Lubeck MarjaMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Look I can understand and I completely agree with the member Denise Lee that there's some apprehension from some businesses all through the country but that's because they've had the Scott Simpson scaremongering sideshow go all through New Zealand and tell completely the wrong information about what this bill does.I know the member Denise Lee asked the question about the 30 days and I can actually clarify. I have done this a few times now with businesses with employer representation and with chambers of commerce and they've all said Oh now I understand what this bill does. That was never told to me when the National Party representatives came to talk to me."What the 30 days does is it covers new employees under an existing collective agreement. Now listen up because you might learn something. What happens is that the terms and conditions from a collective agreement are extended to new employees so that the employer cannot offer anything less. What happens when you offer anything less to a new employee? You are eroding the collective agreement's terms and conditions. So ultimately as more and more people are joining on an inferior contract—an individual contract—that collective agreement becomes less valuable.The problem is that nobody in this House would have received their sick leave provisions received their holiday provisions received a 40-hour working week or received weekends without unions. Unions got the members in this House all of those provisions. So stop slagging off unions because they are actually holding the line not only for their members but for all of New Zealand and all workers.It's a huge privilege to be speaking on this bill. I was a law student during the time of the undermining changes the National Government made between 2010 and 2015. I would never have dreamt that I would be standing here in this House one day to support a bill that is reversing all of those changes. Nine years of eroding employment conditions and today we're seeing the end of it.We've heard from the other side that the payoff evidently has something to do with the increase of jobs. It's mentioned a few times. "Look at our employment. Look at how many jobs there are." It's not just about the amount of jobs; it's about the quality of the jobs. We don't actually want people to have insecure part-time low-paid jobs. Exactly as my colleague Jan Tinetti points out it's about conditions. We don't want low-paid part-time insecure jobs. We need to improve the quality and the wage level of that work and that is exactly what this bill is doing. This bill is tackling the collective bargaining which will strengthen the union rights in the workplace.Now when these changes were made the National Government really undermined collective bargaining and you have to wonder why they actually did that. Well they did it because that way employers were allowed to avoid collective bargaining and collective bargaining lifts wages and conditions. So the result of the changes that they made over those years was actually a reduction of pay and conditions for all of our workers. "Workers" is not a dirty word. I think it was Jacqui Dean who said "Oh I'm not going to say the word 'workers.'" These are hard-working decent people putting in a fair day's work and they should be getting a fair day's pay and that's what this bill is doing.Over the years we've seen less of a share of the growth in our economy go to working people. At the moment I think it sits at about 40 percent. That's roughly 20 percent less than those dreadful 1970s that the other side is talking about. Minister Iain Lees-Galloway mentioned it already: 1 percent—1 percent only—of people on collective agreements did not get a pay increase last year. That is versus 45 percent of people on non-collective agreements who missed out on a pay increase. So the answer is really simple: it pays to be with a union. For that very good reason this bill is promoting collective bargaining and strengthening unions' rights in the workplace.Some people might have noticed my badge. Yesterday during the committee stage of the bill the member for Clutha-Southland said he had googled my name. At first I thought it was a bit freaky but he actually said he had discovered I was a union delegate—as if that's something to be ashamed of. Yes I was a union delegate before I became a union president for four consecutive terms. I'm a solidarity member of E tū and a proud member of the union.What the comments of the other side really clearly show to us is that they have no idea what it means to give service to working people. A large part of being a union delegate or being in the union as an organiser or an official actually means that you're standing up for the colleagues and for their working rights and that means that you are resolving a lot of the workplace problems as a delegate with your colleagues before they escalate. As a union delegate that often means long hours all hours of the day and you're missing time with your family. That is all because the person that is too vulnerable to speak up needs your support. So others are quiet and the delegate speaks up.I know that the member for Coromandel spoke about greater protection for union members—such a bad thing! Delegates standing up for vulnerable people should not have their jobs put at risk for doing so and it's great to see that in this bill we have added protections to protect union members from discrimination just because they are union members. I find it actually really shameful that this perspective is shown from the other side to people who are giving so much to serving others.It's also really good to see the paid time for union delegates in this bill but again the activities need to relate to the employment of employees by the employer. So it's not just anything they're doing; it's actually beneficial for their employer as well. I said before unions are holding the line for the members and it's called a spill over effect because all workers in New Zealand benefit from the union-negotiated wage increases and wage trends.We actually had quite a few submissions to our Education and Workforce Committee—455 submissions and we heard 86 of those in person in Wellington and Auckland. The Council of Trade Unions talked really well about that spill over effect. They said that the changes which this bill reverses deliberately aimed to weaken the bargaining strength of collectivised workers in the sure knowledge it would result in lower wages and conditions and that is what has occurred over the last years. This not only impacts unionised workers but has a spill over effect on all workers because they benefit from union-negotiated wage increases and wage trends. These negotiated wage increases set the standard for many other jobs.There's a few other things that—[Phone rings] Is that my time is it? There are a few other items in this bill I'd like to clarify. We have the 90-day trial for example. There was no evidence whatsoever at the time when the National Party without a select committee process pushed that law through that it would create extra jobs—no evidence at all—and no evidence to this day because we asked the officials if it created extra jobs. All we had as Jacqui Dean pointed out were stories—stories of how this is a good thing—and that's really all we had on that.Now the duty to conclude is a really important one and I'd like to talk a little bit about that. There was a Supplementary Order Paper on that. Basically the current situation with the duty to conclude is that an employer can go through the motions. They can just meet with the union and meet with workers and after a few meetings they say "Look we can't come to an agreement. This is all too hard." They call it surface bargaining and they can walk away from the bargaining table. They don't have to do anything else but what they can do—because for the next few weeks the union can't renegotiate—is they can offer individual agreements to all of the workforce. They can pick them off one by one give them individual employment agreements and kill that collective agreement.These of course are the bad employers that we have in New Zealand. They are in the minority. The vast majority treat their employees well. They look after them—they're their family—but that small amount of bad employers completely erodes and undermines those good employers.So it's completely a good thing and I don't understand why the National Party keep saying it isn't but that is probably because they have no idea about industrial relations about employment law or in fact about this bill. Jacqui Dean again referred to the MECA and said that if a person has to be forced on to a MECA—well actually it's called a collective agreement. The MECA also is not a "multi-employer collective Act" like some people have referred to it as. It's a multi-employer collective agreement. And as the member for Northcote said "If your employer is on a collective agreement the MECA still applies and you cannot opt out of it."—that doesn't even make any sense.So the scary thing is that these are people that are telling some of the businesses that might be watching completely incorrect information. I'm quite happy to meet with anybody out there that would like some real clarification and I'm sure that at the end they will applaud this bill. It's good for them. It's good for their workers.That's 10 minutes already so I have a few more things to say but I'll finish off by saying thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a fantastic bill. I'm absolutely honoured to be standing here as a proud union member seeing this bill come into action. Thank you Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. Thank you team."