Parliament witnessed a lively debate around the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill, tabled by Minister for Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities Priyanca Radhakrishnan, during its sitting on October 18.
The Bill aims at stamping out temporary migrant worker exploitation in New Zealand. It seeks to do this by introducing a “fit for purpose offence and penalty regime” to empower regulators.
Employers who exploit migrant workers will be held to account more effectively under the Bill, the minister told the House.
“This is not an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff,” Minister Radhakrishnan told the House. “Instead, it’s an extra line of defence at the top.”
The government had committed $50m to support efforts by Employment NZ and Immigration NZ to curb exploitation, she said.
The minister highlighted government initiatives such as the migrant exploitation protection visa that enabled migrants to leave “exploitative [workplace] situations quickly and to be able to remain lawfully in NZ.”
Migrant workers were ignorant of their rights, the minister noted.
Once passed, this legislation will amend the Immigration Act, the Employment Relations Act and the Companies Act to bring in fines and penalties to deter employers of temporary migrant workers from non-compliance with their obligations under both immigration and employment law, the minister explained.
The Bill fills the gaps that exist in enforcing the law on employers who exploit their migrant workers, she said.
It empowers immigration officers and labour inspectors to “deal with lower-level offending before it becomes more serious.”
Once the Bill is passed, immigration officers will be able to compel employers who have supported a visa to produce documents relating to a migrant worker’s employment and wages to “verify that those employers are actually complying with their obligations,” such as paying migrant workers the salary quoted in their employer-supported visa application.
It would also help monitor the working of the new Accredited Employer Work Visa system.
At the moment, employers are not time-bound to respond to requests for information from the regulators. Employers who infringe the new 10 working days’ time-frame to furnish information will be issued infringement notices.
Currently, Immigration NZ has no mechanisms to tackle “low-level offences.”
However, National’s Erica Stanford, while “tentatively supporting the Bill, with great trepidation and many concerns,” cited a news report to say investigations into migrant complaints were falling behind and were inconclusive.
This Bill will not solve the problems with resourcing of Immigration NZ and compliance officers, she said.
Instead, the Bill allows “desk-based” officials to request wage and employment documents from employers, and empowers them to slap fines.
Stanford faulted the Bill for going after the “very low-level offending,” and made the pitch that “the majority of employers ( 97 percent ) want to do the right thing but are confused by the complex changes in immigration law in recent years.
“The same employers are working under extreme labour shortages, the worst in 50 years,” Stanford said. “And they need flexibility of workers to keep their doors open.”
Stanford argued the Bill ignored the real problems such as “the under-resourcing and enforcement at the higher end.”
The Bill targeted the good employers, mostly small businesses, who are trying to do the right thing, and are unsure of all of the changes of immigration law, she said.
Stanford drew on the hospitality industry to highlight the shortage of staff, noting : “If a restaurant owner asks his cook to cover a front-of-house shift, that would be in breach of the visa conditions.”
“Instead of focusing on getting workers into the country, which is what we need to relieve the severe [staff] shortages, this government is obsessed with making it more difficult, more costly, taking longer and adding a much more bureaucratic process to get workers into NZ,” the National Party MP lashed out.
Stanford said her party’s support for the Bill at the Select Committee would hinge on the inclusion of “a reasonable cause” or grounds for an Immigration officer to request a business owner to provide documents. Without that, it would become a mere “fishing expedition.”
The desk-based officers will replace the boots-on-the-ground compliance officers who are equipped to identify the real offenders, Stanford observed.
In addition, there is no right of appeal for businesses who feel they have been unfairly targeted.
The Bill, which had its first reading in the House, is set to go before the Select Committee for its deliberations.
All Bills must have three readings in the House before they are passed.
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