A Southland dairy business and its owner — who have paid over $116,000 in arrears owed to three employees and were last year ordered to pay penalties of $215,000 by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) for minimum employment standards breaches relating to those arrears — have been penalised a further $15,000 for obstructing the ERA’s investigation.
The company, Rural Practice Ltd (RPL) was ordered to pay a penalty of $10,000 and its owner Reza Abdul-Jabbar ordered to pay a penalty of $5000.
Labour Inspectorate head of compliance and enforcement Joanne Hacking said the latest penalties imposed on RPL and its owner demonstrated the importance of co-operating and complying with the authority and its processes.
Mr Abdul-Jabbar is a religious leader in his community and served as a religious adviser and mentor for at least one of the three Indonesian workers he was found to have exploited when the ERA penalised him and his business last year.
Both the business and Mr Abdul-Jabbar were found to have breached minimum employment standards by not paying the workers the minimum wage, not paying certain holiday and leave pay appropriately, unlawfully deducting money from their wages, forcing the workers to pay premiums, and not keeping accurate wage and time records.
During the initial Labour Inspectorate investigation into the exploitation of the workers, RPL and Mr Abdul-Jabbar claimed one of the workers owed $5000 for recruitment costs paid by RPL to an agent in Indonesia on his behalf, and that the worker had agreed for this amount to be deducted from his wages.
However, the worker denied he had hired a recruitment agent and said he had not seen the invoice provided by RPL and Mr Abdul-Jabbar until the labour inspector showed it to him.
During its investigation, the ERA asked to see evidence that RPL had paid the invoice and RPL, through Mr Abdul-Jabbar, subsequently provided a photograph of a receipt.
But when asked for the original of the receipt, Mr Abdul-Jabbar provided a similar, but different, document without any accompanying explanation.
This led the ERA to launch an own-motion inquiry into whether it had been obstructed.
Chief of the ERA Andrew Dallas, who ruled on the obstruction case, found none of the “reasonably available and objectively verifiable, corroborative material, has ever been provided”.
He also found “it more likely than not this material does not exist”.
The actions of RPL and Mr Abdul-Jabbar had made the ERA’s investigation process significantly more difficult for both the ERA and the labour inspector. Mr Dallas found an obstruction had occurred due to “the ongoing failure to provide evidence to corroborate the authenticity of two receipts — both materially different but said to be ‘original”’.
“The nature of RPL and Mr Abdul-Jabbar’s conduct in obstructing the ERA’s investigation was serious and sustained. The obstruction was not mere inadvertence or negligence,” the ERA said.
In a previous determination relating to this case, the employer had tried to mislead or deceive Immigration New Zealand and the Labour Inspectorate by providing them materially different versions of the same documents (IEAs and pay slips) and it was deeply concerning to see this type of behaviour impact the authority’s process as well, Ms Hacking said.
“This case underscores the critical importance of honesty and transparency in proceedings before the ERA, which relies on the integrity of the evidence presented to it.” — Allied Media
