Illegal construction workers not a sign of 'industry-wide exploitation'

Thursday, 25 March 2021

Construction is desperately short of workers, but not at any cost, the Construction Strategy Group says.

State housing agency Kāinga Ora has secured border exemptions to bring in seven overseas staff, as the construction industry grapples with a shortage of workers.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says Kāinga Ora’s build and urban development project was recently added to a list of government-approved programmes eligible for the “other critical worker” immigration category.

Seven workers – four engineers, two system programmers and a supervisor – have been approved for exceptions under this category. None have yet entered New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the industry is grappling with an Immigration New Zealand crackdown on visa-less workers after a site inspection resulted in 10 Chinese nationals being taken into police custody at an Auckland building site this week.

Chinese migrant construction workers tell harrowing stories of being overworked and underpaid.

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Mike Treen says the company which hired the unlawful workers should pay the price.

While Immigration NZ was reluctant to give details, it said it was investigating reports that other construction companies were also not acting ‘’in the spirit of the labour laws’’.

However, pan-industry body the Construction Strategy Group does not think unlawful workers in the industry is a widespread problem.

‘’CSG and the construction sector abhors exploitation of any kind, but we don’t think this is an industry issue – rather it is isolated cases of workers choosing to overstay once their visas have expired, group executive director Julien Leys said.

At the same time, he said, construction workers were desperately needed.

‘’The construction sector has employed people from other areas of the economy and there has been recent media on this – however, it has not been enough to address the 50,000 to 60,000 skilled workers that the industry still needs. It is a huge problem.’’

Mike Treen, an advocate for Unite Union, believes the detained workers should be allowed to stay in the country and apply for new visas rather than being deported.

The country had many workers who had been forced to go outside their official visa status because of the pandemic, and he believed the wrong people were being penalised.

“No worker can be employed in New Zealand without an employment agreement and a confirmation of their legal status. Every employer knows this.

“Yet when workers are employed without a valid visa it is the workers who get arrested not the boss.

“We need an amnesty for workers who only want to contribute their labour to help New Zealand develop and lock up the bosses who have entrapped them.”

He also believed the offending company should be banned from hiring migrant workers again.

However, Immigration NZ deputy head Steven Vaughan said earlier this week that it was because these workers were so vulnerable that the department was keen to stamp out exploitation against them.

Most people faced with deportation chose to leave voluntarily so they could re-enter the country legally, he said.

Earlier this year Stuff spoke to several workers unlawfully in the country. First Union’s Dennis Maga expressed hope that the Construction Accord between the Government, unions and major building companies could jointly apply pressure to stamp out exploitation.

One such lever could be through the Government withholding state contracts. “Once we find … exploitative practice … we are going to be holding them [the big firms] accountable,” Maga said.

Immigration New Zealand has a special skills shortage list for construction and infrastructure workers which can result in them being granted an essential skills work visa.