Employment Standards Bill makes zero-hours contracts problem worse

The Employment Standards Bill is a step in the wrong direction in the fight against zero-hours contracts, effectively making them legal.

Earlier this year Workplace Relations Minister Michael Woodhouse described zero-hours contracts as “unfair” and “unbalanced,” promising to make this exploitative practice unlawful.

However the select committee has heard that instead, the Employment Standards Bill actually legalises zero-hours contracts by allowing employers to lock them in at the beginning of employment.

Security guard and E tū member Kendall Gupwell supported E tū’s oral submission to the select committee today. Mr Gupwell works for Armourguard at WINZ offices in Wellington, where under their employment agreement most staff don’t have fixed shifts and are paid just above the minimum wage even though the work can be very dangerous.

“It can be tough at times, when you have to intervene when a case manager is being threatened by and upset client. For this I am being paid $15.64 an hour, another guard is on $15 and the third is on $14.80, five cents about the minimum wage,” he said.

“Because my employer won’t agree to set shifts on set days, security guards are having their hours chopped and changed.

“I can’t guarantee that my shifts and hours won’t be changed without my consent. That is not fair.”

Mr Gupwell said that the complete flexibility at the employer’s end meant that supervisors could allocate hours unfairly, favouring their friends.

“I class that as workplace bullying.”

E tū spokesperson Alastair Duncan said that Mr Gupwell’s experience was shared by Armourguard workers across the country.

“You can be regularly rostered 45 hours a week at a WINZ office or a hospital, but if the client decides you are not wanted, justified or not, Armourguard will remove you with no guarantee of hours beyond a 3-hour minimum shift – if you are lucky enough to get a shift. You will be literally waiting by the phone for enough work to get by,” Mr Duncan said.

“This is exactly the kind of problem the Government should be fixing. Instead they are making it worse – they are enshrining the practice into law. The National Government are continuing their attack on workers with this legislation, end of story.”

ENDS

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