A Lower Hutt restaurant has been fined $90,000 after two migrant workers were underpaid, had their wages deducted, and were made to work excessive hours. <\/p>\n
The company, which can’t be named at this stage, was sentenced at the Wellington District Court after pleading guilty to two charges. <\/p>\n
The charges related to the exploitation of two migrant workers from India who were employed at the restaurant between 2017 and 2021. <\/p>\n
An investigation by the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment uncovered a “consistent pattern of excessive hours, underpayment, and deductions from wages”.<\/p>\n
The workers, who held temporary visas, regularly worked up to nine hours a day, six days a week, while being paid for far less. <\/p>\n
Despite often working close to 54 hours a week, one worker was paid as little as 36.5.<\/p>\n
The two victims had a combined total of $36,217.78 in unpaid minimum wage entitlements. They were also owed a combined $36,284.43 in pay for holidays and leave. <\/p>\n
Between 2020 and September 2021, the restaurant docked $50 from one of the workers’ pay slips, saying it was for food. Meanwhile, they increased the employees’ hourly rate to $25.50 to meet the requirements for an Essential Skills residency visa application. <\/p>\n
Jason Perry, national manager, investigations, at MBIE said more than $72,000 in arrears was owed. He said it demonstrated the “seriousness of the exploitation”. <\/p>\n
\u201cEmployers are solely responsible for meeting visa\u2011related pay requirements and must never pass those costs on to workers,\u201d Perry said. <\/p>\n
\u201cUsing visa requirements or a worker\u2019s immigration status to influence their employment is unlawful and will not be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
At sentencing, the company was ordered to pay a $90,000 fine.<\/p>\n
Prior to this, a reparation order was made for $46,574.74 to be paid to the victims via the Court and $25,926.47 to be paid to the Inland Revenue Department. Additional reparations of $9,361.66 were ordered at sentencing. <\/p>\n
Permanent name suppression for the business and its directors was refused. They cannot be named yet, as they have applied to extend interim suppression. <\/p>\n
\u201cExploitation is not a business model; it is unlawful, harmful, and taken seriously\u201d Perry said. <\/p>\n
\u201cEnsuring New Zealand remains a fair place to work depends on holding employers who breach minimum standards to account.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Lower Hutt restaurant has been fined $90,000 after two migrant workers were underpaid, had their wages deducted,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-350245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-crime-and-justice","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories","15":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}