Gloriavale accused of exploiting workers; MBIE says it can't intervene

Friday, 13 November 2020

The isolated West Coast Christian community of Gloriavale has set itself apart from the rest of society for more than 50 years.

For more than two decades, Virginia Courage worked 14-hour days with one week off a year. She was never paid. JOANNE NAISH reports.

Virginia Courage left school at 15 and, for 25 years, worked long hours in commercial-scale kitchens, laundries and child care centres.

She started at 6am and finished as late as 8pm, cooking or cleaning for 600 people. She worked six days a week with one week’s holiday a year.

For this, she was never paid.

According to the government, she was a volunteer and therefore not entitled to protection against exploitation.

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That’s despite the government taking income tax from the wages she earned at the Gloriavale Christian Community’s childcare centres – wages she was expected to hand over to the community’s leaders.

Employment lawyer Barbara Buckett has labelled the Labour Inspectorate’s decision in 2017 to classify Gloriavale workers as volunteers – and therefore not protected by employment law – a whitewash and a “sham” that allowed modern day slavery.

The Courage family left Gloriavale in 2019.

“It’s not right. The Labour Inspectorate has taken a once-over-lightly simplistic view of it and is allowing exploitation. That’s disgraceful,” she said.

The MBIE Labour Inspectorate inquiry in 2017 said women doing domestic duties worked as part of an “extended family” and men who worked for the community’s profitable businesses, as well as women who worked for the childcare centres, had signed their employment rights away when they pledged all their income to the community.

The inspectorate recently said it needed current and former members to come forward before it could reassess the status of the workers.

Courage, who left the community last year with her husband David and 10 children, said she and others inside Gloriavale were not volunteers.

“My kids don’t do a quarter of the work they were doing inside Gloriavale. They weren’t volunteering to get up and clean bathrooms before breakfast and then cook breakfast for 600 people.”

Former Gloriavale members John Ready, James Harrison and Virginia Courage outside the High Court at Greymouth, where they filed their civil action.

Members of Gloriavale have no choice where and when they work.

About 180 have left the community in recent years.

Gloriavale’s Christian Church Community Trust has assets of more than $41 million and earns $3m a year from several businesses, including a large dairy and deer farm, fishmeal production, honey and protein manufacture from offal for export, according to the 2017 MBIE report.

In September, WorkSafe investigated claims some members of the West Coast Christian community were forced to work more than 20 hours a day – but found no evidence to support after speaking with 13 workers.

Gloriavale workers have suffered significant injuries including lost fingers, falls, chemical burns and the effects of toxic fumes in a series of incidents since 2016. However, the Government's workplace safety watchdog ruled the incidents did not meet the “minimum threshold for formal investigation”.

Virginia Courage said many workplace accidents happened because people were exhausted or too young to carry out the work expected of them.

Three of her young sisters received bad burns on their feet while trying to carry large kettles of boiling water – and the youngest was expected to go back to work before she was fully healed.

She worked in a team of women and girls on a four-day roster of cooking, cleaning, preparing food and laundry.

“If you didn’t show up people would come and pull you out of bed and you’d get in trouble.”

The only day off was Sunday, which was taken up with compulsory meetings. She had to work one in four Sundays. She said she was allowed one week’s holiday per year – but was sometimes expected to work during that time.

People would fall asleep in the dining hall and children would fall asleep at school because they were exhausted, she said.

Employment lawyer Barbara Buckett says Gloriavale leaders are making a mockery of employment laws.

When she got married the hours reduced, but she would sometimes get up at 4am to mend the family’s clothes, clean their room and take washing to the laundry before work so she could spend time with her children in the evenings.

Women could not choose to stay at home with their babies and must put them into the community’s early childhood centres.

Courage said women went back to work a week after giving birth to their first children. They are radioed to come and breastfeed their babies at the centres and then return to work.

She later worked at one of the community’s four early childhood centres, which receive $2.5m from the Ministry of Education every year.

As a teacher, she became a Christian Partner. Christian Partners work for the community’s businesses run by the Christian Church Community Trust – which has tax-free charitable status. According to the trust’s 2019 financial statements labour charges for Christian Partners amounted to more than $4m.

Her husband David was operations manager of the trust’s offal plant. He said the Christian Partners were self-employed and contracted to work at the trust's businesses. They sign a Partnership Agreement which pledges all money back to the community.

Gloriavale Christian Community own a large property and runs 11 businesses on the West Coast.

He said the partners were paid with money going into personal bank accounts. Income tax and ACC levies were paid out from this before the rest was transferred to a shared account that only the leaders had access to. However, he did not have access to his personal bank account and did not know how much he was paid.

He said the men and boys were also expected to work on the dairy farm for no pay. The roster required them to milk cows at 4am before a full days’ work at the other businesses.

The couple said one of the best things about leaving Gloriavale was being able to spend more time with their children.

Courage said she did not understand the Partnership Agreement before signing it.

Following a Charities Services investigation into the trust in 2016, the leaders offered the partners legal advice before they signed. However, Courage questioned how independent the lawyer.

All members of the community were also expected to sign a Declaration of Commitment pledging to give any assets to the trust.

She did not know until she left the community that she was receiving $1000 a week Working for Families Tax Credit payments, which were also going back to the community’s shared account.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson queried the community’s use of tax credits in 2018, but was told by Inland Revenue it had no ability to direct how the payments were used as long as they were paid into the bank account of the principal caregiver.

In a report released under the Official Information Act, a Labour Inspector in 2017 acknowledged the partners appeared to have signed agreements under duress without understanding them and some members did not know they even had a bank account.

“The work performed by women looks very much like employment in that the hours are often long and the work menial and repetitive with little control or choice exercised by workers … If there was no partnership agreement or Declaration of Commitment, it would look very much like employment.”

It said no records of hours or timesheets were kept.

Former Gloriavale members John Ready and James Harrison are taking legal action against Gloriavale leaders.

‘Exploitative relationship’

If the workers were employees “there would inevitably be many serious breaches of employment law, including a complete lack of employment agreements or record keeping”.

“Consideration would have to be given to the possibility of a charge of exploitation given the highly controlling nature of the environment in which members work and the circumstances in which they appear to have signed away their employment rights.”

However, it concluded the women were volunteers because they worked as part of a large family, and food and accommodation could not be classed as reward for their work because they would have received it anyway as residents of the community.

However, it said the leaders had an “exploitative relationship” with members rather than a familial one.

“If Gloriavale is a family it is an extremely patriarchal, authoritarian and fundamentalist one and that many members, being shielded from the outside world, are not in a position to make an informed choice about the way the Gloriavale family operates or the work they do and the rewards they receive.

Members of the Gloriavale community have no choice on what to wear.

“The extreme control of information, psychological manipulation and lack of ability to seek independent advice could point towards exploitation.”

It said Gloriavale had breached its obligations under the Holidays Act and the Wages Protection Act and possibly the Minimum Wage Act – if the workers were employees.

Former member John Ready said the girls at Gloriavale worked long hours in kitchens and laundries.

“It’s a commercial set up. The young girls do long hours and start young. There’s no choice. It’s expected. The standard of behaviour expected is fully controlled. They haven’t signed up to anything, they are born into this way of life,” he said.

In the documentary on Gloriavale shown on TVNZ in 2018, 19-year-old Joanna Courage describes her job making butter for the community using a concrete mixer converted into a butter churner.

“I’ve been making butter for three years. I churn 150kg of butter a day … That’s 15 buckets a day. It is quite a boring job, but I was given a job, so I’ve done it for three years and I’m happy to serve in the church wherever I’m needed,” she said.

Call for Gloriavale members to speak out

Employment lawyer Barbara Buckett said she did not think they were volunteers because they received payment in kind of food and lodging in exchange for their work – and a case could be taken to the Employment Relations Authority.

“It’s a sham and should be questioned. Volunteers offer to work. These people are not free to choose, they are controlled and there is a power imbalance that makes it an unconscionable bargain,” she said.

Gloriavale leaders were making a mockery of the system – and the Government was allowing it to happen, she said.

In October, then Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Andrew Little said he was “uncomfortable” with Gloriavale workers being volunteers.

The new Minister Michael Wood said he was monitoring the situation.

“MBIE publicly made a call for any community member, current or former, to come forward to provide evidence that would identify if there were any grounds to further investigate employment status. That work is ongoing,” he said.

Labour Inspectorate Acting National Manager, Loua Ward said the inspectorate investigated whether any of the members wished to lodge a complaint about any breaches of minimum employment standards in September.

“The Inspectorate found no grounds to take employment compliance action, as all members interviewed, and the community itself, stated they were operating within a volunteer or trust structure,” she said.

The Inspectorate is now calling on any current or former member of the Gloriavale community to come forward, to further assess the status of the workers.

“In all cases under employment law, the Inspectorate needs credible witnesses willing to come forward on record to undertake an investigation into employment status and minimum employment standards breaches. This work continues,” she said.