– Leeann Watson , Chief Executive, Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce

Parliament’s Education and Workforce Select Committee has now completed its hearings on the Government’s Employment Relations Amendment Bill.  Hopefully, the Committee will take on-board the strong feedback from the business community that any legislative changes need to be fit for modern workplaces and a high performing economy, and not based on failed approaches from the Seventies.

The Government has stated that is aspires to create a high wage, high productivity economy, a goal that we all strongly support.  However, I am concerned that this Bill will not deliver those goals.

Four aspects of the Bill are especially worrying:

1. Employers with 20 employees or more will lose the right to include trial periods in employment agreements.

Trial periods have given many employers the confidence to take on people without experience.  80% of employers used a 90-day trial period in the last year.  This clause will discourage New Zealand’s larger employers from doing this and make it harder for young and inexperienced people to enter the workforce.

2.   Allowing union reps access to workplaces without any permission.

This caused issues in the past.  Thankfully, employers and unions today have mutually respectful relationships, and we expect most unions would still provide notice regardless of legislation.  So why return the country to an “us-vs-them”, anti-growth mentality from the 70s?

3.   Forcing businesses to settle collective agreements even if they don’t or can’t agree.

The right for either party to opt out of the bargaining process is fair and equitable.  Removing this right from employers creates an uneven playing field, which is not only unfair but also a recipe for bad agreements created under duress.

4.    Not allowing businesses a choice to opt out of a multi-employer collective agreement.

This compels businesses to join a multi-employer collective against their will.  This is at odds with International Labour Organisation conventions which support everyone’s voluntary right to take part in collective bargaining or not.  It protects the wishes of unions at the cost of freedom, productivity and growth.

These are not the end of potential changes, with the Government indicating a raft of new employment laws are still to come.

On the horizon are a set of rules creating what the Government has call “fair pay agreements”, which on the basis of what has been revealed so far look like a return to the days of industry awards.

Those who remember the industrial relations environment of the 1970s and early 1980s will know that this system provided a confrontational, non-collaborative working environment that would seem to be the opposite to the high productivity goal the Government aspires too.

We aren’t against reform, but we are against badly drafted legislation that doesn’t meet the Government’s goal nor the needs of employees or employers. I’ve been advocating strongly that this Bill needs re-drafting, and that we need to take a more collaborative approach to the employment relations system in New Zealand.

If this Bill proceeds as currently proposed, it will have major ramifications on the ability of businesses in New Zealand to grow financially and employ more people.  That is not an outcome that anyone wants to see.