24 March 2021

Unite Union has called on Immigration New Zealand and the police to arrest the construction boss and release the ten workers arrested yesterday at a construction site in Auckland.

Workers are the people with the least power and most vulnerable to exploitation yet it is they who were arrested and not their boss. This is simply a form of class injustice says Unite Union Advocate Mike Treen.

No worker can be employed in New Zealand without an employment agreement and a confirmation of their legal status.

Every employer knows this.

Yet when workers are employed without a valid visa it is the workers who get arrested not teh boss.

Workers can only be illegal if a boss knowingly employs them. They boss has the power. The worker has none. They are victims.

Unite calls on the Minister of Immigration to allow these workers to stay in New Zealand and get work visas and to ban the construction boss from ever employing migrant workers ever again.

New Zealand needs construction workers not exploitative bosses.

At the moment New Zealand has many workers who have been forced to go outside their official legal visa status because a pandemic has swept the world.

We need an amnesty for workers who only want to contribute their labour to help New Zealand develop and lock up the bosses who have entrapped them.

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