Sixty-one leavers have filed ERA claims alleging child labour, servitude and systemic wage theft
Nearly $40 million in lost wages and compensation is being sought by 61 former Gloriavale members who have filed Employment Relations Authority (ERA) claims alleging the Christian community ran on forced labour and child servitude for decades, according to reports.
The applications, lodged on Wednesday against the community's Overseeing Shepherd, allege systemic denial of basic employment entitlements across the working lives of those who grew up inside the commune.
They include wages, holiday pay, KiwiSaver contributions, parental leave and written employment agreements, Radio New Zealand reported.
Barrister Brian Henry described the claims as the inevitable reckoning for an organisation built on unpaid labour.
"They were denied wages, denied holidays, worked horrific hours and this is the consequence of someone who creates a business model based on child labour. Eventually it catches up with them," he said as quoted by RNZ.
"There is millions and millions of dollars worth of free labour that this organisation has enjoyed and that was illegal."
The ERA filings draw on two Employment Court rulings from 2022 and 2023 that established legal precedent by finding that former Gloriavale members were employees rather than willing volunteers. Those decisions found children were assigned roles from birth, with boys subjected to violent supervision on farms and in factories and girls directed into commercial kitchen and laundry work with no meaningful ability to refuse.
The new claimants say their experience mirrored those findings. Court documents allege they were raised in a controlled environment where obedience was compelled through fear, formal schooling was cut short in favour of work, and earnings deposited into personal bank accounts were immediately redirected into a communal fund they had no authority over.
Injuries sustained during years of work at Gloriavale were also raised as part of the claims, according to the RNZ report.
Barrister Stephen Patterson told the news outlet that 41% of the male claimants suffered permanent, debilitating injuries, including amputated fingers, crushed hands and scalded limbs.
"That's a ratio that should not be occurring in New Zealand in a workplace," he said.
The ERA applications seek remedies spanning lost wages offset by board and food costs, outstanding holiday pay, employer KiwiSaver contributions, compensation for denied rest and meal breaks, damages for hurt and humiliation, and exemplary damages given the alleged scale and deliberateness of the conduct.
Claimants are also seeking interest on wage arrears and have applied to raise personal grievances outside the standard 90-day window, citing ignorance of employment law rights and failures by the Labour Inspectorate.
The claims are separate from proceedings brought by nine earlier claimants, who had sought $5.2 million in a related ERA action, and from ongoing court litigation seeking declarations of slavery and servitude.
A Gloriavale spokesman told the RNZ that the Overseeing Shepherd Stephen Standfast had not been served and was not in a position to respond.
