Sacked for speaking out: Chinese migrant worker fired by concrete company
A Chinese migrant worker who spoke to Stuff anonymously as part of an investigation into exploitation in the construction industry has been sacked by his boss, who he says told him he had “exposed” the business.
Immigration New Zealand will look into the case, and a prominent union activist has agreed to represent the worker.
The migrant used the pseudonym Yu and was photographed in silhouette, but it still aroused the suspicion of his bosses at a concrete factory in the Waikato town of Pokeno.
The factory had already been visited by Labour Inspectorate investigators after a $40,000 wage claim was lodged by four former employees.
Th most useless Government bureaucrat in NZ is anyone working for MPI who bend over backwards for commercial interests so much so you can’t tell where government policy begins and commercial interests end, but following close behind their corrupt incompetence surely is the bullshit Labour Inspectorate!
These are the clowns who supposedly police migrant worker abuse.
I can’t spray enough venom and hate upon our Labour Inspectorates. They don’t go after the abusers, they see the exploited migrant worker as the problem, so instead of throwing the book at the exploiter, they punish the exploited worker by forcing them home.
It’s disgusting how we trick these workers into coming here, exploit them and then when they complain about the grotesque exploitation we punish them by deporting them rather than punish the exploiters!
The Labour Inspectorates see the worker as the problem rather than the boss and this leads to an environment where exploited workers are too fearful to speak out because they are the ones getting punished!
The Labour Inspectorates need to be shamed into action because the only way to make them do anything is to publicise their grotesque values.
These exploited workers deserve our sympathy and protection, they don’t deserve punishment and deportation.
Notice how Immigration NZ are only now getting involved because the media attention is on them!
We need to keep shaming them, there is far more to come on this front and TDB will be leading that.
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I don’t want to dampen down hope but this government is incapable of delivering on most things, light rail, housing, mental health, welfare reform, pedestrian bridge over the Waitemata, climate change, retail fuel industry reform, broadcasting, child poverty…I could keep going.
They can’t see that Pharmac is broken or St Johns Ambulance and those two are blatant.
But exploitation of migrant workers, not to mention it’s cousin, international students, shit, we have a whole culture established here. It’s the way Aotearoa rolls. Its 101 of neo liberal economics.
If we reform migrant exploitation liquor shops are history, as are many hospitality businesses, as is the trucking industry, farming, construction, health, infrastructure building, cleaning, fast food. Plus many more. Tourism, when it was going, couldn’t have survived without doing an Amazon to it’s workers. What would landlords do?
This is not exactly hard, just a lot more resources and dedication into enforcing Labour laws and investigations but I know this is Jacinda’s Labour government and planning solutions to anything much less realising there are issues like this out there, much less implementation of any such solution is just beyond them.
De-linking worker exploitation that is a fundemental component of our economy is simply asking for the impossible.
If National is so great they would be in govt and not a decimated shambles lead by an old dinosaur,abuse of Jacinda is a cheap way to say national are whiners and losers
National are worse, no doubt but Jacinda’s track record of meaningful achievements and “transformation” is terrible. 6 months into this term in a majority government no less and things are looking even less hopeful.
Please stop calling these people migrant labour/workers. They are “guest workers” that we treat very badly.
They are not migrants because most have no pathway to stay here permanently.
You are buying into the narrative of the govt and news media by stating this, they do not want the average person in NZ to know or care about what happens to these people.
Also the individual this all about turned out to not even recieved financial gain through deception or someone who would deceive. Rather than someone deliberately clipped out of context as part of scare campaign.
Well done for highlighting the hypocrisy and ineptitude. But don’t imagine anything will fixed by the gang of incompetents currently in power (who took over from the previous incompetents).
This is late-stage neoliberalism in action (or non-action if you like to think of it that way). The whole thing was a sham all along. But as long as there was an energy supply and an environment to loot-and-pollute, and as long as fake money was accepted, the pretence could be maintained.
It no longer can be.
Has anybody noticed how Meng Wanzhou, Deputy chair of Huawei, is detained in Canada and the Chinese government rushes to assist her?
Ten Chinese construction workers are detained in New Zealand for breaches of New Zealand Law and the Chinese Government ……………….? ( chirp, chirp).
I wonder what the difference is?
Labour Inspectors have no immigration functions or powers – at least direct the ire at the right part of MBIE i.e. Immigration NZ, not the Labour Inspectorate.
Most guest workers in NZ are indentured (they can not change their employer and go work for another employer, its in their NZ visa).
The government was going to get rid of this requirement but employers pressured and lobbied them and that never happened.
Its unkiwi-like and disgusting to say the least, this is only one step before slavery.
The government,media and employers do not want the people of NZ to know this, so tell your family,work m8s and friends.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/our-yeah-nah-migration-policy-is-mean-and-fraudulent
With this going on, pity the standard of the concrete and the next thing buildings falling down! Why let this employer keep getting off – they should not be allowed to have 4 ERA cases against them and a factory full of Chinese workers in NZ and keep operating.
As for the migrants. Immigration is a Ponzi in NZ. The only way to stop a Ponzi is to expose it, and stop those putting money into the scheme from doing so, let it collapse and end the pain for those in the Ponzi about to put more money in.
AKA in NZ, the only way to stop our Ponzi immigration is to call a complete halt on new immigration applications while the government get to grips with why NZ productivity is so low, why so many exploiters are employing migrants and getting away with it repeatedly, why NZ allows so many temporary visas and people working here for years on ‘student or temp visas’ with all their family also able to piggy back on it and have children here, why new migrants to NZ are taking up 50% of the labour inspectorate time with exploiting more migrants, why so many migrants are turning to crime in NZ and why NZ does nothing about it, why more than one in three households are contributing nothing to New Zealand’s tax take, why 40 per cent – receive more in tax credits and other benefits than they pay in tax. Why housands more are neutral contributors, or are close to it…. and how sustainable is that going forward with more Asian migrant pensioners in NZ than Maori or Pacific Island pensioners, why NZ is 100 billion in debt…. NZ mass immigration experiment for the last 15 years does not seem to be working for continuing a social democracy…
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