The owner of a holiday park in Reporoa, Waikato, has been ordered to pay more than $680,000 for gross exploitation of three migrant workers who described working in a prison-like environment.
New Zealand Fusion International LTD has been told to pay $300,000 in penalties, with Golden Springs Motel Holiday Park owner Shenshen Guan ordered personally liable for a further $150,000.
Each of the three workers will receive $100,000 of this total, on top of between $69,000 and nearly $92,000 they are to receive in unpaid wages and compensation. New Zealand Fusion and Ms Guan have also been banned from employing staff for 18 months.
The record payment comes after the Employment Court heard the three workers describe their time at the holiday park as being “a nightmare”. They said it was like living in a “prison”, and one of them said they “wanted to die”.
Following a Labour Inspectorate investigation into New Zealand Fusion, the court heard two of the workers mortgaged a house and withdrew their children’s university funds in China to each pay a $45,000 premium “bond” to Ms Guan before coming to New Zealand to work at the holiday park.
They arrived on visitor visas and began working unlawfully under false promises of being paid.
The court heard the three workers worked on various jobs at the holiday park seven days a week for no wages. Ms Guan had changed their employment contracts and then used the fact that they had no working visas as a reason not to pay them.
She also said their "free" food and accommodation while staying onsite should also offset any expectation of payment.
"Any worker is lawfully entitled to minimum employment standards. Any employer who thinks they can flout these laws, especially by being in a rural environment where they think isolating workers is sight unseen, can expect to be heavily penalised," Labour Inspectorate national manager Stu Lumsden said.
"This judgement sends a strong message that employers who exploit their workers will be put out of business, and charged penalties far in excess of what they may have gained.
"None of us want to believe that this sort of thing can happen in New Zealand but it is happening and we have to deal with it if we want to maintain our reputation as a fair country to work in and to trade with."
Mr Lumsden said New Zealand's tourism and export sectors were especially vulnerable to concerns about treatment of its workers, but added, "increasingly the Labour Inspectorate is seeing a range of industries taking deliberate and systematic steps to assure they’re treating their workers properly, including protecting industry reputation".
Anyone with concerns about the employment situation of themselves or someone else is encouraged to call MBIE's contact centre on 0800 20 90 20. Migrant workers and those new to the workforce are also encouraged to assess their employment rights knowledge with this online tool on the Employment New Zealand website.
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