Labour hits pause on employment change
Legislation reversing National’s controversial ‘‘fire at will’’ and rest and meal break laws will be signed off this week as Labour moves to implement the last of its 100-day plan.
But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has moved to reassure business Labour is in no rush to pass controversial ‘‘fair pay’’ laws that appear to have contributed to a slump in business confidence.
The Labour caucus has been meeting behind closed doors in Martinborough to nail down the last of its 100-day plan before the return of Parliament next week.
Legislation to introduce fairness in the workplace will be finalised on Thursday and introduced before the end of Labour’s first 100 days, on February 2.
A cabinet committee is expected to sign it off this week, and it will include reversing the previous National Government’s ‘‘fire at will’’ laws, and unpopular rest and meal break legislation.
Ardern said the changes had been well flagged by Labour on the campaign trail and should come as no surprise to anyone.
But as the slump in business confidence threatens another ‘‘winter of discontent’’, she signalled Labour would move more slowly on one of the more contentious aspects of its industrial relations policy – industry-wide fair-pay agreements.
Uncertainty over their effect on business has contributed to business unease.
In an overture to business, Ardern said Labour acknowledged the need for a collaborative approach on the legislation.
‘‘We long flagged that was something we needed to spend extra time working alongside our union and business communities, so we are putting that on a longer track.’’
She said Employment Minister Iain Lees-Galloway had demonstrated his intention to work collaboratively with business during the recent discussions around Hobbit legislatoin.
Ardern refused to put a time frame on when the fair pay legislation would be introduced but Lees-Galloway has previously put a 12 month time frame on consultation.
Labour has long promised to overturn National’s 90 day ‘‘fire at will’’ laws and also pledged to reverse legislation allowing employers and workers to contract out of rest and meal breaks.
But its plan for fair pay agreements have been more controversial, because legislation raises the prospect of industrywide strikes and industrial action.
After a summer recess, politics is back in full swing this week as politicians prepare for the traditional Ratana celebrations, followed by the resumption of Parliament next week.
Ardern was expected to announce a mental health inquiry today and to release Labour’s package for reducing child poverty next week. That target will go beyond the impact of Labour’s families package, which Treasury had estimated would lift 88,000 children out of poverty before realising it had done its calculations wrong. It also got the last National government’s child poverty figures wrong.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has revealed he had some choice words for Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf when the error was realised, but said it had no effect on Labour’s plans.
Ardern said Labour would be ‘‘very ambitious’’ on child poverty and 88,000 was never a target, just a Treasury projection.
‘‘So what we will do with this package is still reach more than 380,000 families. What we don’t have a clear picture of is how many of those families have children in poverty. So the package is still a solid package. It will not change. All we’ll know is how much further we’ll need to go to hit some of the ambitious targets we have around child poverty.’’
Those targets would be required of this and any future government’s under Labour’s child poverty reduction legislation, she said. But pther targets under National’s ‘‘better public services’’ package will be abandoned by Labour because it says they are not effective.