NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS NEWS
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A former Auckland labour hire company that supplied painters and plasterers to construction sites in Auckland and Christchurch has ended with its sole director personally liable for more than $200,000. Huy Quang Tran was the only director of High-End Renov Group Limited, which has since been removed from the Companies Register after going into liquidation in March 2025.
The Employment Relations Authority found Tran was personally involved in a series of breaches affecting three Vietnamese migrant workers. The company recruited its workers from Vietnam, which is Tran’s country of birth.
Authority member Robert Davies found Tran liable for failing to pay minimum wage and holiday entitlements, for inadequate record keeping, and for seeking unlawful premiums from two of the workers to secure their jobs.
The orders total $203,469.89. Of that, $132,291.14 covers wage arrears, holiday pay, and unlawfully received employment premiums owed to the three former employees. The remaining $71,178.75 is a penalty for Tran’s involvement in the breaches.
Each of the three workers is to receive $6000 from the penalty, with the balance of $53,178.75 going to the Crown.
Two of the migrant workers each paid $30,000 to obtain employment with the company. The payments were made in Vietnam before the workers arrived in New Zealand.
That timing did not put the payments outside New Zealand employment law because they related to employment in this country. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said the Wages Protection Act 1983 prohibits charging a worker a fee for a job, but until recently, it was unclear whether the law reached a payment made overseas.
In October, the Employment Court ruled that overseas payments made to secure a job in New Zealand are illegal, confirming that such payments are prohibited.
The case turns on a point that matters to any employer bringing staff in from overseas: a payment taken offshore, in another currency, before the worker sets foot here, is still treated as a New Zealand employment matter if it is tied to a job here.
It also shows that incorporation and liquidation are not a shield for the person running the company. The Authority’s orders sit against Tran himself rather than against the company, which no longer exists on the register.
For businesses that use labour hire suppliers, the record-keeping findings are a reminder that wages, holiday entitlements, and the paperwork behind them are the supplier’s legal obligation, and that directors can be pursued individually when they are not met.
The Labour Inspectorate said it would keep investigating allegations of worker exploitation and take enforcement action where employers seek to profit at the expense of vulnerable workers. It described employment standards as minimum legal requirements that apply to all workers in New Zealand, including migrant workers, and said the Authority’s decision showed that employers and company directors who breach those standards can be held personally accountable.
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