ERA finds employer harassed, underpaid the worker it asked to monitor foreman
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has ordered an Auckland automotive business to pay more than $97,000 to a mechanic who it found was harassed, unjustifiably dismissed and underpaid for years.
In its determination, the ERA ruled that the company unjustifiably disadvantaged and dismissed the mechanic. He worked at the company's Onehunga workshop from 2021 until mid-2025.
The employer did not take part in the case. It filed no statement in reply and did not appear at the investigation meeting in May. When the ERA called the workshop, staff said the company's director was overseas. ERA Member Nicola Craig proceeded without the company, saying she was satisfied it "had sufficient notification of the investigation meeting.
Asked to monitor his foreman
The mechanic's problems began in early 2025, when the director asked him to watch his foreman and report how long the foreman spent sleeping or in the toilet during work hours.
Their relationship soured. The foreman repeatedly accused the mechanic of leaving the workshop unlocked, and on 3 April 2025 yelled at him in front of customers. The mechanic took sick leave and hired lawyers. The lawyers asked the employer to send any performance concerns through them.
Over the following months, his toolbox was moved without his agreement, and a colleague and an apprentice were told not to speak to him. When he asked for sick leave to collect his stepdaughter and her baby from hospital, the director said it would have to be annual leave because he was not the girl's biological father.
In June, the mechanic was called into a meeting about alleged sexual harassment from years earlier and pressed to sign a written warning, which he refused to do. On around 25 June, he was blamed for a warrant of fitness sticker missing from a vehicle. He pointed out that only qualified inspectors could attach those stickers, and he was not one of them.
The director then followed him around the workshop with a folded document for him to sign. She called him a "cry-baby" and a "disgrace," asked "are you on drugs, is that why you're not getting it?" and told him to "pack your tools up and leave."
The next day, the mechanic found a letter on his toolbox, which raised several performance allegations.
The letter read: "Your employment with [the company] will be terminated effective immediately and you are not required to serve notice." He received his final payslip on 1 July 2025.
'Not the behaviour of a fair and reasonable employer'
The ERA accepted the mechanic's description of the director and her son running the workshop "like a school yard," setting staff against each other.
"I am satisfied that [the mechanic] was being harassed and the employer must take responsibility for that," Craig wrote. She added that asking the mechanic "to observe and report on his own supervisor then not protecting him, particularly when on notice from the employee's lawyer, is unreasonable."
The 26 June letter was ambiguous about whether a final decision had been made, but the ERA found the mechanic had been dismissed.
"In the context of a mechanic's work, being told to take his tools away indicates that his job has finished," the ERA said.
"I conclude that in the absence of any message from [the company] indicating [the mechanic] should return to work or any response to the letter from his lawyers, that it was reasonable for [the mechanic] to conclude that he had been dismissed."
The ERA found the company ignored the request to communicate through the mechanic's lawyers and pursued him with abusive language.
"This is not the behaviour of a fair and reasonable employer," it added.
The ERA also accepted evidence from a chartered accountant. The accountant found the mechanic was paid for nine hours a day instead of the 9.5 hours his agreement required, and that leave was deducted on days he worked.
"At least substantial aspects of the pay arrangements which resulted in the underpayments to [the mechanic] must be seen as intentional," the ERA said.
The company must now pay the mechanic:
- $50,999.63 in lost wages, covering six months
- $25,000 in compensation
- $14,667.17 in arrears, plus interest
- $1,800, half of a $3,600 penalty, with the other half going to the Crown
- $3,375 in costs, which includes a 50% uplift
- $1,382.55 in disbursements
