the right to feel respected and to be valued.The previous member had asked us about an example of the rest and meal breaks saying that it was all made up so I've got a little example here that is factual—you can check it. As soon as the changes to rest and meal breaks became law instead of having two paid breaks in the morning and in the afternoon and an unpaid break in the middle of the day production run times were increased. So there would be only one break—one paid and one unpaid. This means longer hours on the production chain standing on concrete in gumboots doing repetitive and strenuous movements. These people I'm talking about work either in freezing temperatures in the chillers or in extreme heat in the slaughter and boning rooms. They have their arms and hands above their heads for hours on end and there's heavy lifting that takes its toll on longer runs. Toilet and water breaks are actively discouraged because it means stopping the chain.The outcome for these workers is fatigue and more injuries and it gets worse as the day wears on because with overuse of backs shoulders and wrists and with fatigue there's also an increased risk of knife wounds. This is an example of the meat industry and the Talley's AFFCO workers are looking forward to rest and meal breaks being restored as soon as possible. There are plenty more where this came from.A comment was also made the other day about it all being about jobs and that the first priority is just about having a job. How uninspiring—having a job. Never mind what the pay and conditions are don't worry about job security minimum standards health and safety—working people should just be grateful they have a job. Well some of them have more than a job. They have two or three and that's because one job doesn't pay the bills. They are not choosing to take more than one job; they are doing it because they need to survive.Now there's an E tū member and she's a cleaner. She works three shifts between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. Her husband does the mid-afternoon and evening shift and he's a security guard. They're both on the minimum wage. They work their butts off and they still can't afford to pay for their family of two children. They can't even spend time with their family. So when you're talking about how it's all about this job creation and how wonderful it is that we have all these jobs these are the people you're hurting. They're hard-working Kiwis—people that can't get ahead. We have people that put their heart and soul into jobs looking after our most vulnerable in healthcare in disability and after 19 or 20 years in their jobs they're still on $17 an hour.Now this is what this bill is addressing. Yes our working people are not commodities. They are first of all people. They have human rights. They have lives outside work. This bill is a good start to changing that and I commend this bill to the House.