Shameful exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers

Friday, 21 June 2019

The 'welcome to New Zealand' page of Radius Contracting's website has photographs of newly arrived Filipino construction workers at Auckland airport grinning and giving the thumbs up.

There are no pictures of their future accommodation which included 22 cabins inside a former bingo hall last week served with a dangerous building notice by Auckland Council inspectors for posing serious fire risks.

Earlier this year a secret recording was made of Northland transport company boss Stan Semenoff repeatedly threatening to send his Filipino drivers home, banging the table and calling some of them arseholes and mongrels to emphasise the consequences if they didn't speak English, were caught speeding, or tried to find a job elsewhere.

These are not isolated cases according to unions and migrant advocates who say we urgently need to clean house over our treatment of vulnerable and easily exploited migrants brought here to fill gaps in the workforce.

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Mikee Santos, chairman of worker group Migrante Aotearoa says it is unacceptable for employers to treat workers as property just because they have paid $4000 or $5000 in recruitment and placement fees to bring them here.

'I'm really mad. We have to change the culture because they're treating migrant workers not only unfairly … it's as if they own their whole life, they're treating them like slaves.'

Migrant workers are considered more vulnerable because they are less aware of their rights, have limited English skills, lack independent financial means of support, face high expectations from family members back home, and are often reluctant to report exploitation for fear of losing their job or being deported.

More than half the Labour Inspectorate's 676 investigations last year involved migrant workers and it is targeting industries with compliance issues.

They include retail, hospitality, horticulture and viticulture, construction, cleaning franchises, and fishing; and concerns with the transport sector are emerging.

Since 2017 Immigration New Zealand has 'outed' 366 businesses stood down from recruiting migrant labour for six to 12 months for breaking employment laws.

Chorus recently announced a slew of measures to stamp out discrimination, harassment, corruption and bribery after a report into the roll-out of its ultrafast broadband network found close to one in three of its 365 subcontractors may have breached labour laws in their treatment of 1600 workers, more than half of whom were migrants on temporary work visas.

Santos says threats to deport workers, delivered subtly or with a hefty dose of verbal abuse, are all too common, especially among smaller employers.

At the end of April there were 22,593 Filipinos here on work visas, and they are highly represented in the construction and dairy industries.

Santos says many come to New Zealand on two year visas, and now the Auckland building boom is entering its second year, those who signed 12 month contracts are opting to move onto to jobs offering better pay and conditions.

He is handling several cases where angry employers retaliated by threatening deportation and withholding workers' final pay.

'Why are employers acting differently, they wouldn't do that to a local worker?'

A migrant truckie who worked for a company that demanded he routinely break driving hours' rules says it felt like slavery. 'Sometimes we slept only four to five hours a day.'

Finding a new job was a godsend.

His new boss put him up in a hotel for a month, kitted him out head to foot in protective gear, and met the cost of transferring his visa to a work to residence one, which will allow him to bring his family here.

Recruit NZ owner Tanya Gray says she thoroughly vets employers before placing migrant workers, and tries to help those seeking to escape exploitative situations.

'We're getting businesses coming to us after realising their temp worker gets paid $18 to $20 an hour while they are paying $35 to $47 an hour [to a labour hire company].'

'Good employers are now understanding how ripped-off these guys are.'

One such employer says his own Filipino staff begged him to take on badly treated temp workers, but he simply could not afford to.

Anti-poaching clauses in his contract with a labour hire company stipulate that clients who employ a temp worker within six months of them leaving are liable to a penalty fee 12 weeks wages.

Problems with migrant workers being charging exorbitant amounts for settlement or 'pastoral care' packages are stoking calls to regulate this sector.

Auckland-based carpenter William Guido found himself saddled with $420 a week in deductions from his pay of $600 to $700 a week to cover accommodation, a rental car, electricity, TV and internet.

He quickly discovered he could find much cheaper accommodation and buy a car for less than he was spending on the rental vehicle, but he was locked into a 10-week automatic payment scheme. 'They charged too much.'

Workers living at the Manurewa property run by Radius Contracting say they were shocked to discover they had to pay off a $3500 settlement package at the rate of $100 a week on top of $200 for rent.

Radius director Mark Hubble defends the $3500 charge saying it was necessary to assist workers who turned up virtually penniless, and included $200 pocket money, tools, use of multiple vehicles, a $50 loaded travel card, a rice cooker, training courses and skills certification.

Do know more? Contact amanda.cropp@stuff.co.nz

Such stories are no news to Filipino Kiwi Bob Bolanos who came to New Zealand to work in the dairy industry.

He now runs a small Christchurch plastering business and voluntarily assists migrants in difficulties.

He describes the proliferation of pastoral care providers as like a Hydra. 'You cut one head off and another one grows in its place.'

Workers are persuaded to sign up for settlement services in the Philippines without the opportunity to get independent advice.

'They're given this very dire presentation about being alone here and without any help.'

Last year Bolanos helped 10 workers dissolve a pastoral care contract half through the 20 week term.

Those working as hammer hands earning $18 an hour had nothing left to live on once all the deductions were made, and they relied on fellow workers to buy them food.

Bolanos says charges included $165 for a driving test that consisted of a spin around the block.

'The welcome pack was a sack of rice and a few kilos of chicken, nowhere near what they expected it to be.'

As is often the case, the workers were reluctant to complain.

'They felt intimidated because they thought they were going to be deported but we told them, the company doesn't hold your visa, the New Zealand government issued it and if you're not violating anything, there's no grounds for you to be deported.'

Unemig, the migrant arm of First Union, last month launched a fair labour migrant agreement setting standards for employee agreements, accommodation and pastoral care, and an independent worker complaints process.

Union general secretary Dennis Maga still believes government regulation of pastoral care is needed, along the lines of the code of practice for international students introduced in 2016.

He wants settlement work to be the preserve of non-profit organisations, rather than commercial operators.

For that reason he has rebuffed approaches from Scott Mathieson, director of recruitment company Working In Resourcing and NZ Settlement and Accommodation Services, a national provider of pastoral care services.

Mathieson says that last year they extended contracts for settlement services from 10 to 20 weeks to give workers more time to pay off their loans, but halted the practice in January after complaints.

'We were trying to make it good for these guys to help them out, not to rip them off.'

He denied that pastoral care was profitable and said it resulted in a 'sizeable' amount of unpaid debt.

'Workers don't understand we are loaning them money and they have to pay it back.'

Extrastaff Management director Tom Tschudin was the first signatory to the fair labour agreement and contracts Mathieson to provide pastoral care for the 200 mostly Filipino workers he brings in annually,

He is in discussions with the Migrant Action Trust to take over some of the settlement work, and he has asked Mathieson to 'review' his operation so it meets the non profit model.

Mathieson says he has dropped worker contracts and is talking to employers about charging them an extra $1000 per worker to cover their set up costs, such as initial accommodation and transport.

Gray is unconvinced that the fair labour agreement will do much to alleviate the climate of fear many migrants work under here and she believes there needs to be tougher enforcement by government agencies responsible for preventing exploitation.

'We've been dealing with guys from a company that are terrified because there is an addendum attached to their employment agreement that says they have to repay any money paid out if they leave before two years.

'It's horrible, it's bullying and it's harassment.'