A construction company has been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in wage arrears and compensation after a tribunal found it failed to pay a worker for his first month on the job and then made him redundant without consulting him.
The Employment Relations Authority ruled that project quantity surveyor Junchen Xu was an employee of Aurora Developments Limited from his first day in March 2021, rejecting the company's claim that he was merely "learning and observing".
The Auckland-based residential building firm had argued that Xu did not undertake any billable or project-related work during that initial month and that his involvement was limited to scenario-based exercises and practical exposure.
However, the authority found that Xu's daily work logs and timesheets proved he was performing identical project tasks to other quantity surveyors, such as completing purchase orders and variation orders. Authority member Simon Greening noted that even though the company did not bill clients for Xu's work in March, it still gained an economic benefit from his activity on its residential housing projects.
ADL was ordered to pay Xu back-wages at the statutory minimum wage rate that applied in March 2021 for a 40-hour work week, plus an additional 8% in holiday pay.
