The Employment Relations Authority has fined a company, Rural Practice and its owner, Reza Abdul-Jabbar, a total of $215,0000 for exploiting migrant farmers.
RNZ reports that the farmer, who is a well-known imam, and his company have been found guilty of exploiting three migrant workers from Indonesia who worked for the company on its Invercargill dairy farm. They were subject to various employment breaches while working there between 2017 and 2022. The breaches included failure to pay the workers minimum wage, not paying for their holidays, manipulating their payslips, unlawful deductions of their salaries and inability to keep accurate wage records.
One of the workers raised the alarm in December 2020. He contacted the Ministry of Innovation and Employment about his pay and day offs and reported that the employer withheld his passport and identification.
A Labor Inspectorate investigation found that no employee had been paid the correct wages and that unlawful payslip deductions were made. The head of the compliance and enforcement team, Simon Humphries, said it was unforgivable that business owners would knowingly and deliberately exploit vulnerable workers they brought to New Zealand.
Employment Relations Authority member Alastair Dumbleton said, “Abdul-Jabbar knowingly disregarded the law governing employment. He took advantage of (the migrant employees) because they were not from New Zealand.”
