Calling him a contractor let the company skip the paperwork, and that is exactly why it lost
Treating a carpenter as a contractor and leaving his wages weeks late forced his resignation, Judge M S King ruled on 16 June 2026.
The carpenter began work for a construction company in January 2022, keeping his own record of the roughly 10 hours a day he worked at $32 an hour. The company believed it had hired him as a contractor, responsible for invoicing for his time before being paid.
His pay arrived irregularly, with gaps of two to six weeks and amounts ranging from $960 to $6,451, depending on the period. He resigned in late September 2022, finishing on 28 October, and later claimed he had been constructively dismissed and unjustifiably disadvantaged.
In an email to the company's sole director, the worker set out how he saw the relationship. "Our relationship is employee and employer," he wrote, asking to be paid wages he said were outstanding.
The case turned first on whether the carpenter had raised his grievance in time. The Employment Relations Authority had found he had not, and refused him leave to proceed. On his challenge, Judge M S King agreed the grievance fell outside the 90-day window under section 114 of the Employment Relations Act 2000, and that the company had not consented to it being raised late.
The judge granted leave anyway. The company had never given the worker a written employment agreement, because it regarded him as a contractor, and so had not provided the plain-language explanation of grievance rights and the 90-day timeframe that section 65(2)(a)(vi) requires. Combined with the worker's limited English and unfamiliarity with New Zealand employment law, that omission amounted to the exceptional circumstances needed to extend time.
On the dismissal itself, the judge found the company could not lawfully withhold an employee's wages until he invoiced. The director accepted in cross-examination that three other employees had written agreements, employment records and paid entitlements such as leave, none of which the carpenter received. He resigned, the judge found, because the invoicing requirement was unreasonable and delayed his wages. "He was correct," King wrote.
The delays caused serious financial distress, the worker said, leaving him borrowing from family to cover food and mortgage payments. The director denied he had complained about mortgage difficulties, saying he understood the worker needed money to buy his daughter a vehicle. The judge found the conduct breached the company's good-faith duty and its obligation to specify wages, and that a resignation was reasonably foreseeable.
King also rejected the company's suggestion that the worker had been earning undeclared cash income, calling the tax-evasion claim speculative and without evidential basis. A separate penalty claim failed, because the carpenter filed it on 15 November 2023, three days after the 12-month limit, having been found to recognise the employment relationship a year earlier.
The judge found the carpenter had been constructively dismissed and unjustifiably disadvantaged. The company was ordered to pay him $10,000 in compensation for hurt and humiliation under section 123(1)(c)(i), placing the harm in the lowest of the court's three bands, together with a sum equal to 12 weeks' lost wages, within 21 days. He was awarded costs, with the amount reserved. A claim seeking to hold the director personally liable was not made out.
