Restaurant Brands is refusing to reemploy a Pizza Hut assistant manager Amit Sharma despite 4 years service with the company because his work visa was renewed by immigration two days late.
The delay in getting approval was caused by Immigration NZ having to ask the company to resend its sponsorship forms because the ones they used to support the assistant managers application were no longer valid.
Now the worker faces having his right to stay in New Zealand terminated on Friday unless the company comes to the rescue.
Unite Union National Director Mike Treen says “the company’s attitude is simply inhuman.
“Here we have someone who has given the company 4 years service and he is tossed aside like so much garbage because they can’t be bothered renewing their sponsorship.
“The company told us they have no positions for an assistant manager in any of their dozens of store. We don’t accept that argument. In fact his manager at the Birkenhead store told me that he has been without an assistant since Amit was terminated and he wants Amit back in his store.
“The only fair thing to do in these circumstances is to place Amit back as an Assiatant Manager with the company” said Mike Treen. It is the only decent and humane thing to do.”
Get rid of him
NZ doesn’t really have a problem producing fast food workers
We need to import workers we can’t produce
This man contributes nothing but putting another NZer on a benefit
Unite agrees that the importing of migrant workers to work in the fast food industry is largely unnecessary:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/7640241/Migrants-plug-holes-to-train-as-managers
However, and this is very important, once we have allowed workers into New Zealand we need to treat them fairly and with respect – which was not done in this case. Allowing migrant workers already here to be exploited and treated as disposable labour units actually undermines every workers pay and conditions – see http://unitenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/migrant-workers-their-problems-are-every-workers-problems/
Playing one group of workers off against another is how wages and conditions get lowered – not improved.
Yes, but most of us don’t see the immigrants as the fantasy other workers but as what they really are our replacements. Once immigrants get themselves into hiring positions in these companies
that is the end of employment opportunities for NZers.
Unite has had some issues as you describe, with one ethnicity becoming dominant in a store to the exclusion of all other ethnic groups. Two interesting points about this.
Firstly migrant workers can’t get in to the country unless the employer assures them of a job. Where it happened it was with the full knowledge and encouragement of the senior management. Why? because migrant workers were more vulnerable and therefore less likely to join the union, ask for pay increases, proper breaks and safe working conditions. We are not talking migrant employers, the managers involved are usually born and bred kiwis just doing what the company wants – keeping down costs (wages) to increase profits.
Secondly we have seen some companies pull back from that strategy. What they found is that if their staff didn’t reflect the communities that their customers came form then sales suffered. Of course individual store managers may still operate a discriminatory hiring policy but when it becomes obvious we have had some success ion getting it changed.
With migrant employers in small businesses it is obviously still an issue – particularly when they don’t pay the minimum wage. When you can get away with paying lower wages there is a huge incentive not to employ kiwi-born workers. The law simply needs to be enforced – that is the solution.