277 employers put on name and shame list for breaching employment standards

Wednesday, 26 December 2018

Bombay Post restaurant owner Bish Kunwar said the reputational damage from the stand-down list was bad enough.

Bombay Post restaurant owner Bish Kunwar is one of hundreds of businesspeople who have been banned from hiring vulnerable migrant workers over the past two years.

The bans are put in place when employers breach standards and mean that they cannot sponsor new visas to recruit migrant labour - usually for between six months and two years.

A n ame and shame list was brought in in April 2017 by the Labour Inspectorate and Immigration New Zealand.

At least 277 employers have been barred in total.

Kunwar is among them for failing to keep correct time wage and time records.

* Burger King barred from hiring migrant workers for a year

* 150 bosses put on list for breaching employment law**

Kunwar said while he had not hired any migrant workers, the reputational damage from the standdown list was 'bad enough'.

Pegasus Energy, which operated as a BP petrol station, was ordered to pay the largest fine this year, $120,000.

People would join and leave his business so often he could not keep accurate employment records, he said.

'It's a small shop and we had people working for us for two weeks while looking for other jobs. Employees wouldn't even pick up our calls when they left,' Kunwar said.

'We had an accountant who would look after the holiday pay [rules] but I had to manage council requirements meanwhile working at the store.

'If you're doing your paperwork on time it would be easy but that would only happen if your business is large enough. We were not able to keep the right records.'

Kunwar said managing his small restaurant was not what he expected when he set it up and had been looking to sell the business for the past year and a half.

Victoria 88, run by former Christchurch mayoral candidate Gordon Freeman, was banned from employing staff for three years for breached minimum employment standards.

'Overall it's hard to do business. The sales are not high enough. With the current business we're just managing by having one full-time person and it's just his wages.

'As a director, I help with the business but I earn nothing out of it. All our profits go back into the business. It's a lot of effort, what's the point?'

Last week a 64-year-old Samoan, who holds New Zealand residency, was charged with both human trafficking and slavery.

Burger King is one of the bigger companies to have been placed on the stand-down list for a year after under-paying a staffer.

The man had allegedly imported migrant workers from Samoa since 1994 to work in stonefruit picking gangs.

Earlier this year Pegasus Energy, which operated as a BP petrol station in Flaxmere was ordered to pay $132,000 in arrears to two former employees after a labour investigation found employees were made to live in 'poor' conditions and mistreated.

Pegasus Energy also received the largest fine of the year, $120,000, for breaching the law and was put on the standdown list till April 2020.

A spokeswoman for BP said BP took the investigation of employment breaches 'extremely seriously' and had dropped the company as its dealer.

Also this year Christchurch bar and eatery Victoria 88, run by former mayoral candidate Gordon Freeman was banned from employing staff for three years after the Employment Court found it intentionally and persistently breached minimum employment standards.

Retail NZ spokesman Greg Harford says small business employers need to be educated on their obligations.

And Burger King too has been placed on the standdown list for a year after under-paying a staffer.

Burger King's spokesman James Woodbridge said the restaurants, had amended its processes.

In an Official Information Act response the Ministry of Business Employment and Innovation said the most common industries employers on the stand-down list operated in were hospitality, retail, agriculture, forestry and fishing.

Retail NZ spokesman Greg Harford said the standdown list was a big deterrent for businesses that might breach employment standards.

Unite Union's national secretary, Gerard Hehir, said the standdown list was a blunt tool.

'There's a very tight labour market. It's very hard to get good quality people to employ in the retail sector.

'Retailers are often times looking overseas to recruit so taking that away is a big disadvantage to the business,' Harford said.

'Part of the issue is around education. Both for employers and employees.'

But Unite Union's national secretary Gerard Hehir said the standdown list was a blunt tool.

Hehir said it was more effective for bigger companies.

'Small service companies are high risk because what we find is a business might be on the banned but might operate under another company,' Hehir said.

Hehir said many migrant workers never complained about bad employers because they were discouraged by the cost and the fear they might have to leave the country by the time the issue was resolved.

'Having the right and being able to exercise it in time and having enough money to fight it to get yours back is a different thing altogether.'

He said all employment agreements and contracts should be registered in an online database and the Labour Inspectorate should also regularly monitor companies after they come of the list.

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has said he wanted to increase funding and double the number of inspectors by the end of the Government's term.

Earlier this year the Government announced an $8.8 million increase, over the past four years in Budget 2018, increasing the number of labour inspectors.

Since October 2018, 8 labour inspectors and standards officers have been recruited, bringing the Inspectorate's warranted staff count to 71.

Further proposed increases are planned throughout the term of Government, but MBIE nor Lees-Galloway would give specifics.

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