The contract said 28 days. The text message said something very different
A seafarer cook says he was promised years of work. He got 28 days.
The New Zealand Employment Relations Authority has found that a maritime cook was a permanent employee - not a casual one - despite signing a casual employment agreement for a single 28-day voyage.
The determination, issued on October 20, 2026, turned not on what the contract said, but on what the employer said before the worker signed it.
The worker was an experienced cook who learned that Kingston Offshore Services Limited (KOS) was hiring for a vessel operating under contract for an overseas company. He discussed the opportunity with the company's general manager, who told him the work was expected to last three to five years.
That mattered. He already had permanent employment elsewhere. He was not, as he put it to the Authority, interested in leaving a permanent job for a single casual voyage of 28 days. He had retirement planning and mortgage obligations to think about.
So he checked. He sent the general manager a text, asking directly whether the contract was for around two years. He was upfront: he did not want short-term work.
The reply left little room for doubt. Three years, the general manager texted back, expected to extend to five. The client wanted to bring in more vessels. A growing industry.
With that assurance in hand, the worker signed the casual employment agreement and started on the vessel for a 28-day period.
He also asked the general manager for a letter to give his bank, explaining that the bank was uncomfortable with the casual agreement. The general manager obliged. The letter stated the worker was employed on a vessel with "a three-year contract to work here in New Zealand with options to extend" and put his annual salary at $130,000.
Then, after the first voyage, the vessel's master declined to offer further work. KOS pointed to the casual agreement and said it had no obligation to provide anything beyond that single period.
The worker brought an unjustified dismissal claim - New Zealand's equivalent of an unfair dismissal action. KOS denied it, arguing he had been a casual employee throughout.
The Authority disagreed.
The general manager's evidence was that her text about three to five years referred to the overarching contractual arrangement between KOS and its overseas client - not to any work available to the worker personally. But the Authority found the text simply did not say that. There was no mention of the contractual arrangement between KOS and its client. The general manager had not explained that the commercial relationship might last years while the worker's own engagement was limited to 28 days.
The disconnect was "particularly acute," the Authority found, given that the worker had spelled out his position. He told the general manager he would not accept a short-term offer. It was in direct response to that statement that she replied with the three-to-five-year figure.
The bank letter reinforced the finding. While it referenced the vessel's contract duration rather than the worker's own engagement, it immediately followed that reference with an annual salary figure - language the Authority found hard to square with a one-off, 28-day stint. The general manager said KOS was often asked to provide such letters because lenders were uncomfortable with short-term contracts. But the Authority noted this particular letter was provided at the worker's specific request, not as a matter of course - and the worker had told the general manager it was to support his lending, making clear he was taking on financial obligations on the strength of the job.
The Authority concluded that KOS had been expecting a "significantly longer period of work" and engaged the worker on that basis. The worker had been "alive to the possibility" that he was trading permanent employment for a single casual engagement, took steps to confirm otherwise, received that confirmation, and acted on it. KOS could not now claim it had only offered 28 days when its own correspondence told a different story.
The worker was found to be a permanent employee. His unjustified dismissal claim will now proceed separately, with the parties directed to return to the Authority within 28 days for a case management conference.
For HR teams managing casual or fixed-term workforces, the case is a pointed one: what a manager says before the contract is signed - by text, by letter, by phone - can override what the written agreement actually says. Especially when the worker asks a direct question and gets a direct answer.
