Labour-hire exploitation ‘disgraceful’

‘‘Disgraceful’’ cases of racial and sexual profiling of recruits will be heard in Parliament this month when a bill to regulate labour-hire companies is introduced.

Labour list MP Kieran McAnulty said the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill would close ‘‘loopholes’’ in employment law that allowed companies to exploit workers supplied via labour-hire firms.

The bill would amend the Employment Act so workers employed by a labour-hire company can bring personal grievances against the secondary employer they are subcontracted to work for.

Citing a recent immigration investigation that exposed a network of 10 labour-hire companies supplying illegal Malaysian workers to Auckland construction sites, McAnulty said the situation was ‘‘appalling’’.

He had heard examples of companies choosing workers from ‘‘rogue’’ labourhire companies based on their ethnicity and sexual orientation.

‘‘[Labour-hire] companies do have a lot of information on those that are on their books. We have heard examples of employers sitting down and determining the certain characteristics of people that they take on. For example, no women of child-bearing age, no homosexuals and no one from an ethnic community.’’

Some companies fired female workers as soon as they fell pregnant, he said.

Because workers were employed by labour-hire companies, not by the company they worked for, they had no contractual rights to take action against the company deemed a secondary employer if they were exploited, he said.

‘‘That is pretty disgraceful and it’s unacceptable in this country.’’

Labour-hire companies served a need to supply firms with temporary workers on short notice, typically in the logistics, construction and manufacturing sector where big contracts were taken up quickly and workloads were seasonal, he said.

Labour-hire company Adecco general manager Teresa Moore said it had ‘‘jumped on the migrant worker bandwagon’’ and employed 260 migrant workers because there were not enough local trades workers here.

But ‘‘cowboy’’ companies, like the 10 supplying illegal Malaysian trades workers, who had since been deported, had plagued the labour-hire industry, she said.

‘‘It is appalling. That is where our industry is not as regulated as it should be.’’

The bill’s first reading in Parliament is on March 21.

McAnulty said parties should vote for the bill to progress to the education and workforce select committee so Parliament can have a ‘‘serious and rational discussion’’ about labour-hire worker and migrant exploitation.

‘‘It would be a regrettable message to this country if they voted it down now, because in doing so it says that they are comfortable that this sort of behaviour is happening in NZ.’’