Employment Contracts (Employment Rights) Bill
- Introduction
JIM ANDERTON (Sydenham): I move, That leave be given to introduce the Employment Contracts (Employment Rights) Bill. I want to deal with some of the defects in the present Employment Contracts Act and the response that I think this Parliament should make to them, and I hope my colleague the member for Auckland Central will be able to deal with some of the detailed clauses in the Bill at a later date.
There are some fundamental defects in the current Employment Contracts Act. It is based on the myth of employer-employee equality, which, of course, does not exist in the real world. In most situations, conditions of employment are mainly---and often entirely---determined by employers, with no genuine process. Employers present workers with contracts---usually individual but sometimes misnamed collective---and require workers to accept them. Sometimes this is done with overt pressure, such as threatening to deny people promotion, transfer, or wage increases. The Act fails to promote collective bargaining and therefore breaches the conventions of the ILO. The ILO renewed its criticism of the Employment Contracts Act on this point in its final report on the complaint laid by the Council of Trade Unions.
The Employment Contracts Act provides escape routes to employers from collective bargaining. Employers are not required to bargain collectively with their own staff to enter multi-employer contracts or even to bargain in good faith. The basic civil rights of an employee in the workplace are not protected, access by union representatives is still under attack, and employers try to avoid dealing with authorised representatives of workers.
The Alliance policy is for a full review of industrial relations legislation with the aim of putting in place a law that encourages collective bargaining, guarantees workers basic rights in the workplace, and puts in place a fair pay-fixing system. This Bill does not do all those things but it does address the worst aspects of the Employment Contracts Act that we have at present. It contains a series of amendments to the Employment Contracts Act rather than being a complete replacement for it. In that sense it is a realistic Bill drafted with the composition of the present Parliament in mind.
It should be possible for this Parliament to accept this Bill. We believe that the Bill reflects the majority of public opinion better than the Employment Contracts Act does in its unmodified and seriously defective present form. If passed, this Bill would make a real and immediate difference to the workplace situation of many thousands of workers. People would see Parliament working for them rather than merely entrenching the power of those who are already strong. The Bill reflects the criticisms that have been made of the Act by the ILO and it reinforces the direction of recent court decisions, which have tended to soften some of the worst effects of the Employment Contracts Act. But we should not allow the courts to have to do this, nor should we wait for them to do it; this Parliament should do it. ' I want to give some examples to those members who may not realise how serious the effect of the Employment Contracts Act is in the workplace at the present time. I visited Romanos Pizza Co. late last year and the employer is still refusing to negotiate a collective contract, even though the employees want one. In 1994 the union sought and got an interim injunction preventing the employer from going behind the union's back. The employer now recognises the union, but only its acting for each worker individually. It will not accept collective negotiations or a collective contract. The union argues that settling a contract for one worker affects the possible outcome for others who are also union members so that they have to negotiate collectively.
Pay rates at Romanos range from $6.50 an hour, which is $300 a week, less tax, to the highest rates of pay, $8.25 to $8.50, which is $330 to $340 a week, less tax. The hours of work are not guaranteed. There are a certain number of weekly hours, but there is no daily predictability whatever. Under the contract that workers are required to sign, they can be required to work 12 hours on one day, and 2 hours the next day. Some workers have been sacked for working only 8 hours on a given day. The substantive argument arising from the interim injunction that was granted by the court is yet to be heard. But the union will be seeking an instruction for the employer to negotiate collectively and in good faith, which he refuses to do.
I mention the Taylor Preston meat processing plant. This is a large site in the Ngauranga Gorge. It has 600 staff, and it runs four shifts 7 days a week. It is run, according to union representatives, like the Paremoremo prison. Management watch the workers via closed-circuit television. Workers are filmed and timed when talking to the union. The delegate has been banned from using the phone to ring the union. The union has about 200 members and it has sought to meet with them on the site. Union organiser Ken Findlay was arrested recently for entering the slaughter board. The company is trying to confine union officials to designated meeting-rooms. This will be tested shortly at a hearing of the Employment Court. This action clearly appears to be in breach of the Employment Court's decision on rights of access in the Southern Pacific Hotels case.
The New Zealand Educational Institute has reported that the Government is attempting to put principals, assistant principals, and deputy principals on to individual employment contracts, even though most of them want collective contracts. The Government is trying to foster a management culture offering, through the State Services Commission, more money to those who accept individual contracts. It is 5 percent this year and 5 percent next year subject to performance evaluation, compared with the 2 percent this year plus the $600 payment offered to those principals who will not accept an individual contract.
Kindergarten teachers are losing the ability to have a national contract. Some individual kindergartens are opting not to join a national collective contract. The issues are pay rates, no rise in wages for kindergarten teachers for 4 years, working alongside untrained staff, attempts to reduce holidays, and the lengthening of working-hours by making the teaching sessions longer. These rights are denied by the Act---the right of workers to choose to be in a collective contract and the right of workers to pursue a multiple-employer contract.
Churtonleigh Retirement Home was picketed by the Service Workers Union just before Christmas last year. The employer agreed to collective bargaining but refused a collective contract. It refused to consider pay rates paid by similar homes, it made a take it or leave it offer, and it then refused to negotiate. Staff were rung up at home by the principal nurse, who offered pay increases to some people and threatened others with a loss in shifts. No pay offer was made to the union delegate until March 1995. Workers were left with no legal remedy other than strike action. Some have now signed individual contracts, and $250 was paid to selected staff members for signing an individual contract. The pay rate there is $8.60 an hour. There are no weekend penal rates. The unions sought $9 an hour, which is 40c above that. Other homes, which do not pay penal rates, pay an hourly rate of about $9.50.
In February this year McDonald's, which has had a collective contract since the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, announced that it was no longer interested in collective contracts. It had received advice from a company called Teesdale Meuli, who are industrial law advisers. Over a 3-week period McDonald's held crew meetings around the country to explain the new system. The union was not admitted to these meetings. Terms of employment were to be incorporated into company policy with an annual review of pay. No opportunity for negotiation was to be made over terms of employment. In effect the whole of McDonald's workforce is now on individual contracts, and that is 5,000 staff. This was all done despite the union being authorised to act as the bargaining agent for members of the union working for McDonald's. The company has bypassed the bargaining agent. That is clearly against the Employment Contracts Act.
These things need to be dealt with by this Parliament rather than by court actions just stacking up against employers who want to exploit working people.
In March 1995 workers at Pizza Hut were offered a take it or leave it package of a 1.33 percent pay increase, with a further 2 percent increase in December of this year, plus youth rates. There will be no union fee deductions. In the new Delta outlets there will be no collective contract. No negotiations were permitted. The offer was made directly to the staff, even those who were union members.
The decisions of the Employment Court are starting to extend the right of workers, but these decisions are being resisted by some employers. This is the role of Parliament; it is not the role of courts. The legislation coming from this Parliament should be clear. It seems to me that the Government has promised delivery under the Employment Contracts Act, which has clearly been breached in reality.
Qantas Airways has refused to negotiate on the existing collective contract. Staff have been presented with a new contract containing cuts, removal of penal rates, and the lengthening of a standard working week from 37 hours to 40 hours. People who are seeking transfers, promotions, or new jobs have been told that acceptance of the new contract is a condition of getting those transfers or different positions.
The ILO has said to the Government and the country that the Employment Contracts Act does not promote collective bargaining, as international labour law requires. On the basis of evidence presented to it, the ILO committee concluded: "A significant number of collective bargaining problems have arisen and continue to arise in practice from the point of view of compliance with ILO principles on freedom of association." The Government claimed that that report was a vindication of its Employment Contracts Act. I would hate to be around when the committee was being critical of it. The ILO committee said that "Bargaining should be in good faith." It said that "Employers should not try to bypass the authorised representatives of working people."
It called for the repeal of section 63(e) in the Employment Contracts Act. This is the provision banning industrial action in support of multi-employer agreements. It called for tripartite talks over the future of industrial legislation. Of course, such talks have not occurred. The provisions in our Bill are along the lines sought by the ILO.
Mr Max Bradford: Rubbish!
JIM ANDERTON: The member says "Rubbish." What the member does not know about banking is only compounded by what he does not know about industrial relations. The provisions in our Bill are along the lines sought by the ILO. The House should be aware that if it votes against this Bill, it is not just thumbing its nose at the ILO. I know that some members on that side, by what they have said, hold that organisation in contempt. Recently, at the social summit in Copenhagen, this Government brought New Zealand into disrepute by trying to get removed from any discussion the labour provisions under the Employment Contracts Act.
If this Act is allowed to continue it will bring industrial relations in this country into international disrepute. New Zealand will be seen clearly by the international community to be not upholding justice for working people. It is about time that some of the issues, which are happening in the real world under this Employment Contracts Act, were addressed by this House.
There are serious injustices. Even if the Government claims that the benefits of the so-called recovery are out there for all to see and feel, the truth is that the Employment Contracts Act has provided a mechanism by which ordinary working people can be refused access to the fruits of that recovery. In fact, their conditions and pay can be worsened at a time of economic recovery.
Steve Maharey: So-called.
JIM ANDERTON: So-called recovery. The reality is that people are earning less money and are working harder under worse conditions. By the Government turning its mind from that reality, it is refusing to face the circumstances that so many of the citizens it claims to be representing are now facing.
I appeal to members of the Government, who proclaim from time to time their concern about social justice and about the ordinary needs of working people, to make a contribution to this Parliament as a representative body by voting for the introduction of this Bill. It needs to get into a select committee so that people like myself and others can hear evidence from people at the coalface about what is really happening in industrial relations and about working conditions, so that we can get a humane, sensitive, and compassionate set of industrial laws that will again start to make New Zealand the kind of country and society that people can be proud of and that working people can see they have a just right to belong to. That is the challenge to Parliament tonight.