Napier builder told to pay $28k to apprentice dismissed by text

Building apprentice John Peck took his former employer to the Employment Relations Authority. Photo / NZME

A Napier builder has been ordered to pay more than $28,000 to an apprentice he fired via text message.

Builder John Gemmell sent the text - which contained the phrases "I've had enough of you" and "you are no longer employed" - to apprentice John Peck while Peck was at a hospital with his sister, who had been rushed there.

Building apprentice John Peck took his former employer to the Employment Relations Authority. Photo / NZME

Peck also gave evidence to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) that Gemmell's company, Warrior NZ Ltd, had unilaterally reduced his hourly rate twice during the nine months he worked there.

He was paid $25.93 an hour when he was first employed in October, 2019, but this was dropped without his consent to $23.15 an hour in early 2020, and to $20.37 by July, 2020.

Peck was dismissed on July 31, 2020.

Peck told the authority that the dismissal was a traumatic time for him and his family - that he had no job to go to and struggled to find another job. He was, for a time, reliant on food grants.

Peck took a personal grievance to the ERA, seeking compensation and lost wages, arrears of wages, reimbursement of deductions from his pay, and payment for annual holidays.

On the day he was dismissed, Peck had gone to the hospital with his sister and told a colleague to inform his foreperson where he was.

Gemmell texted him to ask him why he was not at work. Peck explained he was at the hospital, and then raised an issue about not receiving payment for a period of bereavement leave.

Gemmell then dismissed him by text and told him, "your final instructions are to drop off the car and the gear".

The ERA was told that Warrior NZ was no longer trading and would be removed from the Companies Register.

The company did not attend an investigation meeting, but provided written memos to the ERA through a representative.

In them, Warrior NZ asserted that Peck had pawned tools for which he still owed the company money.

Peck said he did this only after he was dismissed and when he was not paid for the bereavement leave.

The authority found that Peck had been unjustifiably dismissed, and the means of his dismissal were "callous and highly inappropriate".

"I am satisfied that Mr Peck suffered humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to his feelings, and that the dismissal and other unjustified actions of Warrior NZ had an impact on him for which he should be compensated," authority member Rowan Anderson said.

The authority ordered Warrior NZ to pay Peck $10,000 for "hurt, humiliation and injury to feelings" within 28 days.

It also ordered Peck be paid $7642 for lost wages, $2090 for arrears of wages, $8333 for deductions from his wages made without consent, and $167 for unpaid holiday pay.