Trigger points
Mall massage shop workers say there is a dark side to the booming industry and they want tougher penalties for employers who exploit staff. Amanda Cropp reports.
Amasseuse paid as little as 86 cents an hour by an Auckland massage shop wants tougher penalties for employers caught exploiting vulnerable workers.
Businesses ‘‘pressing the flesh’’ have exploded with shops in many malls and suburban shopping areas offering on the spot treatments for walk-in customers.
Since 2018, close to 1000 massage therapists have been granted visas to work here, and the Labour Inspectorate is taking an interest in how well those treating our aches and pains are being treated by their employers.
Masseuse Jing Shen was awarded more than $13,000 by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) in November after it found she was underpaid and unjustifiably dismissed by Oriental Natural Healthy Ltd, which runs the Body Haven massage shop in Auckland’s St Luke’s Westfield mall.
Shen, a New Zealand resident, is angry that an additional $450 in fines imposed on her employer amounted to less than a speeding fine.
‘‘The penalty is so little, it will never act as a deterrent to other massage shop owners.’’
Migrant exploitation is more common in sectors such as horticulture and hospitality, so they are a higher priority for the Labour Inspectorate, but massage cases are mounting.
Over the past 21⁄2 years, six massage operations have been pulled up over labour law breaches, and investigations into a further three, including Shen’s former employer, are ongoing.
Last month Hanako Massage Therapy in Papakura was fined $10,000 for illegally withholding holiday pay from two Thai workers.
The ERA said owner Somsamai Chantrasee had taken advantage of the young migrants who were unfamiliar with New Zealand laws and reliant on her for their temporary work visas.
She had held on to $4640 deducted from their holiday pay for more than a year after they quit, and she misled a visiting labour inspector about her identity, pretending to be a staff member rather than the owner.
Branches of Fans Massage, believed to be New Zealand’s largest massage chain, have also come under scrutiny.
The Labour Inspectorate confirmed B-Relax NZL Limited, trading as Zen Massage Manukau, Zen Massage Wellington and Sam’s Land Beyond, both trading as Fans Massage, were each fined $1000.
Companies Office records show the three businesses have directors in common.
Bing Tian, Qian Zhang and Han Dong Hu are directors of or own shares in at least six massage and physiotherapy companies, and they had involvement in a further five removed from the company register.
Tian was the sole director and shareholder of HTZ Investment Christchurch Limited, while Zhang and Hu were former directors of the now-deregistered company which employment advocate May Moncur took to the ERA in 2019 on behalf of a Chinese masseur.
According to a statement filed with the ERA, the man was fired from his job at one of five Fans Massage stores in Christchurch after he objected to being forced to repay more than $9000 of his wages.
The company went into voluntary liquidation, but Moncur secured a confidential settlement for her client after she presented the ERA with transcripts of voice recordings of him discussing illegal premium payments with his boss.
Moncur says a recruiter had charged the migrant worker $30,000 to find him the Christchurch massage job on a three-year work visa.
After his dismissal he survived on charity from the Chinese community because his lack of English prevented him finding other work, and he eventually returned to China.
Sunday News approached Hu and Tian with questions about their massage operations.
Hu, understood to be living in Australia, did not respond. Tian said he was busy working on a Coromandel building site, but would try to respond to written questions by deadline. He did not.
In 2019 Moncur alerted the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to problems with massage shops after fielding complaints from eight workers.
She believes the business model would be unsustainable without cheap labour.
Chinese migrant worker
Linda is working in her third New Zealand massage shop, and she wants a light shone on their ‘‘injustices and behind-thescenes practices’’.
She declined to have her full name published because of possible repercussions in an industry where employers frequently know each other.
She says wages listed in employment contracts were just for show.
Massage shops routinely took 60 per cent commission from customer fees, and demanded that staff repaid tax deductions in cash.
‘‘I would work 48 hours across six days a week, the boss would pay me 40 per cent of the salary, but only record 25 hours of work on paper to avoid risks.
‘‘I’ve been to both Japan and Singapore, but so far the massage parlour industry in
New Zealand is the darkest profession I have seen.
‘‘We can’t even get the minimum wage. People like us on work visas have nowhere to share our grievances.’’
Some massage shops engage complete novices as unpaid interns while they are trained by more experienced staff and Jing Shen took this route into the industry.
At her ERA hearing she gave evidence that Body Haven told her she would receive above minimum wage once trained, and assured her some staff members earned $800 to $1000 a week.
There was no reference to her being employed as a contractor, and she never received a written employment contract even though Inland Revenue records showed she was taxed as an employee with PAYE and ACC deducted from her earnings.
A month after starting at
Body Haven she received $170 for 198 hours work – 86c per hour net – and thereafter her weekly pay varied significantly from $270 up to $500.
In her decision, ERA member Eleanor Robinson said the company’s failures arose from a mistaken but genuine belief that Shen was a contractor, rather than a deliberate intention to flout the statutory requirements, and the three penalty payments of $150 reflected that.
Robinson also dismissed Shen’s complaints about sexual harassment, bullying and physical assault, partly on the grounds that she had not complained about them during her employment, so the company could not take steps to prevent a repetition of the behaviour.
She said that while Shen was offended by crude sexual jokes made by owner Zengli Shen (no relation), they were made in the general workplace and not directed at her personally.
Robinson concluded witness evidence of assaults was not credible and other staff did not back up allegations of widespread violence, such as kicking and slapping.
But Shen told Sunday News it was not unusual for Zengli Shen to hit staff on the head and shoulders, and workers just accepted it. ‘‘No one even said a word, everyone was enduring and I [was] used to this environment, so I didn’t say anything to anyone.’’
However, Jing Shen was not the only Body Haven worker to complain of exploitation.
Moncur filed ERA claims on behalf of four Body Haven migrant workers in August 2019 alleging eight labour law breaches including bullying, failure to pay minimum wage, holiday or sick pay and underpayments and seeking illegal premiums.
A little over a month later police were called to a Greenlane property after the sudden death of Zengli Shen and they referred the case to the coroner.
Within days two Body Haven masseuses who had lodged personal grievances were physically attacked and verbally abused at work by a visitor to the premises who blamed them for their employer’s death.
The two women laid complaints with police who
‘The penalty is so little, it will never act as a deterrent to other massage shop owners.’ JING SHEN, WHO TOOK A CASE TO THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS AUTHORITY
investigated but said the incident was not captured on CCTV. No charges were laid and the file is ‘‘not active’’.
One of the assault victims says she also received threatening phone calls, and she and her three co-workers ended up withdrawing their ERA complaints.
The Labour Inspectorate has issued Body Haven with an infringement notice and is awaiting the owner’s comment on an investigation report.
Zengli Shen’s step-daughter and Body Haven’s administrator Carol Cong strongly denies claims of exploitation, and rejects any suggestion family members were involved in assaults, intimidation, or threats to workers and ERA witnesses.
She says her step-father was ‘‘a very good boss’’ who treated his staff well, and he was very stressed about the ERA action at the time of his death.
Cong says paying a fixed hourly rate is difficult for massage businesses, because of the potential downtime between customers.
Body Haven paid contract staff the industry’s highest commission rate of at least 40 per cent which gave them an incentive to compete for customers and work hard.
‘‘Usually they can earn more money from commission than if they received minimum pay.’’
Independent contractors are not covered by most employment-related laws, so they don’t get things like holiday or sick pay, and cannot bring personal grievances.
According to Immigration New Zealand, migrant workers on essential skills and employerassisted temporary work visas must be treated as employees receiving at least minimum wage and all other entitlements.
Auckland employment lawyer David Fleming says it is a ‘‘real stretch’’ for mall massage shops to suggest massage therapists are independent contractors when the boss dictates prices and sets staff rosters.
‘‘It’s very hard to see how the people working in these places are anything other than employees because they’re delivering a service that is just part of the business.’’
One Union campaigns against migrant exploitation, and Chinese support worker Julia Liu says employers recruited massage therapists from China or Thailand because they were easy to control, and their lack of English made them vulnerable.
‘‘The only information they get is from the employer. The employer will say, we only need your skills, you don’t need to talk to the customer, we will tell you what to do.’’
Massage NZ president Helen Smith says massage shops have proliferated over recent years because they offer cheap convenient services, but there are concerns about use of untrained staff, and her organisation has lobbied for compulsory registration to set minimum standards.
‘‘Anyone can do massage in New Zealand with no training whatsoever.’’
A formal New Zealand level 5 qualification in relaxation and wellness massage requires 12 months’ training, and qualifying in remedial massage takes a further year.
Smith says it is important for therapists to be able to communicate with clients to get informed consent about the amount of pressure being applied (see sidebar), and the inability to speak sufficient English can be a problem.
‘‘Some complaints we get are that people are too hard and don’t stop when they’re asked.’’
Massage NZ education officer Doug Maynard runs an Auckland practice, and he says mall services are more suited to treating ‘‘well and healthy’’ people.
He says massage clients should be asked about health problems, previous injuries, recent accidents and medication use, but mall shops did not always do that.
If someone had low blood pressure, it may be even lower post-massage, and they should be advised not to use machinery or drive a car immediately afterwards.
Maynard says massage therapists should also do standard Covid-screening of customers, for example checking whether customers had any symptoms or had been in contact with a Covid-sufferer.