Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Labour) : I move, That the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This Government seeks to boost protections for vulnerable workers and breastfeeding mothers by legislating for minimum meal breaks and rest breaks, and the protection of employees who wish to breastfeed their babies at work. These amendments will create minimum standards and a modern workforce in respect of the protection and promotion of infant feeding, and the provision of rest and meal breaks. These amendments also support Government policy concerning the choices of employees, particularly when it comes to their work-life balance and parenting responsibilities. I want to acknowledge the hard work of Sue Moroney MP, whose member’s bill formed the basis for the rest and meal break provisions contained in this bill, and the Hon Steve Chadwick, whose member’s bill on breastfeeding was the basis for the infant-feeding provisions of the bill.

This bill returns to the House with a small number of minor amendments in response to the submissions received by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to clarify the intent of the bill. These amendments include clarification that breastfeeding breaks and facilities are to be provided only where it is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances, and clarification that employers and employees can agree to the times that rest and meal breaks can be observed. Where such agreement cannot be reached, these breaks must be provided in the middle of the work period, where reasonable and practicable. The bill was also amended to entitle employees to one 10-minute rest break, if their work period is 2 hours or more, but not more than 4 hours. As introduced, the bill would have entitled employees to a 10-minute break if their work period was 4 hours or fewer.

This bill reflects the Government’s commitment to the protection of our country’s most vulnerable workers. It upholds Government policy to support the work and caring choices of hard-working New Zealand parents while recognising that breastfeeding provides the best start in life for babies. I want to thank the select committee for its work on the bill, and for its report. I also extend my thanks to all those who took the time to make submissions. I commend the bill to the House.

KATE WILKINSON (National) : The Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill should be a relatively uncontroversial matter. Of course employees should be given meal and tea breaks, and, by all accounts, common sense prevails and this does happen. It is interesting, though, that this bill has been drafted with two relatively separate and discrete issues. The first is to deal with meal and rest breaks, which most thought were already enshrined in law, and arguably are enshrined in the health and safety legislation, but this is for the avoidance of doubt; despite the fact this bill is not necessarily needed, if it merely codifies what is already happening in workplaces then it should be relatively uncontroversial. Secondly, the bill deals with the requirement for the employer to provide breastfeeding breaks and facilities.

When asked why both these matters were contained in the one bill, one Government member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee offered the response that it was to make it politically difficult for National. There was nothing at all in that member’s response about whether the bill was needed, nothing at all about what evidence-based research had been done to establish whether in fact there was a problem—it was merely to try to make it politically difficult for us. There was no evidence of a problem, no regulatory impact statement, just the comment that the Government would love National to vote against the bill and the Government would therefore be able to say that National is against giving meal breaks to workers. We are not against giving meal breaks to workers. Although we are not entirely happy with the bill, we will be supporting it, but we will be looking at some practical amendments to it at the Committee stage.

Submitters on the bill, and in particular I refer to the submissions of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, noted that 95 percent of employers provide paid rest breaks of 10 minutes or longer, and 99 percent of employers provide unpaid meal breaks of 30 minutes or longer. Many considered the bill to be “unnecessary”. They said that it purports to address matters that already happen and are covered in employment agreements, that are consistent within the scope of the existing good-faith negotiation framework, and that the terms are prescriptive, allowing for little or no account of long-established work practices or necessary workplace flexibility.

It is interesting that one of the comments in the explanatory note stated: “These amendments, however, are consistent with the majority of active collective agreements so would be expected to support current practice and not require a significant change to current workplace practices in most instances. They would also provide a minimum code to support provision of breaks in those sectors or workplaces where provisions may be light or restricted and where vulnerable workers are like to be present.” However, as one submitter duly noted, in the private sector collective bargaining coverage is about 10 percent, although it is about 22 percent when taking the public sector into account, and, therefore, using existing collective arrangements to all employers may be seen at least statistically as the tail wagging the dog. The explanatory note further notes; “There is a risk that legislating for rest and meal breaks will be seen as reducing workplace flexibility. A legislative approach also presents a risk in sectors and industries where rest and meal breaks of specified duration and frequency are incompatible with business operations.”

Some submitters in some sectors, including transport, hospitality, tourism, and retail expressed concern that the nature of their business precluded the suitability of an overly prescriptive meal break regime. Flexibility is required. A mountain guide halfway up a mountain cannot take a break, just because the law prescribes it, even though it is impractical for the break to be taken precisely at that moment. A waiter at a restaurant who was in the midst of serving customers would not take a break, or indeed want to take a break, precisely as prescribed in the law. Waiters take their break when it is convenient. They work it out with common sense and communication with their employer, and there is no problem.

The major issue raised in relation to meal breaks and rest breaks was not the provision of these breaks but the prescriptive nature of the timing of the breaks. Although one of the union submitters attempted to suggest that the old awards were much more prescriptive, this proved to be a fallacy. For example, in the old tearooms award it is specifically stated that breaks are taken “at a time convenient to the employer”. It is not the same as “by agreement”; it is not the same as this bill prescribes, and neither is it the same as “reasonable and practicable”. Admittedly, at select committee, the bill was amended in an attempt to make it less prescriptive—less “one size fits all”—by providing that the timing of rest and meal breaks is to be agreed between the employer and the employee. It is only in the event that agreement cannot be reached that the default provisions apply—namely one 10-minute paid break if an employee’s work period is 2 hours or more but not more than 4 hours; one 10-minute paid break and one 30-minute unpaid meal break if the employee’s work period is more than 4 hours and not more than 6 hours; and two 10-minute paid breaks and one 30-minute unpaid meal break if the employee’s work period is more than 6 hours but not more than 8 hours. This bill is still not the perfect solution, but it is an improvement; it at least acknowledges the ability of the employer and the employee to reach an agreement.

Underlying this legislation is the notion of what is reasonable and practicable, and concern was certainly expressed by many of the submitters as to what exactly this would mean and what it would entail to test it—yet another process, no doubt, for employers to have to navigate their way through. There is no clear definition of what is reasonable and practicable. Perhaps some direction can be gained by the similar expression contained in the health and safety legislation, and it is of some—but perhaps not much—comfort that further guidance as to what this all means will be provided in a code of practice. Although a code may assist employers to determine what is reasonable and practicable in their and their employees’ particular circumstances, good law requires certainty. Both workers and businesses need certainty as to what this all actually means, and at the moment there is uncertainty. The proposed code will need to be drafted with a lot of thought and research—a lot more, certainly, than was given to this bill.

The transport industry submitters were most concerned as to the consequences of this bill on their respective operations. Their hours of work and timing of work breaks, etc., are already covered under separate subordinate legislation, such as the work time and logbooks rule and maritime rules. This current bill either duplicates in some part, or conflicts in some part, with such industry-related rules. It should be made clear that the specific transport-related rules should prevail; if not, it is clear from the submissions received that the bill, as drafted, risks imposing substantial additional costs on the industry—such costs, of course, would be passed on to the consumer. This “one-size-fits-all” legislation does not fit the transport industry. We heard from a submitter, NZ Bus, that the increased cost on its operations resulting from this bill would be over $9 million.

At the moment, the bill provides that such other enactment would prevail if the breaks provided under that other enactment are additional and enhanced. But, again, what exactly does that mean? A simple amendment that where there is other legislation—such as the logbook rules, etc.—that provides for breaks, then that other, industry-specific rule should prevail is common sense, yet it should not detrimentally affect the workers and their entitlements to proper breaks. Those rules still have to undergo the scrutiny of industry consultation and final sign-off by the Regulations Review Committee, which affords protection for all concerned. The transport industry submitters wanted a specific exclusion to this bill, providing for their specific regulations and rules to prevail as the preferable and more common-sense solution.

Finally, is this bill necessary? Probably not. Are meal breaks and rest breaks necessary? Without a doubt. This bill is another drop in the dripping tap of employment legislation that imposes more and more regulation and compliance on employers, when there is no real evidence from research showing that there is indeed a problem. National endorses the need for certainty in legislation and for proper protections, to ensure that workers have proper meal breaks and tea breaks, etc. It does not endorse unnecessary legislation, but it does support these protections for workers. Therefore we are supporting the bill, which we hope will include the amendments I have mentioned earlier.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : I can tell those who were listening to the previous speech from Kate Wilkinson that the National Party supports the second reading of the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. It was actually very hard to pick up on that point. National members are trying very hard to support this bill, but they are clearly finding it quite difficult to do so. Kate Wilkinson, National’s spokesperson on labour and industrial relations, spent 10 minutes criticising the bill and saying that it was not necessary, but for some reason—

Hon Trevor Mallard: I bet they won’t support the third reading.

SUE MORONEY: Well, I would like to invite the next National speaker to make a commitment about what the National Party will do at the third reading of this bill.

I am clearly supporting this bill at its second reading. I was very pleased to be one of the two MPs who contributed to the bill as a result of the member’s bill process. Both Steve Chadwick and I had put forward quite similar bills on workplace rights and workplace issues, and to see them combined in this effective way has been a very heartening process to go through.

I was certainly very concerned about ensuring that all workers in New Zealand had the legal entitlement to basic rest breaks and meal periods while at work. I am not sure whether Kate Wilkinson was at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for all of the submissions, but I am sure she heard many of the ones that told us that this is not the case. Sadly, mainly young workers get these basic rights denied to them every day in the New Zealand workplace.

The National Party needs to think very carefully about the rest of its industrial relations platform. We heard from individual workers who told us their stories about not having basic rights—like having rest periods—in the workplace. These very workers will be at risk if the National Party gets its way and has the “90-day Fire at Will Bill” put before the House again. If that legislation is passed, these young, vulnerable workers will get the sack—and this has happened before—for asking for ordinary breaks. Under National’s proposed legislation that situation would be absolutely fine, and there would be no course of redress for those young people in that situation.

Nicky Wagner: Wrong!

SUE MORONEY: It is not wrong, I tell Nicky Wagner. In the select committee we heard from a young man from Hamilton, where I come from, and he had been sacked for taking a 30-minute break during a 12-hour shift. That young man came along—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs): Order, Mr Bennett!

SUE MORONEY: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I have been interrupted for quite a few minutes by the barracking of members opposite, and I would like to have some of that time reinstated.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs): No, I am sorry. There was a sudden amount of noise just now, but the member will please continue.

SUE MORONEY: Thank you. That young man came to tell us his story. He had worked for the Subway restaurant in Hamilton East, which is where I am from. He was doing a 12-hour shift, and in the course of that shift the company was prepared to give him a break of only 10 minutes. It gave him a 10-minute break in a 12-hour shift! After talking to the company to try to get a reasonable break of half an hour, the young worker decided to take his entitlement to a break in any case. I tell Nicky Wagner that the worker was dismissed. He was sacked for daring to take more than a 10-minute break in a 12-hour shift.

I watched the National members on the committee listen to that submission and sympathise with the young man and say how terrible that was. But did that stop them from continuing to put forward a bill that would give that worker no recourse if the same thing happened in the first 90 days of his employment? Under National that worker would be sacked; he would have no recourse. I clearly remember one of the National members sympathising with that young man and saying: “I hope you’re taking a personal grievance, because what happened to you is illegal.” Under this Government that practice is illegal, but under National’s proposals it would be quite lawful for that to happen to the young man.

National members have to think carefully about this issue. Perhaps they are feeling OK about supporting this bill for workers’ rights because they believe that their party intends to take away workers’ rights—all workers’ rights—in the first 90 days of employment anyway. So perhaps that is why they are not too bothered that National is supporting this bill.

Hon David Cunliffe: Will they change their vote later?

SUE MORONEY: We will have to wait and see whether National changes its vote; there are two more opportunities in this House for the bill to be debated. I look forward to continuing to debate this very important issue about basic workers’ rights—the right to take decent breaks while at work and the right to breastfeed while at work. Thank you.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : National supports the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. Can I say that again for the previous speaker, Sue Moroney. National supports the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. We understand that this bill is designed to outline minimum requirements for breaks. It will provide facilities for those women who wish to breastfeed, so far as it is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances.

This is a common-sense bill. That is why we support it, and we support it because it reflects what is already happening out there in the workforce. All employers respect and expect to provide rest and meal breaks for their staff. At the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee there was no evidence to suggest that this was a serious problem. It was also suggested, during the select committee process, that the bill’s provisions are covered elsewhere under health and safety and other industry-specific regulations. I believe that most employers understand the value of looking after employees. They understand the value of providing regular breaks. They understand that value for a multitude of reasons. First of all, refreshed and renewed employees do not tend to have work-related accidents. Refreshed and renewed employees tend to have more community within their workplace. Refreshed and renewed employees tend to be more productive.

I have been an employer for over 25 years myself, and I believe that the key to the successful relationship between an employer and employee is flexibility. National is concerned that this bill may be unnecessarily prescriptive, and that because of its unnecessarily prescriptive nature it could actually have a negative effect. It could reduce the flexibility of the workplace. If it reduced that flexibility, it could make it more difficult for employees and employers to work together.

Businesses, particularly small businesses, need to have a stable and a well-trained workforce to be successful. The churn of the workforce is extremely unsettling, extremely expensive, and extremely unproductive. No employer wants a large churn in employees. The relationship between employer and employee is something to be valued—and I believe it is—and is something to be cherished. Over the years, I have employed a large number of people, the majority of whom have been women, and very often they have been young women with young children. In fact, several of my employees have had babies and gone on to have more than one baby while they worked for me. What tended to happen when they became pregnant was that they would come and see me, and together we would work through how we were going to make it work.

Kate Wilkinson: Common sense.

NICKY WAGNER: It was absolute common sense. We would talk about the work we had to do over the next year and how we would manage it. We talked about how we could make sure the mother, the baby, and the business could work together for a good outcome. It worked really well. In fact, some of my employees used to plan their pregnancy around our busy times at work, because that made it easier for everybody. My philosophy with my employees has always been to say what work has had to be done, and to ask how we were going to manage it. We have got through that work with a mixture of options—like working from home, particularly when babies have been young and needed breast-feeding often. Perhaps working flexible hours in the office has been an option, or employees bringing nannies to the office with them. Often, job-sharing with other people who worked in the company has been an option, but if we were not able to manage that, then we have contracted out part of an employee’s job, for the length of time that employee has been away.

The interesting thing is that one of the best results of this type of arrangement is that employees help each other. I remember that just recently I was at work—working late; it was about 9 o’clock at night—and one of my employees was still there. I said to him: “What on earth are you doing here? It’s 9 o’clock at night; you should be home!”. He said “Well, Tania had to go home early because her son is sick.” I said: “Thank you very much. It’s great that you stayed on. I really appreciate that work you’ve got done, and Tania will appreciate it, too.” He looked me in the eye and said: “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. She covered for me when I had to go home to India for my grandma’s funeral.” And that is what it is all about. That is the flexibility in the workforce, where employees can help each other and employers can work with them.

We have the same situation during the school holidays: some people work from home; some people work in the office. They combine their time and make it work. We just have to get through the workload. People do this not just for the good of their health; it is basically because they can see the benefits. They can see the benefits for employers and employees. There is the benefit to the business of the long service of employees. If people stay in a business for a length of time, they do not lose the skills they develop. They do not lose the business relationships they build. I think that all of us can identify the situation where we ring up a company but the person answering the call is constantly changing. It is frustrating for the customers of a business if they always have to develop new business relationships. If employees are long-serving, the business does not lose its institutional knowledge. That is all retained. It is an enormous waste to a business to lose a female employee just because she is pregnant, just because she wants to breast-feed, or just because she has other family reasons.

Employees also benefit from flexibility in the workplace. They benefit because they have a stable job, they get to have that long-term, stable business relationship with their customers and other workers, and they have the satisfaction of being part of a team.

In conclusion, I say once again that National supports the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. It is basic common sense, and it reflects what is already happening out there in the workforce. Our only concern is that it is very prescriptive and might actually reduce the flexibility of workplaces. We want to make sure that those workplaces can incorporate new ideas, can be creative about how they manage their work, and can be productive about how they make their workplace arrangements. I will be very interested to see the code of employment practice that is to be approved by the Minister, and I can only appeal to the Minister to keep it as flexible as possible. Thank you.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) : I do not intend to take a long call, because I think we are all saying the same things here. From what I can work out, we all support the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. It went through the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee with a great deal of support. It is only a small bill, and a few clauses were amended to make it flexible, fairer, and clearer. New Zealand First takes the attitude to legislation—certainly, to workplace legislation—that it should be to encourage people to work to live, not to live to work, and we think this legislation puts in place some reasonable entitlements for working people.

I have to say that we had our doubts—and I think the National Party also expressed its doubts—about whether we needed such legislation, when the bill first came into the House, but we supported it to go to the select committee. Those doubts were quite quickly dispelled when we listened to some of the submitters. So we think we are doing the right thing, in putting this bill into place. The bill might well need some amendment or adjustment of clauses when we get to the Committee stage, to ensure that it does exactly what we all think it means to do, but that is yet to be seen. At this stage, New Zealand First is supporting this bill.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) : Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou e te Whare. Exactly 100 years ago miners at Blackball on the West Coast were sacked for daring to ask for 30 minutes for a meal break, instead of the 15 minutes their bosses said they could have. And over the last century those mining heroes have been joined by other advocates in the fight for workers’ rights. There have been many struggles to achieve comprehensive rights for workers—annual and public holidays, sick leave, bereavement leave, penalty payments, overtime payments, and even the supply of milk, sugar, and tea. In fact, it could be thought that every possible right a worker might want would already be accepted practice in today’s modern world.

So it came as a bit of a shock to hear that earlier this year, up north, Filipino nurses were being treated like slaves because of debts they were supposed to owe to their recruitment agencies, which forced them to work in desperate conditions, and bonded them for 3 years at low wages. Or there was the situation that John Minto told me about, after he was rung up by a woman working in the departure lounge at Auckland International Airport. She started work every day at 4 30 a.m. and did not get a meal break until just before midday. Naturally, worker turnover is high there, but instead of trying to find out why that is, Work and Income just keeps sending more workers into the fray—mostly women, and mainly Māori, Pacific, or other recently arrived ethnic minorities. I thought we had got rid of these kinds of conditions years ago, but apparently not.

It is, quite frankly, bloody outrageous that in 2008 we even have to have a bill to make employers give workers paid rest breaks and unpaid meal breaks. Bizarre as it may seem, the need for protecting workers’ rights is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. In fact, less than 24 hours ago Te Rūnanga o ngā Kaimahi Māori o Aotearoa, the national representative body of some 60,000 Māori workers, declared its support for the rolling strike action being taken this week by Sky City workers, who are being threatened by moves to roll back working conditions and create a new minimum wage structure. If these horror stories are not enough, here is another one from Laila Harré from the National Distribution Union, who told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about an employee in a high-end dress shop. The employee was told by her boss to use a bucket out the back of the shop, rather than lock up when she needed to go to the toilet.

It makes me ashamed to think that we have some employers in this country who still treat their staff like this in the pursuit of the mighty dollar. But apparently the Service and Food Workers Union reckons that most of the calls it gets are from workers and parents of kids who have just started work, who ask about their rest and meal break entitlements. So yes, the Māori Party supports the provisions for workers to have meal breaks in order to help raise standards for workers in Aotearoa, with the only question being, of course, why it has taken so long. Like many others, I thought that meal breaks were already compulsory, but apparently they are not. Although I know that there are many excellent employers out there doing everything that they can to ensure that their workers are happy and productive, clearly there are also those out there who just do not give a damn.

The other focus of this bill is to allow mothers to breastfeed their children at work. Given that the 2006 census showed that 75 percent of mothers of baby children are now at work just to help make ends meet, this bill is really just simple recognition of that sad reality. Economic circumstances are forcing young mothers to go to work, rather than their being able to choose to go to work to buy luxuries for the house, and this bill allows mothers to feed and nurture their babies in the workplace. Mind you, the other side of this whole issue is the deepening economic crisis that is forcing both parents to have to work to feed, clothe, and house families today, compared with 30-odd years ago, when families were able to be sustained on just one wage. When the 40-hour working week was first introduced, it was based on the understanding that the income for 40 hours’ work would be enough to support a household. Clearly, that scenario no longer applies; clearly, the comparative standard of living has fallen alarmingly, and, just as clearly, we need to be worried about this continuing pressure not only for families to work but also often for both parents to hold down two and sometimes three jobs. It might have been better if the sponsor of this bill had simply extended paid parental leave to 12 months, so that women could actually stay at home rather than have to go back to work with their children at the breast. But in the absence of that move, and in the reality of the pressing economic crisis on families in Aotearoa, this bill allows women to breastfeed in a workplace and, hopefully, it will encourage the Government to move quickly to implement ILO Convention 183, which also arose out of the revision of maternity protection.

The Māori Party will endorse the breastfeeding provisions, consistent with our push for paid parental leave and support for whānau, and we will support the meal break provisions, in line with our clearly stated support for workers’ rights. Tēnā koe, kia ora tātou.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : It gives me pleasure to rise to speak to the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. The first thing we ask when we look at this bill is why we would want to push it through Parliament only a couple of months before a general election. The reason is simply that it is part of that incremental change in labour policy and labour relations law that the Labour Government is engaged in. Rather than doing it in one fell swoop, the Labour Government has engaged in a process of incremental change, because it believes that this is the way to hide from the public the changes in the general employment situation it is bringing about.

I think that one of the first things we need to look at is the point that this bill is about breaks and infant feeding; this is not a bill about the 90-day - trial period. All of the Labour members may want to go out and talk about the 90-day bill, but that is not what we are talking about here today. We are talking about something to do with meals, rest breaks, and infant feeding, so the way that Labour has used this session to try to promote legislation not actually being debated in this House today, is a shame, and it really shows the Labour members’ true intention towards this legislation: they do not actually mean what they are doing here today; they have no real desire to progress workers’ rights; and they just see this as being another tick in the box they can give to the unions, leading up to the election campaign, so that the unions can fund them again in their campaign to try to get votes at election time.

We also have to look at this legislation in the sense of what is happening out there in the market place. We are in a situation where there is rising unemployment. By the end of next year the unemployment rate will probably be peaking at around 6 percent. This country is going through a dire situation where people are losing jobs, and they are losing jobs because of the economic management of this country. Employers came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and said that they did not need more conditions placed on them in these tight economic times. They asked committee members whether we wanted to make it harder for them to employ someone, or to retain people in situations where they could easily close businesses, but the Labour Government has ignored that. It has totally ignored it, and feels that it is appropriate to put more conditions and requirements on employers, even though employment is becoming very tight in the sense that there will be an oversupply of staff and employees going into the next year, which is quite contrary to what we have had in the past couple of years. So instead of helping employees by making sure that they will have job security and that jobs are there for them, the Labour Government is putting another hurdle in the way of employees at a time when it does not need to do that—it does not need to do that at the time of these economic conditions.

This legislation came before members of the select committee in a form that would have actually hurt employees. It would have meant that some people would lose the entitlements they already had; it was too prescriptive. In some cases employment agreements were already giving greater recognition for breaks. Employers and employees had agreed on something that was less onerous than what was in this legislation, and if Labour had fulfilled its requirement and had just gone through with the bill in the blunt form it had had originally, employees could have lost out. But the reality was that when the bill came to the select committee, Labour became aware that this legislation actually took away some workers’ rights, and it had to amend the bill.

How many pieces of legislation do we see going through this House that have a commentary of nearly 2 pages, and over 1½ pages of that commentary are proposed amendments? That shows what a quick-fix solution this bill has been. It shows that it was not thought out, in its initial form. It shows that the Labour Government did not have the best interests of workers in its initial thoughts. It had only a conceptual basis that it wanted to pay its unions back with, and that has become the start of this legislation.

Let us look at these amendments. There will have to be amendments with regard to breastfeeding facilities and breaks—a “so far as it is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances” clause needs to be added—and there will have to be amendments with regard to the entitlements to rest breaks and meal breaks. The timing of those breaks needs to be further mandated through the legislation, so that people actually know what the timing of those breaks will be and what time frames employees will be entitled to. Some big amendments are required around the timing of rest breaks; many people felt that the provisions were far too prescriptive. Some of the nature of the agreements between employers and employees will also have to be incorporated into legislation, so that if there is already an agreement, then that will take precedence over what the legislation may say.

A very important part of the legislation is the enabling of employers and employees to agree on things. There is nothing wrong with that in a workforce environment where both parties have the ability to negotiate and agree, as they do now. We do not need to take away that ability from employees. The ability for an employee to agree on certain conditions can be to his or her advantage, and if we have prescriptive legislation over little parts of an employment agreement, then we can take away workers’ rights. We can take away their ability to negotiate and agree.

The legislation also affects employers, in the sense that they may be mandated to do things that just do not suit their employment relationships in the nature of their businesses. We very much heard that from bus industry representatives, who were very concerned, because of the nature of their industry, that prescriptive requirements on them would be detrimental for their business. They had no problem with giving people breaks—and they do so now—but they did not want to be told they had to do that in a prescriptive nature, which would mean that the breaks were detrimental to their business.

The ability of an employer and an employee to come together and to make mutually beneficial rules is something that we must cherish and support. If we take that away by incremental legislation that aims to be prescriptive on every little element of the employment relationship, we will be hurting employees. We will be taking away their ability to negotiate. We will be taking away their rights. How can Labour members stand in this House and take away employees’ rights? Why would they want to do that? All this is about is Labour giving payback to its funders, going into an election campaign.

A number of people who spoke on this bill in its first reading raised a very important issue about the bill—that it has not been thought through. The financial consequences of this bill have not been thought through. The research has not been done to see what the implications of this bill will be in the community. There was no regulatory impact statement submitted in time for the bill, and the analysis has been very much lacking. This has been just a conceptual mandate by the Labour Government. The legislation has not had the hard-core research and analysis done that we would expect in a bill, to make sure that it is solving a problem. The nature of this legislation, because it has been so rushed, because it needs so many amendments, and because it takes away the fundamental debate between employer and employee, means that in time it will be shown to have created a number of holes and problems that will have to be sorted out through further legislation, or through agreement between the parties.

When we pass things quickly in the House, just for the sake of an election campaign, it does not make for good legislation. This bill needs to take its time. It needs to be thought out, and to have the proper research and analysis done on it, so that all parties can determine what needs to be done in the circumstances, and it needs to have time spent on it so that we can get the best results for all concerned. That is one of the concerns that many people raised when submitting to the select committee, and it is a concern that many members of the select committee held, as well. They felt that this legislation was rushed, it was not done in a proper process, and it did not take account of what was going on in the market place between employers and employees.

Although the National Party does support this legislation, we believe that the Labour Party and its allies could have done a better job. Employees will be detrimentally affected by this legislation, and it sets a bad precedent for employees when parts of their employment negotiations will now be done through mandatory prescriptive legislation rather than by giving employees the ability to negotiate through the nature of their work.

• Bill read a second time.