No time records, no defence as Authority backs PA's huge unpaid hours claim
A salaried personal assistant claiming years of unpaid extra hours won over $105,000 in wage arrears, Authority Member Simon Greening ruled on 19 May 2026.
Sasha Lee started at JNJ Management Limited, the parent company of a hospitality and bowling group, in November 2018. On paper she was personal assistant to the group's sole director, James Yoong Sun Kwak. In practice, the Authority found, her work ran far wider, covering management duties across the group's businesses, project coordination and human resources.
Lee said her salary never covered the additional hours she put in over more than three years. JNJ argued the opposite, that her fixed salary paid for everything. The dispute turned on two clauses in her second employment agreement that appeared to pull in different directions.
Clause 5.1 read: "Your pay rate is specified in appendix 1. This rate includes all hours worked to complete the responsibilities of your position, except if requested to work on a public holiday." Clause 4.1.2 read: "You also agree to work any reasonable and mutually agreed additional hours required to fulfil the responsibilities of your position and extra payment will be made for those additional hours."
Greening read the clauses together, finding ordinary hours sat within Lee's salary while reasonable, mutually agreed additional hours attracted extra pay. Lee and Kwak worked closely and, for a period during the employment relationship, lived together. On that basis the Member found Kwak must have known about the extra hours and did not stop her working them, making the additional work mutually agreed by implication.
JNJ kept no wages and time record of those hours, breaching the Employment Relations Act 2000. Working from Lee's reconstructed diaries and a check-in system, Greening allowed 2,101 of the 2,873 hours she claimed and ordered JNJ to pay $105,342.25 gross in arrears, plus $34,373.75 gross in holiday pay.
The Authority also found Lee was unjustifiably dismissed. JNJ said her role was made redundant in December 2023, but Greening found the decision looked predetermined. Key duties had been stripped from Lee two weeks before consultation began, and the consultation pack did not explain why the role had to go. A proposal cited a "notable 500% profit decrease compared to the previous year", yet JNJ supplied no financial information to support it.
Lee also won an unjustified disadvantage claim over the earlier removal of her duties, which JNJ announced to staff without consulting her first. A separate disadvantage claim, over an alleged shouting incident, was not established.
After the employment ended, Kwak raised an allegation that Lee had held herself out as a property manager for an apartment the Authority understood JNJ owned, and had taken payments from a tenant. Greening recorded that the matter had been reported to police and that no charges had been laid, noting: "On the face of it, this is a serious allegation." He treated it as an allegation rather than a finding and reduced Lee's compensation by $8,000 to reflect it.
In Lee v JNJ Management Limited [2026] NZERA 309, Greening declined JNJ's bid to offset leave payments it had already made and found Lee had not contributed to her grievances, so no remedy was cut for her own conduct. He ordered JNJ to pay Lee $17,500 in compensation and the equivalent of 13 weeks' wages for lost remuneration, with costs reserved.
