A South Island cafe has been fined a second time for breaching multiple minimum employment standards, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) said today.
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) said Springs Junction Café and Motor Inn - located just before Lewis Pass when travelling from Nelson to Christchurch - as well as its director Jerry Hohneck, had been involved in 22 breaches of employment standards in 2020 during the pandemic.
The breaches included failing to pay minimum wage to an employee — including holiday pay — telling them to stop recording the hours they had worked, and for inadequate recordkeeping.
The ERA said the deliberate failure to pay an employee wage to the worker is "exploitation and is serious".
Labour Inspectorate head of compliance and enforcement Simon Humphries said there was no written agreement to reduce the employee's hours and payments made to them by Springs Junction Café suggested the wage subsidy had simply been passed on to them.
"Employers may find that workers who are in a vulnerable situation will agree to working conditions that are less than required by law, but this never excuses exploitation," he said.
"Accurate record keeping is a fundamental requirement of all employers and any decision to stop keeping records is inexcusable.
"The inspectorate believes it is important for the public to be aware of cases like this where employers knowingly exploit workers who in many cases are vulnerable migrants."
The business and Hohneck were fined $24,000 and $12,000 respectively.
The employee is to be paid $10,800 of the penalties while the business and Hohneck paid them $33,165 in wage arrears.
In 2016, Springs Junction Café and Motor Inn Ltd, which previously traded as Alpine Motor Inn and Café, was penalised for a similar case of breaching minimum employment standards.
The ERA found the business had not paid the employee for work she had done, claiming instead that she had been a "volunteer" who, while on a student visa, was working in return for accommodation and food while waiting for a full work visa.
In that case, the business was ordered to pay $6,292.80 in arrears of wages to the employee, and was penalised a further $7500, $5000 of which went to the worker on the basis she was in a vulnerable situation.
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