ELE was a labour hire and recruitment business, now in receivership with Deloitte as its managers.
ELE was a labour hire and recruitment business, now in receivership with Deloitte as its managers.
Opinion:
The recent failings of ELE Group have highlighted the way Immigration New Zealand is assessing businesses for their fitness to employ workers from overseas on temporary AEWV (Accredited Employer Work Visas) visas.
Businesses don’t fail overnight, it’s a slow burn, and ELE group knew well in advance of their receivership that they were only just treading water.
It would be prudent for Immigration New Zealand to be across these happenings as well. Especially as this affects large-scale AEWV employers.
Immigration NZ is not the only one at fault in this situation, both the receivers and the banks will have been working with ELE for months leading up to the receivership.
Inevitably, as stakeholders, self-interest takes centre stage, there has been a race to “pull the trigger” and attempt to recover as much value as possible for the financiers whilst having not fully thought out the morality or ramifications of making over 1000 people jobless in the week before Christmas and leaving them without any holiday pay, wages for the previous week’s work or stat day payments.
Construction industry and community groups joined forces to help laid-off ELE Group workers in East Tāmaki. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
It certainly justifies the new National-led Government looking into how it came to be, and moving to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Aotearoa New Zealand’s international reputation will undoubtedly be damaged in foreign recruitment markets.
Because of these failures in our system, we now have migrants who have given up employment in their country of origin and left their families to provide a better future.
Many now are without employment, living in cars and are unable to afford food. Worse still, instead of being the proud breadwinners who are sending money back to their families, many of them are now in a position where they are asking for money to be sent to them instead, adding pressure to already strained budgets over the Christmas and New Year period.
A number of these skilled migrant employees come from relative poverty in Southeast Asia where the average salary is NZ$500 a month. The vast majority of them would return home if they had the means to, something that ELE committed to when they brought these employees to New Zealand.
Assisting these migrants into further employment is another pressing issue that Immigration New Zealand needs to address with urgency.
Anecdotally, having spoken with several employers who had staff through ELE, the employers are generally willing to take on the displaced staff but are in a position where they are unable to offer employment to the workers due to visa constraints and the fear of prosecution.
The migrant exploitation visa is not fit for purpose meaning that while the community and business in general want to look after these workers, they are unable to. The process of employer accreditation, job checks and the required variations to conditions to get the workers onto the business’ books can take months. Months that these people don’t have.
David Chalmers. Photo / Supplied
This is a time that requires real strength and leadership and, unfortunately, I haven’t seen anyone put on the captain’s armband and take ownership of the situation. That leadership must start at the top.
David Chalmers is an immigration advisor for Lowie Recruitment and is working with many of the migrant workers.
