Calling him a contractor let the company skip the paperwork, and that is exactly why it lost
Treating a carpenter as a contractor and leaving his wages weeks late forced his resignation, Judge M S King ruled on 16 June 2026.
The carpenter began work for a construction company in January 2022, keeping his own record of the roughly 10 hours a day he worked at $32 an hour. The company believed it had hired him as a contractor, responsible for invoicing for his time before being paid.
His pay arrived irregularly, with gaps of two to six weeks and amounts ranging from $960 to $6,451, depending on the period. He resigned in late September 2022, finishing on 28 October, and later claimed he had been constructively dismissed and unjustifiably disadvantaged.
In an email to the company's sole director, the worker set out how he saw the relationship. "Our relationship is employee and employer," he wrote, asking to be paid wages he said were outstanding.
The case turned first on whether the carpenter had raised his grievance in time. The Employment Relations Authority had found he had not, and refused him leave to proceed. On his challenge, Judge M S King agreed the grievance fell outside the 90-day window under section 114 of the Employment Relations Act 2000, and that the company had not consented to it being raised late.
The judge granted leave anyway. The company had never given the worker a written employment agreement, because it regarded him as a contractor, and so had not...
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