An emoji reply, duelling time records, and months with zero shifts
A construction company's suggestion that its workers "find some short-term jobs outside" during a downturn has landed it with a bill of more than $44,000 after New Zealand's Employment Relations Authority found the worker was constructively dismissed.
The October 19, 2026 determination ordered Buildforce NZ Limited to pay its former worker a combination of wage arrears, lost wages, compensation, and penalties. The Authority found the company failed to honour guaranteed hours, kept poor time records, and left the worker without income for months.
Guaranteed hours, no work
The worker, a construction labourer on an accredited employer work visa, signed an employment agreement with Buildforce in May 2023. The deal guaranteed him 30 hours a week at $30 an hour. The company supplied labour for construction projects around Auckland.
For the first few months he was paid entirely in cash with no payslips. Once payroll moved to the Xero accounting system, payslips followed. But the company used two different GPS clock-in apps over the course of the employment, and when it switched systems in October 2023, it lost access to the earlier records entirely.
That gap mattered.
When the dispute reached the Authority, both sides produced time records from the second app - and the numbers did not match. The Authority noted it was "more likely that if someone from Buildforce was changing the hours, that would be done in the lead up to paying for the lesser hours."
For a period in 2024, the company also paid several workers partly in cash and partly into their bank accounts.
"You'd better quickly find some other work"
Then the work dried up. By early 2025, construction projects were dwindling. The worker returned from a holiday in China in mid-February and messaged his site manager to say he was ready to resume work. The reply was blunt: "You'd better quickly find some other work to do in the meantime. I just wanted to be honest with you instead of misleading you."
In early March, the company's director messaged the project's WeChat group acknowledging the company was "facing unstable project situations" and suggesting that workers could "find some short-term jobs outside to transition." He said he would call everyone back once stability returned.
The worker responded with an emoji. That was about it.
Over the following weeks, the company offered the worker a single day's work on two occasions. He declined the first because he had a driving test. He did not respond to the second, though the site manager followed up within 20 minutes saying the director would sort it out.
On May 5, 2025, the worker sent a message to his employer: "Due to the reason the company has not arranged me to work for a long time, I have been made to have no income. In order to maintain my life, today, I have officially resign the job from you and the company."
That message, the Authority noted, had not initially been provided and only surfaced with closing submissions after the investigation meeting.
Not a resignation - a constructive dismissal
Despite the worker's use of the word "resign," the Authority found this was a constructive dismissal - where the employer's conduct effectively forces an employee out, even though the employee is the one who formally leaves. The failure to offer guaranteed hours over an extended period was a breach of the company's obligations, that breach caused the resignation, and it was "sufficiently serious to make it reasonably foreseeable" that the worker would not continue. The handful of one-off day shifts were not enough to change that. Other workers had already left after the same events.
The dismissal was also found to be unjustified. The company used no formal process - no consultation, no redundancy procedure. The Authority accepted there was genuinely minimal work available, and that had the company run a proper redundancy process, the worker's employment "would very likely have terminated within a few weeks." But it had not done so.
The money trail
On wages, the Authority worked through each phase of the employment separately.
For the initial cash-payment period (May to August 2023), it accepted the worker's personal time records but deducted unpaid break time his calculations had missed, arriving at $444 gross. For the next phase, with no daily employer records available, it again relied on the worker's figures less break deductions, finding $2,460 owed. For October 2023 to February 2024, where the worker had electronic records and the employer did not, the Authority found $7,005.30 outstanding - including $510 improperly deducted from a Christmas payslip without the worker's written consent.
For a later period when cash payments were part of the mix, the Authority could not satisfactorily establish the claimed hours and made no award.
Total wage arrears came to $9,909.30 gross. Add $2,070 in underpaid public holidays, $240 in sick leave, and $977.54 in holiday pay on the arrears, and the wage-and-leave component reached $13,196.84 plus interest.
Lost wages, compensation, and penalties
On top of the arrears, the Authority awarded $18,000 in lost wages across both the disadvantage and dismissal grievances - covering the period the worker went without guaranteed hours, plus three weeks after his resignation until he found new employment.
Compensation of $12,000 was awarded for humiliation, loss of dignity, and injury to feelings. The worker described his wife working alone to support the family, their parents having to provide financial support, and his wife eventually returning to China to earn income.
A penalty of $3,000 was imposed on Buildforce for breaching the Wages Protection Act and the Holidays Act - half to the worker, half to the Crown.
Director on the hook
The Authority also found the company's sole director was personally involved in the breaches under the Employment Relations Act. As sole director and shareholder, he was directly involved in operations - aware of the cash-payment arrangements, aware the app switch had destroyed earlier time records, and the one who communicated with workers about the lack of work. The Authority granted leave for the worker to pursue recovery directly from the director if Buildforce cannot pay the wage and leave arrears.
For HR teams managing labour-hire arrangements or guaranteed-hours contracts, the case is a pointed example: when work dries up, silence and suggestions to look elsewhere are not a substitute for a proper redundancy process - and directors who are across the detail may find the liability follows them personally.
