No apology for Chorus workers

Chorus chief executive Kate MacKenzie says she has not thought about making an apology to migrant workers involved in the roll-out of ultrafast broadband, despite acknowledging the company had not done enough to protect them from the risk of exploitation.

One subcontractor working on Chorus’ UFB network said he and his peers were still struggling financially and being treated unfairly, in the wake of a statement from the company that it had started to implement improvements to its subcontracting model.

Chorus committed yesterday to ensuring all its subcontractors could earn a ‘‘decent living’’ at the same time as releasing a report it commissioned from former state services commissioner Doug Martin of professional services firm MartinJenkins.

The report found Chorus, and contractors Visionstream and UCG, failed to sufficiently protect 1600 mostly-migrant workers hooking up homes to Chorus’ UFB network from exploitation by their employers, more than 100 of which Chorus acknowledged may have breached labour laws.

MacKenzie said she would expect workers who were ‘‘just starting out’’ would be paid at least the minimum wage of ‘‘about $34,000’’ with experienced technicians earning up to $100,000 and ‘‘quite a range between those two extremes’’.

But she did not expect Chorus’ commitment to ensure ‘‘decent pay’’ would increase the cost to the company of completing the UFB project.

Evidence was presented to the Chorus board three years ago that ‘‘with hindsight’’ should have alerted it to the risk of migrant exploitation, Martin said.

Those indications included customers telling the company that UFB installers were complaining about pay, and complaining themselves that the technicians were ‘‘overworked and rushed’’ and were delivering poor quality work.

But Chorus appeared to overlook early indications that working conditions for subcontractors were poor because its focus was on meeting higher-than-expected demand for UFB, he said.

No Chorus board members attended a media conference organised by Chorus yesterday to discuss the report, and MacKenzie would not comment on whether anyone should be held accountable for the failings it identified, or in what way.

‘‘Whether [the board] should have known or didn’t know, our focus now is: how do we make sure that going forward we are doing the right thing?’’ she said.

One linesman said Chorus and Visionstream appeared to have taken action in relation to some specific allegations made by whistleblowers that were personnelrelated.

But he said little had changed in practice for workers on the front line since concerns about Chorus’ subcontracting model came to the fore late last year, in the wake of action by labour inspectors.

Experienced workers were having to compete with migrant subcontractors on ‘‘rubbish money’’ who were doing the work primarily to get residency and who would not push back against unreasonable demands, he said.

MartinJenkins’ report noted migrant workers could be reluctant to report abuses out of fear it could affect their right to work in New Zealand.

The report revealed more than half of the 1600 workers hooking up homes to UFB for Chorus were migrants on temporary work visas, and for 70 per cent English was a second language.

The linesman said he was having to pay for equipment such as adapters and enclosures that Chorus had requested and that he believed it should pay for, and he had to take out an additional loan of thousands of dollars to pay his staff.

Subcontractors who were paid to connect homes to UFB were coming across problems with the parts of the communal network that had been funded by the Government which they were effectively being forced to fix for free, he said.

‘‘If we don’t fix it, we don’t get the customer connected and we don’t get paid.’’

Such issues were being taken up ‘‘left, right and centre’’ but it was an ongoing battle, he said.

‘‘You are set up to fail.’’ Chorus committed yesterday to make about 20 changes to the way it oversaw subcontracting work and protected workers, and said the implementation of many of the changes was ‘‘already under way’’.

But MacKenzie clarified it ‘‘hadn’t implemented those changes as yet’’ and had given itself six months to put them in place.

‘‘Changes to the system take time and won’t happen overnight’’ but it would thoroughly investigate any concerns that were brought to its attention, she said.

Chorus is understood to be close to renegotiating a contract under which it engages Visionstream, Downer and Transfield Services as prime contractors to manage repairs on its shrinking copper network. MacKenzie did not rule out dropping one of the latter firms and providing more of the work to Visionstream, which has been viewed as the pioneer of its subcontracting model.

Chorus shares rose 1.2 per cent to a near record high of $6.05 in afternoon trading.

‘‘Changes to the system take time and won’t happen overnight.’’