When restaurant manager Sanjay* wanted to get married, his bosses wouldn’t let him take a weekend’s leave. Instead, they forced him to get married on a Wednesday, his rostered day off.

There was no overnight trip, no honeymoon, no time to catch up with the friends who had travelled from Auckland to Wellington to celebrate with him.

Instead, Sanjay was back at work by Thursday, where he was supposed to be paid the minimum wage of $17 an hour, but he says was actually paid only $14, or $11, or sometimes as low as $7, depending on how much unpaid labour his employers squeezed out of him, under threat that his visa would be revoked.

For five years, this was Sanjay’s life. And this is the case he will put before the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) in a bid for compensation. He says he didn’t get annual leave. He wasn’t paid extra for public holidays. If he wanted to go away, he would have to leave early Wednesday morning and return that night. He never celebrated Diwali, or Christmas, or was able to see his friends for more than a lunch in Rotorua, nine-hour return trip.

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“I was always working, working. I couldn’t ever enjoy anything. Even on my day off sometimes, I would be asked to work, to do deliveries,” Sanjay says. “I ran around...

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