Dear Jacinda Ardern – End Workplace Exploitation and Abuse NOW!
Kia Ora Jacinda,
Please help stop exploitation.
Thousands of workers are bullied, sacked, underpaid or exploited every day. As a group of volunteers, we do our best to help these workers.
Unfortunately, we are coming across an increasing number of employers who are deliberately exploiting and bullying vulnerable employees. Many victims are too scared to even ask for their minimum rights and protections.
Our employment legal system is broken. When victims do decide to stand up, the lengthy delays and high costs prevent them from getting justice through the legal process.
Guilty abusers are allowed to pay a fraction of what they owe. They get full and permanent confidentiality, and are free to repeat their abusive behaviour. This has led to the rapid spread of exploitation and bullying in our workplaces.
We have a very simple plan to stop it.
These three law changes will end exploitation and abuse at work overnight.
1. Any employer exploiting vulnerable workers, including migrant workers, shall be referred to the criminal courts.
👉 If exploiters know they could go to prison, they will stop their abusive behaviour.
2. If an owner sells or closes their business to avoid justice, the employer shall be held personally liable for any money owed to a victim. Currently many employers who exploit ‘sell’ their business to an associate before their case is heard.
👉 Cases must no longer be automatically dismissed on these grounds.
3. Any worker’s claim of under $20,000 must be held within one month. A mediator shall decide the matter and any compensation is to be paid within 14 days. More expensive or severe cases shall be decided within 3 months.
👉 Currently, victims regularly wait for more than a year just to get their case heard.
With your help, we can stop criminal exploitation by employers in our country.
Sincerely yours,
UTU JUSTICE FOR WORKERS CAMPAIGN
Why is this important?
We want thousands of people to sign this letter. We want to convince the prime minister that many New Zealanders want to her to change the current laws, so victims will get prompt and fair justice. Only then will workplace exploitation and abuse stop.
🔥 Who are we? 🔥
UTU for Workers Union is dedicated to campaigning to stop workplace exploitation and abuse in Aotearoa NZ. We fight for justice.
We provide employment advice and advocacy for any worker in a non-unionised workplace who can’t afford a lawyer.
The campaign is co-ordinated in partnership with the Migrant Workers Association. They provide pastoral and visa support to exploited migrant workers.
Currently our name is One Union, and we are an incorporated society and registered trade union. From May 2021 we will formally be renamed UTU for Workers Union.
Please sign this open letter to Jacinda to end workplace exploitation and abuse.
Agree 100%. Also stop dispute resolution confidentiality and non- disclosure clauses from being almost automatic now, and thereby protecting bad employers. Also there is no good reason why government dept bullies, in particular, should be protected by confidentiality agreements.
You need to ask yourself…. Is this story relevant to the UN? If so, expect action, if not…. meh!
Though I agree with this article, it’s not going to happen.
If you’re an employee and you’re being bullied, put in unsafe situations or not being paid – leave!
Don’t wait weeks, months or years! Leave today. I can understand why people don’t, however you have a responsibility to yourself too.
Agree hugely that worker and labour rights in NZ should be tightened up.
But “Any employer exploiting vulnerable workers, including migrant workers, shall be referred to the criminal courts.”
Shouldn’t it be any worker being exploited has the rights for their case to be referred to the criminal courts? Not just vulnerable workers? Why make the distinction? Worker exploitation is across the board in NZ and getting worse with more scams.
Joanne Harrison for example managed to make redundant workers who were questioning her criminal frauds.
Then there was professors and lawyers bullying or sexually harrassing others.
None of these may fit the ‘vulnerable’ worker discourse that the media and woke love but are not acceptable ways for colleagues or managers to behave in their employment roles.
It is extremely easy for people to use power in NZ against others, and not always in the woke sense that government has become obsessed about, such as migrant exploitation (while woke are seemingly encouraging migrant exploitation with more migrant work permits, for lower end jobs and for longer. While also having non NZ citizens able to bring in work visa applicants into NZ so it’s a free for all).
NZ workers are easy to exploit as NZ workers often have a ‘trust’ model and so are easily exploited by scammers who seem to be everywhere in NZ.
It’s actually considered good business in NZ to exploit labour here.
A starting point for helping workers should be compulsory redundancy payments.
Another change necessary is that ERA should be able to hear all labour cases equally not just those in “employment” so that contractors, gig workers and so forth don’t have additional discrimination to them by being a ‘get out of jail free’ card for abusive employers and employment scams as they try to make every worker outside of employment to ensure they don’t have to pay minimum statuary contributions. (Employment scams are increasing across the board in NZ not just for migrants and vulnerable people. )
If we want to keep NZ a safe place for labour here, then government need to update the employment laws with the times.
There needs to be a complete system for redress for labour disputes across the courts in NZ. NZ is falling behind the world (and OZ) and it is starting with our abusive labour laws that encourage labour exploitation in NZ and have a very narrow view of it.
ERA needs to be more user friendly, more like disputes tribunal and tenancy tribunal.
There should be under $50k courts for Labour disputes, over $50k courts for Labour disputes and then collective or test labour cases, which is when there are legal points to prove in discrimination to keep up with the growing labour scams and exploitation, aka not paying holiday pay, uber drivers etc.
The payments are also so low from ERA that people’s legal costs are over the pay outs so for middle class workers. There is little incentive or penalty in NZ to provide decent benefits for labour here.
This government has trapped renters in a situation where they cannot move, they have to find the landlords extra $150 a week, they are stuck. They cannot leave an area. They cannot afford to leave their job. Their lives are hell. They are depressed, anxious and worst of all, often suicidal. At least the slumlords are happy though hey?
UTU for Workers Union seems a hybrid activist organisation angling for social change and doing some case work and education along the way as they put the fear of the proverbial into some of the worst exploiters.
If we had a class left, regularly fighting central labour organisation, such adventurism would not be necessary. CTU officials turned up at the bus strike/lockout today, dunno, because it was in Wellington? I will be watching their statements closely on this because if they cannot make significant noise about venture capitalists locking out essential transport workers then they may as well retire.
Remember Matt McCarten started Unite union for the untouchables, as other unions deemed fast food and migrant workers, and is a credible ongoing force today. So who knows where UTU might end up. “Living Wage” was a movement that got tacked onto some unions work flows and has delivered in some areas while a flawed programme imo that does not necessarily increase union density.
So good luck with UTU.