KEY POINTS:
When Saia 'Aholelei was asked to join one of the first groups of Tongans heading to New Zealand under a new seasonal work scheme, he agreed to go to help out his community.
He had worked on foreign merchant ships and the town officer in his part of Nuku'alofa, Kolomotu'a, considered that he knew something of the world and would be able to help look after the other 19 men in his group.
'Aholelei, 38, had a job servicing machinery for the Nuku'alofa Water Board to support his wife and two children aged 11 and 6. But he was happy to come to New Zealand under the new Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, which lets horticulturists bring in up to 5000 seasonal workers from 11 Pacific countries for up to seven months a year.
"The concept of the scheme is very good because there are lot of people in Tonga who don't have jobs," he says.
"They thought they were coming to New Zealand as a civilised country."
What they actually came to was not what they expected. They were employed by Kerifresh and accommodated at Kerikeri's Aranga Backpackers in what 'Aholelei says were 12ft by 16ft (3.7m x 4.9m) cabins, five men to a cabin.
They had the use of the camp kitchen, but "there were too many people there", so the camp put up a tarpaulin outside their cabin and they cooked their food there.
"Where I live in Tonga is way better. My kids don't sleep together with the pots and the dirty clothes," 'Aholelei says.
After three days on the minimum wage of $11.25 an hour, the men pruned fruit trees on piece rates varying from $2.50 to $8 a tree depending on the size of the trees.
Out of their wages, Kerifresh deducted income tax, $100 a week each for rent, $40 a week to repay their airfare from Tonga and $105 a week for health insurance, plus savings under a scheme which aimed to help each man save $7000 in their seven months.
'Aholelei ended up with only $100 to $200 a week in the hand to buy his food and support his family back in Tonga.
He had to borrow from his sister in Auckland to eat. He pulled out of the savings scheme and in January he quit the job.
His work permit was revoked immediately, but he has appealed through Otahuhu lawyer Nalesoni Tupou to Associate Immigration Minister Shane Jones to be allowed to stay until his original seven months is up next month.
"I didn't plan to stay in New Zealand," he says. "I'm just staying to get justice."
Sadly, 'Aholelei's story is typical of what growing numbers of migrants from poorer countries are finding at the bottom end of what is supposed to be our civilised society.
Filipino unionist Dennis Maga has documented cases where registered nurses have been recruited from the Philippines and bonded to work for up to three years in minimum-wage caregiver roles in rest homes, paying back loans for exorbitant fees to recruitment agents.
Counties Manukau District Health Board project manager Sue Christie describes some private rest home contracts as "almost like slave labour".
Despite an immigration policy geared mainly towards luring rich, skilled migrants, our low unemployment rates are driving employers to bring in surprising numbers of relatively unskilled workers. Work permits issued in 13 low-wage sectors ranging from horticulture to hotel messengers and doorkeepers (see table) have leapt more than 10-fold from 1443 to 15,235 in the past five years.
In the Marlborough vineyards, Amalgamated Workers Union organiser Steve MacManus estimates that 3000 out of a seasonal workforce of 5000 are from overseas.
Censuses show that overseas-born caregivers have risen from 19 per cent of personal care workers in 1996 to 26 per cent a decade later.
Employers such as Dwayne Crombie, the former Waitemata District Health Board boss who now runs rest home conglomerate Guardian Healthcare, complains that Immigration NZ has capped the number of caregivers being recruited overseas each year to five per employer, unless specifically approved by Associate Minister Jones.
"It's really hard to get New Zealand people willing to do this kind of work," he says.
"The first preference of most employers is that, if the Government was willing to fund it, we would love to pay the same minimum rate as the public hospitals of $14-$15 an hour.
"Our second choice, if the Government doesn't want to fund it, is to go overseas.
"Why are they putting up barriers to trying to get these people in?"
Work permits are in fact easy to get under certain schemes such as the new seasonal work scheme, working-holiday agreements with about 20 mainly rich countries, and special quotas for some Pacific island states.
But, in general, the official policy is that employers can bring in unskilled workers only if they can prove that they have tried, and been unable, to recruit New Zealanders.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
The Government has already tightened the rules in many ways to try to protect vulnerable migrants, as well as low-paid New Zealanders whose jobs they might fill. But clearly there is still a problem.
Measures taken so far include:
Raising the minimum wage from $7 an hour in 1999 to $12 from next month.
Raising the minimum for foreign fishing crews to $1.25 above the minimum wage from January 2007, rising to $2 above the minimum by next January. The table shows that this has effectively stopped immigration of fishing crews.
Raising funding for aged care last year on the basis that the money had to be passed on in higher wages to caregivers. Rest homes spokesman Martin Taylor says the average caregiver wage has gone up as a result from $11.86 an hour last year to $13.15 now.
Requiring ministerial approval for any approval in principle to recruit more than five workers overseas in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs from January 2005.
Requiring RSE employers to have "human resource policies and practices of a high standard", show a "commitment to recruiting and training New Zealanders" and provide a wide range of "pastoral care" including suitable accommodation and transport to and from work.
Requiring all immigration agents to be licenced by 2010.
Prosecuting agents who have exploited migrant workers, mainly in horticulture. Seven have been convicted so far. The latest was a Vietnamese supervisor with labour supply company Contract Labour Services, Ngoc Viet Dang, who was sentenced in Nelson this week to home detention for seven and a half months for aiding and abetting illegal workers to stay in New Zealand. He allegedly threatened them with a machete.
Part-funding a new group, NZ Master Contractors, which was launched in Hawkes Bay yesterday to promote a stronger code of practice among contractors.
Unions argue that the way to stop continuing abuses is to keep going in the same direction. "The only way to stop it is to address the pay parity issue," says Nurses Organisation analyst Marilyn Head.
More generally, the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) suggested last year that employers granted approval to recruit workers from overseas should be required to train one NZ worker for every five imported, or to spend a percentage of the wage bill for the migrant workers on training.
That suggestion came to nothing in the Immigration Bill which is now before Parliament. But CTU research officer Andrew Chick says the Labour Department is now reviewing its temporary labour migration policy.
"They are aware that demand for temporary labour is increasing," he says.
"So they are making sure that they have the policy tools that are going to work."
LABOUR, HOUSING FAIL TO KEEP UP WITH BURGEONING HORTICULTURE
Steve MacManus in Marlborough expresses exasperation with the way fruitgrowing and winemaking have spread like wildfire through most rural districts of the country in the past decade or two, apparently oblivious of the lack of people to harvest the vines when the fruit matures.
"As far as the eye can see there are vines everywhere _ new development, new development, new development all the time," he says.
"They know there is going to be a shortage of labour, so why do they keep doing it?"
Not only is there an absolute shortfall of local workers in places like Marlborough and Kerikeri, but there are also simply not enough houses to accommodate a seasonal influx of 5000 people in such places. So, for New Zealanders as well as migrants, seasonal work often means staying in cramped conditions, sometimes in tents.
"We've heard of 15 or 20 people in a house. That's overcrowding with one toilet," MacManus says.
Auckland restaurateur Graham Sanders says two Thai men, part of a group recruited by contractors Marlborough Horticulture, turned up at his Thai restaurant late last year because they resented staying in a house with 20 people and getting only sporadic, weather-dependent vineyard work.
MacManus agrees that some of Marlborough's 120 contractors are not following the rules, but ironically he says Marlborough Horticulture is not one of them.
"They are my top contractor. They pay premiums for their workers and really look after their workers."
He says other Thais who ran away to Nelson, around the same time as the two who absconded to Auckland, are now back with Marlborough Horticulture, picking apples in Nelson until the vineyards need them.
In Tonga, recruitment for the RSE scheme has been organised by the Tongan Government, with quotas allocated to each village. Town officers and village committees have picked suitable people in each district, and employers such as Kerifresh have made their own selections from the community shortlists.
About 5000 of Tonga's 67,000 working-aged adults have put their names forward for the scheme and about 600 have come here to date.
Nalesoni Tupou says two groups, each of about 20 people, have gone home early so far because they were unhappy with the conditions here.
He says the cost of medical insurance is scandalous and that, although the migrants are covered by accident compensation, there has been at least one case where an employer failed to report an accident when a man fell off a ladder.
"The manager said you'll be okay overnight, but overnight his leg swelled up and the workers had to arrange medical care for him _ not the employer. He was never given ACC."
Because they are here for only a few months, the RSE migrants should normally get tax rebates when they leave, but Tupou says some of those who left early were not given tax returns.
Former Auckland journalist Sefita Hauoli, who is now one of two local Tongan Government representatives responsible for "pastoral care" of Tongan RSE workers, confirms that one group at Kerifresh went home early in late January, after replacing another group who were "unproductive".
"Those who went home early came as a three-month contract to replace a group of AIP workers [where the employer was given "approval in principle" to recruit overseas] who proved unproductive," Hauoli says.
"When they came here they asked for a pay increase which the company said they couldn't meet. They were getting $45 a bin. They wanted $70.
"In spite of several meetings with them, they said no, they would rather go home."
Hauoli says the five-person cabins that upset Saia 'Aholelei were actually designed for six people, and that the camp bent over backwards to accommodate the Tongans' cultural needs with the outside cooking area, even though there was room for them in the camp kitchen.
"They said, `we are embarrassed to cook our food in front of people who cook in a different way'," he says.
Hauoli says their rent of $100 a week each includes free transport to work, and that the savings scheme is not compulsory but is designed to make sure the men bring money back to Tonga.
"We know that some of the heaviest smokers would smoke more than what they would normally pay in rent," he says. "We think if they were encouraged to put the $100 aside as savings, rather than look upon it as their smoking ration, life might change for their health as well as their savings."
He says tax rebates when the men go home are an issue which was raised at a meeting with the Labour Department two weeks ago.
"The department is approaching Inland Revenue to see if there can be a special tax rate for RSE workers."
