Immigrants caught in pay net

The Government is poised to crack down on the exploitation of immigrant workers - the secret shame of New Zealand's fishing industry.

Foreigners, mostly Asian, are alleged to be paid as little as $3.50 an hour, once companies have deducted the value of shipboard accommodation, food and even, say some, cigarette rations.

This week the Department of Labour is to release a report into foreign workers' pay and conditions.

Labour Minister Paul Swain is warning that the department will take action against identified offending fishing companies if they don't clean up their acts. "The ones that aren't playing by the rules taint everybody else," he told the Herald on Sunday.

"Given that I'm minister of labour and immigration, I've got both eyes on this issue. We won't allow immigration to be used as a tool to drive down wages."

Some foreign workers are paid a token retainer then made to wait weeks for a cut of the proceeds from selling the fish they catch, the report will find. They work long hours for many weeks at sea, crammed into ships that have more space for the catch than the crew, often without holiday entitlements.

The Government is working with the industry to establish a reasonable rate of pay that might even entice New Zealanders back on to boats.

As a stop-gap measure, Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor has begun to insist workers are paid the minimum wage without deductions before he will approve companies' applications to bring in foreign workers.

But the industry says it is struggling with labour shortages and the soaring dollar. Once New Zealand's fourth-biggest export earner, it has dropped to sixth, employing 26,000 people and earning $1.13 billion last year.

Mr Swain refused to discuss details of the report.

While the worst offenders are alleged to be smaller "cowboy" operators, it is understood the department is talking to two of the biggest companies: Sealord and Amaltal. Sources said Sealord, chaired by Labour Party candidate Shane Jones and one of the biggest fishing companies in the Southern Hemisphere, had agreed to remedy delays in paying its workers.

Company secretary Terry Horne said he was not authorised to comment, as the chief executive was on leave and Sealord was yet to see the report. Amaltal was still contesting the department's findings of delayed payments, sources said. "There's no secret there's a couple of fringe operators, but Sealord and Amaltal are not among them," said Amaltal director Andrew Talley. "I would say that in terms of industry practice in respect of foreign crews, we believe Amaltal would be one of the best."

Amaltal employed more than 200 New Zealanders and only about 35 foreign fishermen - Icelandic, Faroese and Filipino - to make up for the nationwide labour shortage, Mr Talley said. They would receive their share of the proceeds little more than a week after arriving back from six weeks at sea.

New Zealand's third-big fishing company, Sanford, has already been publicly embarrassed after four Chinese fishermen jumped ship from one of its chartered squid jiggers, blaming bad pay and working conditions.

Though the total number of foreign fishing workers has dropped from 3000 to 1500 in the past few years, last year more than 150 of them, mostly Vietnamese, Indonesian and Chinese, jumped ship in New Zealand.

Sanford managing director Eric Barratt blamed the increasing numbers of ship jumpers on unscrupulous orchard owners prowling the wharves for cheap labour to illegally harvest their crops.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY