A construction company's suggestion that its workers "find some short-term jobs outside" during a downturn has landed it with a bill of more than $44,000 after New Zealand's Employment Relations Authority found the worker was constructively dismissed.
The October 19, 2026 determination ordered Buildforce NZ Limited to pay its former worker a combination of wage arrears, lost wages, compensation, and penalties. The Authority found the company failed to honour guaranteed hours, kept poor time records, and left the worker without income for months.
The worker, a construction labourer on an accredited employer work visa, signed an employment agreement with Buildforce in May 2023. The deal guaranteed him 30 hours a week at $30 an hour. The company supplied labour for construction projects around Auckland.
For the first few months he was paid entirely in cash with no payslips. Once payroll moved to the Xero accounting system, payslips followed. But the company used two different GPS clock-in apps over the course of the employment, and when it switched systems in October 2023, it lost access to the earlier records entirely.
That gap mattered.
When the dispute reached the Authority, both sides produced time records from the second app - and the numbers did not match. The Authority noted it was "more likely that if someone from Buildforce was changing the hours, that would be done in the lead up to paying for the lesser hours."
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