How one company used a chef's own holiday pay to fund a wage cut he never agreed to
An Auckland chef's holiday pay covered a pay cut he never agreed to, Employment Relations Authority member Marija Urlich ruled on 30 July 2026.
The chef worked for his employer from 15 January 2025 to 19 October 2025. His written employment agreement, signed on 20 January 2025, set his pay at $25 gross an hour for 30 hours across five days a week, and required any change to those terms to be agreed in writing.
The employer's sole director accepted holiday pay was owed but disputed the amount. He said the chef had agreed, from 2 June 2025, to work three fewer hours a week for correspondingly less pay, pointing to an email he sent proposing the change on 8 June 2025.
Urlich found that email did not record any agreement, and no later written confirmation existed either. She considered it more likely the chef never agreed to the change, since his pay did not actually drop. Instead, she found, the employer had been using the chef's public holiday entitlement to make up the missing hours.
That conclusion traced back to an email the chef had sent on 2 June 2025, asking for a payslip and listing six public holidays he said had gone unpaid. In it, he told the director, "you haven't paid me anything".
Later correspondence bore this out. The employer applied part of the chef's public holiday entitlement to his pay on two occasions: nine hours between 9 June and 29 June 2025, and a further twelve hours between 30 June and 27 July 2025.
On the alternative holidays claimed, Urlich pointed to a clause in the employment agreement requiring them to be taken as a day off, in line with the Holidays Act 2003. On that basis, she found the employer could not lawfully have used the chef's alternative holiday entitlement to top up his ordinary pay.
Urlich calculated the chef was owed $2,382 gross in holiday pay arrears, based on 8 per cent of his total earnings, plus $1,575 gross in alternative holiday pay for seven public holidays he worked without loading or a day off in lieu. She ordered the employer to pay the combined $3,957 gross within 14 days, with interest running from 20 October 2025, and to reimburse the chef's $71.55 Authority filing fee.
The chef had also asked the Authority to hold a second company jointly liable, citing Inland Revenue records showing that company paid his wages between April and July 2025. Urlich disagreed, finding the original employer remained the employing entity under the written agreement and had paid the balance of his wages. The claim against the second company, she found, was not established.
On personal liability, Urlich found the director, as the employer's sole director, may meet the threshold of a person involved in the breaches. He had signed the employment agreement himself and corresponded directly with the chef about using holiday pay to cover wages, telling the Authority in an email, "holiday pay is owing", though he maintained the sum was smaller than claimed.
Urlich did not find the director personally liable, since the employer continues to trade and remains on the companies register. She granted the chef leave to pursue the shortfall from the director directly if the employer fails to pay as ordered.
