The liquor baron, the five-year bottle store investigation, and the $87k fine

The 11 liquor stores are no longer trading but director Ravinder Kumar Arora has been ordered by the Employment Relations Authority to pay $87,000 in penalties for failing to improve working conditions. Photo / 123rf

A liquor store baron previously ordered to reimburse his migrant workers $259,000 for underpaying them has been fined again, this time for failing to action improvements to working conditions.

Ravinder Kumar Arora, the director of Nikhil Himalaya Botany, which operated 11 liquor stores mostly trading as Bottle-O, has been ordered by the Employment Relations Authority [ERA] to pay $87,000 for taking years to action improvement notices.

The claim was lodged by a labour inspector in the ERA, who said an improvement notice was an important tool to enforce compliance on an employer who was failing or had failed to meet minimum employment standards.

An investigation into Nikhil Himalaya Botany’s employment standards began in January 2018 when inspectors visited the 11 liquor stores from Auckland to Ōtaki.

Copies of wages and time records, holiday and leave records, and employment agreements for past and present employees for the previous six years were requested.

However, the response dragged out for years with multiple extensions requested by Arora, insufficient evidence provided, and arrears calculations stalling the process.

The Bottle-O in Pt Chevalier, which no longer trades, was one of 11 North Island stores where employment improvements were needed.

In total it took five years after the inspector opened an investigation to correctly calculate and pay the affected employees, most of who were migrant workers, a recent decision of the authority said.

“While some of the underpayments predate the improvement notices, the affected employees were denied the benefit of this money until it was paid by the respondents,” the ERA said.

In this case, workers at 11 stores had not been paid correctly and were owed arrears. Almost all stores were trading as Bottle-O.

For each store, slightly different breaches against the Holidays Act, Employment Relations Act, and Minimum Wage Act were identified by the inspector, who lodged the improvement notices in 2019.

The inspector made 11 applications to the authority, seeking one breach per application.

Each notice addressed “broadly similar” issues, primarily to do with record-keeping and payment of arrears for underpayment of minimum wages or holiday pay.

For each of the improvement notices it was accepted none were fully complied with until the final sum of arrears was calculated and paid, which was only confirmed by the ERA earlier this year.

Although some steps were taken to comply with the notices, they were insufficient to demonstrate the correct sum had been correctly calculated and paid.

There were 18 months between the issuing of the first notices and commencing proceedings, and seven months lapsed between the second improvement notices issued to Nikhil Himalaya Botany.

“The labour inspector said the nature of the breaches was serious and rectification of arrears took ‘a number of years’, with a significant quantity of arrears payable to multiple employees,” the decision said.

Despite the delay, the company argued it had continued to engage with the labour inspector throughout the process and “at no point neglected or failed to engage”.

“The labour inspector said the respondent’s failure to act promptly affected a number of employees.”

The delay in action was not “deliberate” but “negligent”, the inspector told the ERA.

Negligence was denied by Arora, who said the stores had been “working in the background to resolve issues that were brought to their attention”.

Nikhil Himalaya Botany argued credit should be given as it had engaged in good faith, complied with the notices, contracted “external services” to help with remediation, and paid the arrears.

Arora blamed the delays on the inspector, who rejected this.

The inspector said limited credit could be given because the respondent was required by law to do these things anyway and cautioned the ERA against giving too much credit for remediation efforts.

“The labour inspector said that a ‘message of deterrence’ to both the respondents and employers generally, would be signalled by the imposition of penalties for non-compliance with an improvement notice,” the decision said.

Arora said working through the process and appearing before the ERA and court was “sufficient deterrence in itself”.

All locations have since stopped trading, and the company sought discounts because of financial reasons.

“I agree with the labour inspector here, the approach proposed by the respondent globalises down the penalties to such an extent they become completely disproportionate,” the ERA decision said.

This was the second decision from the ERA this year involving Arora, with the first relating to a substantial payout for workers who had been underpaid.

Five workers from several liquor stores were awarded $259,685 after their bosses failed to meet minimum pay and holiday rules while employed between Januray 26, 2016, and December 22, 2019.

Arora was also banned from being involved in the hiring of employees for a period of 12 months, which commenced in February this year.

Hazel Osborne is an Open Justice reporter for NZME and is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. She joined the Open Justice team at the beginning of 2022, previously working in Whakatāne as a court and crime reporter in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.