Workers claim liquor barons owe $400,000
Two brothers who run a North Island liquor empire have been accused of years of migrant worker exploitation – paying them as little an $8 an hour and expecting them to work up to 90 hours a week. National Correspondent Steve Kilgallon investigates.
Taranjeet and Jaspreet Singh Janda live in a $1.8 million rural home – but three of their former staff claim the pair owe them more than $400,000 in lost wages.
The pair own Thirsty Liquor bottle stores in Hamilton, Rotorua and Tokoroa. They also own a mini-mart, a pub, a Black Bull liquor store and, formerly, a Four Square supermarket, across the three locations.
They were stripped of the Four Square franchise after a worker, Manjinder Singh Sonu, made a series of complaints against them. Manjinder claims he was illegally underpaid then made to repay a chunk of that or risk losing his visa – and his right to remain in New Zealand.
Two more employees of the Janda brothers have now come forward, alleging a similar pattern of exploitation.
In an industry rife with cases of migrant worker exploitation, the allegations of sustained employment law breaches by the Janda brothers are believed to be the worst to date, according to migrant workers advocate Sunny Sehgal.
Taranjeet Singh Janda says the allegations against him are ‘‘completely untrue’’ and motivated by the workers’ failure to secure residency visas. He refused to comment further, but his lawyer, Sanjay Sharma, says they will fight the allegations.
A KIWI CULTURE?
Satwinder ‘‘Sam’’ Singh says he first met Taranjeet Janda in 2016, when his open work visa was close to expiring.
He claims the Janda brothers told him that, in coming to work for them, he was coming into an Indian cultural job, not a Kiwi job. He says he queried that, asking: ‘‘What do you mean, we are all living in New Zealand?’’
Satwinder claims the brothers told him their Indian workers earned just $8 an hour – well under the $15.25 minimum wage at the time. But he would be helped to secure work visas and, if he worked hard, residency.
Satwinder says he hoped if he proved himself, he would be paid legally. He claims it never happened.
Instead, he claims, he was paid $200 cash for his first 90-hour week of work, then $8 an hour. The Janda brothers then agreed to renew his work visa, but only if he agreed to repay them the ‘‘tax’’ on half his salary – that is to return some of his wages to them, he claims.
‘‘I was surprised,’’ he says, ‘‘my shoulders were down. But I had no choice. I was regretting what I had done. These fellows are exploiting me more and more.’’
Satwinder claims he would usually end up with about $300 for a working week of 70 hours or more, which usually worked out to $8 an hour.
While Satwinder’s visa was attached to Thirsty Liquor in Rotorua, he claims he mostly worked in Tokoroa.
He claims that, when the Janda brothers became worried about Labour Department investigators, they instructed him to forge three years’ worth of timesheets.
The timesheets were to show he was working 40-hour weeks as a store manager at their Rotorua liquor store, as his work visa required.
But Satwinder, who was actually working far longer hours in Tokoroa, 57 kilometres away, made a video recording of himself filling out the false timesheets at his home. He was accumulating as much evidence as he could against his employers before he quit working for them in late 2019, after what he says was three years of exploitation.
Satwinder also handed Stuff an audiotape conversation between him and Jaspreet Janda in which Jaspreet appears to tell him not to complain about being underpaid because he agreed to it. He also has statements from two New Zealandborn former colleagues about the long hours he worked beyond what was officially recorded, and invoices showing him working in Tokoroa when his visa said he should have been in Rotorua.
Satwinder claims the Janda brothers told him they employed Indian migrant workers because they saved money by underpaying them rather than paying the minimum wage to locals.
When Manjinder Singh Sonu laid his complaints against the brothers, Satwinder says he gained confidence to confront his employers and demand to be paid legally.
He says he offered to forgive his past wages if they did, but claims they refused, telling him they were very powerful and would hire the best lawyer, and he was too poor to challenge them.
Eventually, he claims, the brothers said that, while his contract stipulated a wage of $22, they would pay him minimum wage. They suggested there was no benefit to having Satwinder as an employee if they had to pay him like ‘‘a local Kiwi person’’, he claims.
He quit in September 2019 and found another job. He has filed a claim asking for $90,000 in unpaid wages, $25,000 in compensation, the return of $1700 cash and reimbursement of 863 hours of unpaid annual leave.
WORKING FOR $10 AN HOUR
Manjinder Singh Sonu, who was the store manager at Four Square, is preparing his own claim. He provided Stuff a video, in Punjabi, of him talking to Jaspreet Janda, in which Jaspreet appears to admit paying him only $10 an hour.
Manjinder began work for the brothers in November 2011, initially at their Bader St minimart in Hamilton.
He claims he worked an unpaid trial week, then illegally on a visitor’s visa for $8 an hour, and then at the same rate on a visa as assistant manager at Four Square, well under his contracted and legal wage.
Manjinder, too, claims he was told to repay the tax on his earnings, returning $200 of his $498 wages. He supplied Stuff (and Foodstuffs investigators) with bank statements showing a regular payment of $200 to
‘‘T Singh’’ for ‘‘rent’’, but says he never rented a home from the men.
Manjinder says the brothers stopped demanding the $200 payment when media stories began appearing about migrant exploitation. That lifted his wage to $9 an hour – although by then he was on a store manager’s visa, with a contract saying he should be paid $22 an hour for a 40-hour week.
While his visa was being processed, Manjinder couldn’t legally work, so was made to work for free, he claims.
He also claims he didn’t get a day off until 2018. Eventually, he says, they began paying his tax, which raised his hourly rate slightly, to $10.
When the brothers told him they wouldn’t renew his visa, he lodged complaints with Foodstuffs and the Labour Inspectorate. He claims Jaspreet Janda offered to settle with him, and when he demurred, ‘‘sent a friend of his to my family in India to put pressure on them’’.
Manjinder says Jaspreet Janda eventually met him and offered him $60,000 in two instalments to settle, but he refused, saying: ‘‘If you won’t pay me properly, don’t pay me at all.’’ But he says that, when the Labour Inspectorate closed his case, Jaspreet stopped negotiating.
He is now represented by a Tauranga advocate. He believes he is owed between $250,000 and $300,000 in unpaid wages and holiday pay.
THE MENIAL MANAGER
It’s understood the Labour Inspectorate may be acting on the complaint of a third former employee, Adarsh Kumar Monate, who has now returned to his native India.
Adarsh claims he is owed between $10,000 and $15,000 in lost wages after working for the brothers from August 2017 to August 2018, on a work visa as assistant manager at Thirsty Liquor in Rotorua.
Adarsh says his ‘‘assistant manager’’ title was only on paper, as he was given more menial duties. He, too, claims he was told to repay $200 a week from his wages, leaving him just $230 in the hand, an hourly rate of about $8. He says when he complained he was told the store was being sold and he would have to find another job.
He says he became depressed. ‘‘I was in their trap, I couldn’t go anywhere, I had no choice,’’ he says. ‘‘It was a very bad move for me to work for them, so I left and went to another store.’’
However, his new visa application was declined, so he had to return to India.
He says before he left, the brothers agreed to pay him his holiday pay – but then visited him several times to demand the money was returned, so he repaid it.
Sehgal – Satwinder’s advocate – has acted in more than 50 cases of worker exploitation in the liquor industry.
He says he has 20 cases under way, with five already filed in the Employment Relations Authority. The issue is, he says, that they must undergo compulsory mediation first, and any mediated settlement is confidential. This denies them the publicity to prompt other exploited workers to come forward. Sehgal says the Government should end all employer attached visas and any cases of migrant exploitation should be investigated without mediation.
He’s confident of winning Satwinder’s case. ‘‘Their lawyer knows we have a case, but the brothers think they can save some money by going to the authority and killing time . . . they don’t know we have very strong evidence.’’
Sehgal says publicity is essential because it entices other exploited workers to step forward.
The Janda brothers’ lawyer, Sanjay Sharma, says his client ‘‘intends to oppose any claims of any improper or misconduct [sic] by the employer’’.
He says that, as the case is now before the ERA, he’s limited in his ability to comment. ‘‘Beside that I can’t really say anything more, besides that my client is opposed to any claims made against the company.’’
Asked about the videos of his client, Sharma says: ‘‘I have no idea at the moment what evidence has been provided, so we can’t respond to it until we can see it or hear it.’’
He says he’s preparing a defence to Satwinder’s claim and, while he acknowledges the Labour Inspectorate was ‘‘auditing’’ his client, he was unaware of other complainants.
FOUR SQUARE STANDARDS
Foodstuffs spokeswoman Joanna Braeckel confirmed that the Janda brothers had been forced out of their Four Square.
In a statement, she says Foodstuffs had standards that its owner-operators had to meet. It carried out a ‘‘thorough and fair investigation’’ of complaints against the brothers and ‘‘decided to end our business relationship’’ with the Jandas.
Foodstuffs had shared its findings with the Labour Inspectorate, and had helped Manjinder with a new job.
‘‘We understand that the Singh Janda brothers are operating other businesses. We will leave it to the relevant authorities to ensure compliance of those other businesses with New Zealand laws.’’
The Labour Inspectorate confirmed it had closed one complaint about the Janda brothers in 2019 due to ‘‘insufficient evidence’’. Another had been resolved in mediation in 2017, and a third was ongoing.
In a statement, regional manager Loua Ward says the inspectorate is ‘‘concerned about non-compliance in the liquor retail industry’’ and is working with franchisors ‘‘to advise them of the need to audit and monitor their franchisees’’.
In October 2019, Stuff reported on Indian migrant Arvind Saini, who claimed he had been underpaid for three years by the owner of a Thirsty Liquor and Black Bull franchise in Northcote, Auckland.
Canterbury bottle store owner Harjit Singh, who was found by the Labour Inspectorate to have underpaid staff, reportedly shifted his stores to Thirsty Liquor after other major chains refused to deal with him.
Thirsty Liquor chief executive Tina Govan did not return calls for comment.
‘‘I was surprised, my shoulders were down. But I had no choice. I was regretting what I had done. These fellows are exploiting me more and more.’’
Satwinder ‘Sam’ Singh