A Labour MP's draft law that would guarantee paid leave for parent-teacher interviews has been dropped by a Labour-led committee that deemed it "confusing" for employers and workers.
While submitters to Parliament's Education and Workforce Committee agreed that attending parent-teacher interviews was important, several implications were canvassed about the law, including that it could breach the Human Rights Act.
Labour MP for Ōtaki Teresa Ngobi's Member's Bill would have forced employers to give their employees four hours of paid leave each year to attend parent-teacher interviews. It was pulled from the ballot and the Labour Party caucus approved it.
Newshub understands the decision to drop the legislation was taken during a closed session of the select committee, which is led by Labour MP Marja Lubeck. Ngobi was appraoched for a response.
ACT's education and small business spokesperson Chris Baillie said it illustrated Labour's indifference to small businesses.
"The Education and Workforce select committee, which has a Labour majority and chair, found that implementing it would be too difficult and recommended it doesn't proceed," he said.
"Business owners want to do right by their staff, but they need to be able to afford to keep people employed. It's no good to anyone if it becomes too expensive to keep people on the payroll.
"I congratulate Labour for rejecting this harmful policy."
The Education and Workforce Committee decided that it was too complicated to proceed with.
"We consider that this Bill could create unnecessary complications, confusing employees and employers. It could also interfere with current work underway to improve the Holidays Act."
Ngobi, speaking to the Education and Workforce Committee last month, said it was about "making sure the expectation isn't always just on the kura, just on the school. They have enough to do already".
"We all need to make sure we're all doing our bit to ensure educational outcomes and that includes employers as well as us as the Government to make sure there's access. What I'm saying is if there is time in the day that they can go, that the employer does allow that."
Ngobi said while some employers offer flexibility to their employers, "not all of them do", and workers shouldn't have to use their annual leave for parent-teacher interviews.
"I know there might be some kickback about the cost. I say this is a very minimal cost to make sure that we make sure we're doing everything we can to give everybody the best chance at educational outcomes."
But Greg Hardford from Retail NZ it's not that straightforward.
"There will be some that will say annual leave should only be used for family activities. But I'd argue that there is nothing more important in your family life than attending a parent-teacher interview," he told the committee.
"The proposal is hugely costly. If you assume, as we understand is the case, that this proposal applies per child, it will have a total net impact of removing around over 3000 full-time equivalent workers from the economy.
"Obviously that's not going to fall on individual businesses but the totality of that impact is massive and it creates real issues for businesses, particularly in smaller centres where it's more likely everyone will be taking their parent-teacher interviews at the same time."
He said the draft law might breach the Human Rights Act.
"A cornerstone of our human rights legislation for the last 35-40 years has been that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of family circumstances. But this Bill does exactly that because what it does is create preferential treatment for workers with children. We think that's a breach of the Human Rights Act. We don't think the Government should be endorsing that.
"We fully support the right of people to have children. But it is not the job of the employer to fund those life choices. We agree that there is value in parents attending parent-teacher interviews but it's not the job of the employer to pay for them.
"We would suggest that if this entitlement is to be created, then the costs of that leave should fall on the Government. It should be a taxpayer responsibility to pick up the tab - not those of the employer, which in the retail sector is making an extraordinarily low net margin in the first place."
Harford thanked the Education and Workforce Committee for dropping the draft law.
"We recommended to the select committee that the bill was discriminatory, simplify unnecessary and would create undue extra financial costs on retailers so it is great to see that the committee has agreed with us."
