Trading laws disrupt mother's life

A retail worker yesterday told MPs that allowing Easter Sunday trading would take away the one Sunday a year she was guaranteed to be able to spend with her family.

Wainuiomata woman Claire Wright, who is married with two teenage children, works at Farmers in Lower Hutt.

"Easter Sunday is the one day I look forward to all year - because I work Sunday to Thursday - to have with my family, and because they are religious that's the one day we can all go to church or do family things," she told MPs.

"I feel that people can manage surely one day without the shops being open. I'm sure the shops aren't making any extra money by being open on a Sunday. I think people can change their shopping day to another day."

Ms Wright appeared before the committee as part of National Distribution Union national secretary Laila Harre's submission presentation.

Ms Harre said about 400,000 people worked in retail. Most youth workers, 64 per cent, worked in retail and every time a shop opened workers were required in distribution and other roles.

"Our broad opposition is based on a view that - while there are certainly laughable anachronisms and we all know them about the current legislation - we don't view this as a trivial issue.

"We don't think the fundamental policy issue of keeping shops closed 3/2 days a year is an anachronistic policy position to take."

The union believed a public interest rather than commercial interest position should be taken.

Ms Harre said the union accepted that more exemptions could be needed, but thought present exemptions should also be reviewed.

"There could be much narrower criteria that could be applied to an exemption process."

Issues relating to employees, but also family and community interests, would be taken into account.

"In a place like Wanaka the overriding public interest and promotion of community events might indeed justify an exemption when the air show was on, but in Rotorua on a typical Easter Sunday there may well not be grounds for an exemption under that sort of criteria."

Also, exemptions should only be for areas with a large influx of visitors on the day.

She said protections needed to be included in the bill regarding pay for the holiday.

In its submission, the Wanaka Chamber of Commerce said the rules around exemptions were a mess. For example, souvenir shops could sell goods but photo shops had to shut, even though the dictionary definition of a photo was that it was a souvenir.

New Zealand Chambers of Commerce director Charles Finny told the committee that at a recent meeting members unanimously supported Easter trading.

"If passed, the proposed bill will be good for growth in the economy, it will assist efforts to improve productivity in the economy, it will make New Zealand a more desirable tourist destination, it will improve New Zealand's international image and it will allow workers the potential to benefit from the generous provisions of present labour market regulation."

The organisation advocated that rather than extend the exemptions to additional areas, they should be applied nationwide.

"Any business wanting to trade on Good Friday or Easter Sunday should be allowed to. We would support a change to this bill to extend its effect across the entire country."

If that was impossible, Mr Finny said, all major cities and small centres which had significant visitor numbers should be added to the list of exemptions.


Holiday options

* Parliament's commerce select committee is hearing submissions on two bills - one proposed by Labour MP Steve Chadwick, the other by National MP Jacqui Dean.

* Ms Chadwick's bill aims to give councils the authority to allow shops in their areas to open on Easter Sunday, and Ms Dean's bill would allow shops in some tourist centres to open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

- NZPA