Chinese migrant construction workers tell harrowing stories of being overworked and underpaid.
Some Chinese migrants lured here by the promise of lucrative jobs instead have their wages stolen and their rights trampled, report Steve Kilgallon and Lucy Xia. Zhao eats an egg a day with rice porridge. It’s all he can afford. He’s owed $14,000 in wages by various employers and was left without income for a work-related injury, for which he received no compensation. It’s not the return Zhao and his wife expected when they invested their life savings - about $80,000 - into moving to New Zealand after being promised highly-paid, secure work in our booming building sector.
SUPPLIED Workers advocate Nathan Santesso said the system was broken. He said before Covid-19 there was a rigid process that was followed in the ERA process, but since lockdown, the application for a mediation meeting, which typically took a week, was taking up to two months. “It’s not working. I’ll submit an application and nothing happens. It’s taken up to two months to get a response. They are under-resourced, so they ask people to have a crack at mediation without them,” Santesso said. “We’ve seen some dodgy behaviour from employers during the first lockdown just with the confusion and people challenging redundancies. We knew it would be hard for MBIE. It’s been the perfect storm and that still continues due to more cases and they’re struggling.”