Here’s where it got complicated. Aubricks paid approximately 160 hours per month through its payroll in the usual way, with PAYE deducted and payslips issued. Any hours above that were paid in cash at $25 per hour – no payslips, no PAYE, no record on the books.<\/p>\n
A company director explained that Aubricks sourced the cash through arrangements with other businesses. Those businesses would invoice Aubricks and then hand over cash, which Aubricks used to pay employees. The $3-per-hour gap between the contractual rate and the cash rate, the director said, reflected the cost of running the arrangement.<\/p>\n
None of that changed the employment agreement. It still required $28 an hour, for every hour. No variation was ever established.<\/p>\n
When the relationship ended in March 2025, the worker lodged what New Zealand employment law calls a personal grievance – essentially, a formal claim that his employer had breached its obligations. He said Aubricks owed him arrears across the board: ordinary wages, public holidays, sick leave, bereavement leave, annual holidays. He also claimed the company’s conduct had forced his resignation, amounting to constructive dismissal.<\/p>\n
Aubricks pushed back. It said the worker had been paid what he was owed, apart from a small balance it had already identified. It denied agreeing to an ongoing team-leader bonus the worker also claimed, and said he had resigned voluntarily. Then, in closing submissions – after the investigation meeting had already wrapped – Aubricks lobbed in counterclaims totalling more than $53,000 for the worker’s alleged retention of a company vehicle and tools, plus $6,048 for failing to give four weeks’ notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here’s where it got complicated. Aubricks paid approximately 160 hours per month through its payroll in the usual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,378677,378679,134,378678],"class_list":["post-904845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-business","tag-cash-in-hand","tag-employment-entitlements","tag-jobs","tag-wage-arrears"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}