Mr Speaker,
The Green Party is pleased to be supporting the passage of the second reading of the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill through the House this afternoon.
Despite the enormous amount of work that went into drafting and considering the Employment Relations Act in 2000, it is inevitable that a number of issues would eventually need tidying up, once the Act was put into practice.
However, despite the usual protestations of many employer and business submitters, I don't think either the original ERA or this amending Bill are in any way radical or extreme. I am sure the economy of New Zealand will not collapse as a result of the introduction of bargaining fees or the protection of vulnerable employees' interests in some change of employer situations.
In the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee process this time round, I was particularly struck by the number of submitters from the employer community who started off by saying, that really the Employment Relations Act is working pretty well, and ' if it ain't broke don't fix it', but then went on to warn that businesses would go under or leave the country, as a result of the draconian measures proposed in this Bill. What these submitters seem to have forgotten is that all the same warnings of imminent disaster were made in 2000, often by the same organisations, and as a result of their crying wolf once too often, the power of their prophecies has been somewhat diminished.
All that the Employment Relations Act and this amending Bill are doing is taking some small and useful steps towards redressing the imbalance of power created by the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act and the benefit cuts in 1991. There is a lot more that should be done to rectify this situation, than the Government has deemed possible with this Bill, for example in the area of protection of low paid and casual workers, and stronger safeguards against freeloading. But, of course, we do support the Bill's intent and direction, as far as it goes.
The Green Party is particularly pleased to see that, finally, some protections will be put in place for certain groups of employees whose continuity of employment and conditions are threatened when the business they work for is restructured or sold. In 2000 we tried really hard, alongside some of our union colleagues, to make sure what was then called the 'transfer of undertakings' clause was retained in the Employment Relations Act, but unfortunately at that time, Labour saw fit to beat a retreat in the face of big business pressure.
I commend the Government for sticking to its principles a little more strongly this time around, and it is great to see that people who work in cleaning, food catering, care taking, orderly and laundry services in the public and aviation sectors, and those who work in the cleaning and food catering services in the private sector, will at least now have an arrangement in place which will go a long way towards safeguarding their wages and conditions when their jobs are sold out from under them, or otherwise restructured.
A second area of particular interest to the Green Party with this Bill has been around the vexed question of how to do more to prevent non-union members freeloading off their union colleagues in the same workplace. Since the period of mass deunionisation following the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, this has become an entrenched and difficult problem with workers who pay union fees each week, feeling naturally somewhat aggrieved that their colleagues in the same workplace, doing the same or similar work, are often given all the benefits of a collective agreement negotiated by the union, but without ever having to pay a cent towards the costs incurred.
Even research carried out by the Department of Labour itself in 2003, evaluating the short-term impacts of the Employment Relations Act, reported: 'Free riding by individuals on collective terms and conditions has become commonplace in many organisations.' When the Department asked non-union members why they did not join a union, over 65 percent said it was because they could get the benefit without joining.
The Bill, as reported back from the Select Committee, makes welcome but limited progress on this issue, with the introduction of new sections to the Employment Relations Act aimed at preventing the undermining of collective bargaining and agreements, by making it a breach of good faith for an employer to pass on terms and conditions in some circumstances, and in particular when it is clearly the employer's intention to undermine the collective.
The Green Party has also been pleased that the Government has seen fit to go a step beyond this, agreeing that the Employment Relations Act should also be amended to allow for bargaining fee arrangements to be negotiated where both the employer and the union agree, and that non-union employees who do not want to pay a fee or join a union in these circumstances will then have to undertake their own individual negotiation without any kind of automatic pass on. While the amendments around bargaining fees that the Government is putting forward at the Committee stage do not, in our view, go far enough, at least those amendments will be a further small, but significant, step in the right direction.
A third area of this Bill in which the Green Party has taken a particular interest has been the erstwhile Part 2, which repealed the Equal Pay Act 1972 and the Government Service Equal Pay Act 1960, and replaced them with new equal pay provisions. We found ourselves in agreement with many submitters who argued that given all the good work that has been done on equal pay for work of equal value in recent years, it would be a retrograde and undesirable step to make such a legislative change without including pay equity as an essential component. The Green Party felt it would be better just to ditch Part 2 of the Bill, and for the Government to consider the results of the work of the task force on pay and employment equity in drafting up a new and separate Bill covering both equal pay and pay equity. We are pleased that in the end, the Government supported this position, and agreed to delete Part 2. It will be incumbent on all union's, women's groups, and others who continue to fight so hard on this issue to make sure Labour sticks with the statement in the commentary on the Bill: 'The majority looks forward to the development of robust equal pay and pay equity provisions being introduced in the future.' We do need to make sure that this is not put off into some never-never land but remains firmly on Labour's agenda over the coming months.
Another welcome change to the Bill achieved as a result of the Select Committee process has been the improvement to amendments dealing with the implementation of a code of good faith for the public health sector. We are very concerned that the Bill as originally drafted would have undermined all the good work that was happening between health unions and their District Health Board employers on developing a code, and would have given the Minister undue influence when industrial action took place. What we now have is a real improvement with the inclusion of the now agreed upon code in the schedule, and a matching of clauses in this area with other good faith provisions elsewhere in the Bill.
Overall, I commend the Government for being willing to listen to submitters, and for making these and other improvements to the Bill as we have gone along. This is not to say that this Bill is perfect — far from it — but it is a small but useful step towards realising a fairer and more productive industrial relations environment for the benefit of both workers and employers.
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