The budget announcement that the government has set aside $18 million over the next fours years to counter migrant exploitation and immigration non-compliance is good news for migrants and those in New Zealand on working visas.
In announcing the funding the Immigration Minister, Erica Stanford, said that the funding would be used for three new front-line teams to respond to serious offending, protect people from harm and exploitation, and increase the number of cases investigated.
A recent Employment Tribunal decision in the United Kingdom illustrates the effect that non-compliance by so-called employers on migrants can have on migrant employees that accept work in good faith and move to a new country with limited support for migrants.
Shabin Shaji, a 33 year old Indian citizen, came to the UK to work as a care worker through a post-Brexit visa scheme for an “employer”, Swan Care Solutions Ltd, that failed to provide him with a single days work.
Mr Shaji paid agents £17,000 before he was interviewed for a role at Swan Care Solutions on WhatsApp. He was “successful”, and was then given a certificate of sponsorship, entitling him to live and work in the UK with Swan Care Solutions as his Home Office-approved sponsoring employer. The computer science graduate emigrated from Kerala to Stafford, England, bought a car for the job and undertook online training in 2023 believing there was a major shortage of healthcare workers in the UK.
His sponsored visa prevented him from working for anyone else for more than 20 hours a week. The Tribunal heard that Swan Care Solutions’ staff suggested Shaji take cash-in-hand jobs and use a food bank when he said he was struggling, telling him they would be in touch when it was his turn.
Mr Shaji described being broke and having to rely on charity. He drank tap water and bought bread close to its expiration date to survive. He looked around local shops in Stafford for free bananas and bread for those who were struggling. He said he attended church and after worship the good people shared snacks with tea with him, for which he was very grateful.”
He described being in a terrible situation, feeling like no one in authority cared “if I lived or died.” A year after his arrival in the UK, Mr Shaji eventually managed to secure sponsorship with another employer in April 2024, but he later returned to India in ill health.
The Employment Tribunal ordered Swan Care Solutions to pay Mr Shaji nearly £30,000 wages for the work he was “ready, able and willing to do”. The judge, Kate Edmonds said “the claimant had done what needed to be done to start work. He was now in the country, with the right permissions, and living in the right location. However, the respondent did not provide him with work, nor did they pay him.”
In New Zealand, Immigration NZ statistics show for the financial year 1 July to 30 June 25 there were:
- Complaints received – 2,798
- Investigation actions taken – 413
- Warnings issued – 45
- Prosecutions – 4
Perhaps the most significant prosecution that financial year was of Mr Ratha Ny, the owner and director of R.S.X Ltd (trading as the Bakehouse Café in Murupara) who pleaded guilty and was convicted in March 2025 for 4 charges under the Immigration Act for providing false or misleading information to Immigration NZ. His company, R.S.X Ltd, also pleaded guilty and was convicted of 6 exploitation charges for serious breaches of employment law, including knowingly underpaying employees below the minimum wage and failing to correctly pay holiday and related entitlements. The Court fined R.S.X Ltd $150,000 for the 6 exploitation charges and ordered the company to pay $25,000 in emotional harm reparations — $10,000 each to 2 victims and $5,000 to a third. These reparations were paid by Mr Ny in anticipation of sentencing and were not court-imposed. This brought the total court-imposed penalty to $175,000. These penalties were in addition to $160,000 in minimum wage arrears that R.S.X Ltd had already repaid to the affected workers prior to sentencing.
Minister Stanford explained that the need for the extra funding was due to “delays in responding to migrant exploitation, bad behaviour by employers” and to justify more stringent changes in relation to the ability to deport migrants facing more minor criminal offences.
Speaking for the Labour Party, Phil Twyford said “Labour welcomes the increased resources for combating migrant worker exploitation”, “increased staffing for compliance in this area was a condition of Labour’s support for the India free trade agreement”.
Migrants legally entitled to work in New Zealand often leave family, careers and support networks behind them, and arrive with little support in New Zealand. At the least, they should be provided the protection that the criminal laws, immigration laws and employment laws afford. The problem is ensuring that those migrants know their rights, the protections that are provided and channels for reporting breaches – and of course adequate resourcing to ensure compliance with those laws. Read more...
In Australia, from July this year, about 100,000 of the lowest paid employees on Australia’s minimum wage will receive an above-inflation pay rise of 6% as part of the Fair Work Commission’s annual review. The new minimum wage will be AUD$26.44 per hour (or $1,004.90 per week for a 38-hour week). The Commission has also raised the wages of a further 2.7 million workers on the lowest award rates by 4.75%.
Award rates are legally enforceable minimum pay rates and employment conditions determined by the Australian national industrial relations system. They cover most employees and are industry or occupation specific, covering things like base wages, overtime, penalty rates, and allowances. They are updated regularly.
The Fair Work Commission said tighter monetary policy by the Reserve Bank of Australia will "undoubtedly" slow the economy in the year. The Commission said that “it would not be practicable or responsible in the current uncertain circumstances to award a real wage increase for employees," but we should ensure that “employees generally are not worse off in real terms than they were as at 1 July 2025."
In New Zealand employees aged 16 or over must be paid at least the New Zealand minimum wage. This rose on 1 April 2026 by 45 cents (or 2%) to NZ$23.95 per hour (or $958 for a 40hour week) for all adult employees. Unlike Australia, the minimum wage is set by the government, not an independent body like the Fair Work Commission in Australia.
The minimum wage effects a significant proportion of our workforce and helps to enable many of New Zealand’s most vulnerable workers support themselves and their families. MBIE figures show that there were estimated to be just over 101,000 earning the minimum wage in 2025.
In announcing New Zealand’s minimum wage rate increase for 2026 the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden said “I am pleased to deliver this moderate increase to the minimum wage that reflects this Government’s commitment to growing the economy, boosting incomes and supporting Kiwis in jobs throughout New Zealand. The increase aims to help minimum wage workers keep up with the cost of living, with inflation projected to remain relatively stable at around 2 per cent from June 2026”.
Currently inflation based on the Consumer Price Index for New Zealand households is running at 3.1%. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand says that the CPI increased by approximately 15.5% over the three-year period from the March 2023 quarter to the March 2026 quarter. In simple terms, this means that a basket of goods and services that cost $100 in March 2023 would typically cost around $115.50 by March 2026. The primary drivers of these cumulative increases over the three years have been housing and household utilities such as rising electricity costs, local authority rates, and rent. According to MBIE figures, in comparison the adult minimum wage in New Zealand has increased by 5.51% over the past 3 years (moving from $22.70 in 2023 to $23.95 in 2026).
The Employment Court has said that the Minimum Wage Act “is a statute of fundamental importance in the sphere of employment law in New Zealand. It is a statute that is designed to impose a floor below which employers and employees cannot go. It is directed at preventing the exploitation of workers, and is a statutory recognition of the diminished bargaining power in low paid employment”.
In forming the government, the National Party campaigned on tackling the cost of living crisis. “Our plan is carefully targeted to ensure that those who will benefit the most are working New Zealanders. It’s about time they got some relief from Labour’s cost of living crisis and National will deliver that to them”, Christopher Luxon said.
In delivering the budget this year the government provided little in the way of new support for New Zealanders struggling with the cost of living. The Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, defended the “prudent” approach. She said the “Middle East conflict underscores the need for fiscal discipline”.
The Labour Party leader, Chris Hipkins, said the budget offered “no plan on cost of living” with “no support for New Zealanders who are struggling”. He said the budget would result in more job losses and “more decline and more people giving up and leaving the country”.
What is clear is that our lowest paid workers are set to continue to go backwards as the cost of living crisis continues. Where does the pay for our most vulnerable workers cross the line from a minimum level of fair pay into exploitation? Read more....
Employment rights may often be human rights. They are always human rights in a literal sense. There is a human involved, often with a family or dependents that may be reliant on them. Or the human is reliant on that worker for their support, providing them with a home, with food, with the best education and the best health care that they can.
This governments latest move to strip away employments rights from some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable humans may be the cruellest cut to date. The Minister for Disability Issues, Louise Upston, announced last week a bill that would reverse the recent Supreme Court decision to recognise some family carers as employees.
Christine Fleming and Peter Humphries fought their way through New Zealand’s employment jurisdictions to the Supreme Court, which late last year confirmed that they were employees of the Crown. Ms Fleming and Mr Humphrys have courageously taken on the task of the full-time care for their respective adult disabled children. Ms Fleming’s son Justin was born in 1981. He is physically disabled as a result of a chromosomal condition. The principal consequence of his condition is physical frailty. This has affected his ability to take care of himself. Justin also has a moderate intellectual disability. Mr Humphrys’ daughter Sian was born in 1988. She was diagnosed with a congenital condition as a young child. Sian does not have verbal language and, while not physically frail, needs constant care. Amongst other matters, she needs someone to accompany her outside and has no road safety awareness.
It had been government policy that funding for disability support services could not be used to pay for care provided to disabled people by family members with whom they lived. In 2012 the Court of Appeal in Ministry of Health v Atkinson found that this policy was discriminatory.
Ms Fleming and Mr Humphries each brought proceedings in the Employment Court claiming that, in their full-time care for their children, they were “homeworkers” of the Ministry. Section 6 of the Employment Relations Act makes it clear that the definition of “employee” includes a “homeworker”. A “homeworker” is in turn defined as “a person who is engaged or employed by any other person to do work for that other person” in a home.
The Employment Court found that Ms Fleming and Mr Humphrys were both homeworkers. That Court also concluded that the correct calculation of wages for Ms Fleming should reflect her hours of work, applying the test for what constitutes work as set out by the Court of Appeal in Idea Services Ltd v Dickson. That case concluded that Mr Dickson was “working” for the purposes of the Minimum Wage Act when employed on a “sleepover” in a community home.
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed and declared that Ms Fleming and Mr Humphreys were employees late last year. The Supreme Court noted that the definition of a “homeworker” was introduced to provide protection for vulnerable workers working from home and was consistent with the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
In introducing the Disabilities Support Services Bill, Minister Upston makes it clear that Disability Support Services (DSS) that the Crown is not to be the employer of family carers. The explanatory note for the Bill says that the proposed legislation would reduce the Crown's exposure to fiscal and litigation risks by:
- extinguishing existing claims already filed (other than those of Ms Fleming and Mr Humphries)
- barring claims regarding the employment status of paid family carers, disabled people, and people acting on behalf of disabled people
- baring claims of discrimination related to paid family carers
- Noting that while section 27 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act affirms a person’s right to justice, the litigation bar is necessary to restore policy-setting responsibility to the Crown, and ensure that decisions about publicly funded care and support by family members are made within the framework set by Parliament.
Without revisiting this government’s list of stripping away employment rights, last year this government in the process of saving “billions of dollars” cancelled 33 claims from female-dominated workforces which had been seeking to prove they were underpaid in comparison to similar male-dominated industries under what had been an acceptance in the recent past from both major parties that pay equity issues are real and worth addressing. The Government also significantly raised the threshold for future claims.
What Ms Fleming and Mr Humphries have effectively been fighting for is to ensure that they are paid at the rate of the minimum wage for the work they provide their children personally, rather than the cost to the Crown of putting those children into the care of the Crown (which no doubt would be at a much higher cost - providing carers, providing accommodation, providing minimum access to education and health care etc) and in the process limiting those disabled children with access to the loving care of their parents and whanau.
While Minister Upston has said that she has “commissioned further work in this space and will be consulting on a package for carers", the bill is intended to strip away employment rights, human rights and access to justice in the name of cost cutting. As Nelson Mandela said "A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones."Read more...
