Media release: NZ Council of Trade Unions

Friday 17 April, 2015

Chinese rail engineers have a right to New Zealand conditions

Chinese rail engineers currently working in New Zealand are being short-changed their rightful wage entitlements under New Zealand labour law, the Council of Trade Unions said today.

The workers are here carrying repair work on KiwiRail’s locomotives, and government officials have been unable to determine what their pay rates are, after being refused wage records, and have decided to discontinue their investigation.

“Fair minded New Zealanders would reach the conclusion that if these workers are here in New Zealand carrying out work on our trains, they should be covered by our labour laws,” said Sam Huggard, Secretary, Council of Trade Unions.

“The government’s working assumption should be that New Zealand law covers these workers and until this assumption is proved otherwise the labour inspectorate should proceed on that basis and investigate these concerns further.”

“We know there is a real problem with migrant exploitation in New Zealand, with migrant workers not being paid their minimum entitlements. Although these engineers aren’t migrant workers, there are a lot of the same problems in this case,” Sam Huggard said.

Sam Huggard said that the problems with the asbestos-containing locomotives would have been avoided entirely had they been built locally in rail engineering facilities in Lower Hutt and Dunedin.

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