Air NZ is well within its rights to pay Chinese staff a quarter of what it pays Kiwis, says Clark. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Air NZ is well within its rights to pay Chinese staff a quarter of what it pays Kiwis, says Clark. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Air New Zealand was paying the going rate for Chinese crew working the route to Shanghai in the same way it would pay a different rate for British flight crew based in London, Prime Minister Helen Clark says.

Labour Minister Trevor Mallard has asked the Department of Labour to look into pay disparities between Air New Zealand staff based in China and here.

On Saturday, former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere labelled the state airline a "flying sweat shop" for paying Chinese flight attendants on Auckland-Shanghai services little more than a quarter of their New Zealand colleagues' wages.

He said the majority Government-owned airline hired more than 30 Chinese workers.

Mr Delamere today said that the immigration service manager in China who had arranged the visas for the Chinese staff was last July appointed Air New Zealand cabin crew manager for Shanghai.

The Weekend Herald quoted an Air New Zealand official as saying the Chinese workers were not employed directly by the airline but were seconded by a Chinese company, Fasco, which set their salaries based on market relativity in China.

But this prompted Mr Delamere to also query whether Air New Zealand had made a "false declaration" if it had applied to Australian authorities for transit visas for Chinese airline crew.

He produced an application form in which it said staff were employees of Air New Zealand.

The form did not name any Chinese staff. Mr Delamere said he understood it was a generic application the company used.

An Air New Zealand spokeswoman did not have any comment.

The transit application was for a routine cabin crew flight training exercise from New Zealand to Australia where there was a flight turnaround of about 1.5 hours with the flight crew not clearing customs.

Mr Delamere told NZPA he had been fighting on behalf of Chinese air attendant Crystal Zeng, who had wanted to work out her notice with Air New Zealand to take up a new job in New Zealand. She had graduated with a tertiary qualification from a New Zealand university. But when she had returned to China to work out her notice, her work visa was cancelled.

Mr Delamere said there was no provision in New Zealand law to give someone a work visa to work for a Chinese company that was not registered in New Zealand.