The 174 migrant trades workers would finish the interior decorating of Fu Wah's $200 million Park Hyatt hotel in Auckland.

Unions will tell Immigration New Zealand not to let a Chinese construction company import 174 migrant trades workers after seeing their employment contracts.



E tū spokesman Joe Gallagher said Fu Wah would pay migrant decorators $25 an hour to finish off its $200 million Park Hyatt hotel on Auckland's waterfront.



The migrants would have to pay for their own travel to and from work, and accommodation costs, while they stayed for the project completion in April 2019.



Gallagher said paying such low wages, and forcing the migrants to deduct living costs from their own pay, was exploitative.

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Quality painters and tilers should be paid $32 an hour minimum according to market rates, he said.

SUPPLIED E tū spokesman Joe Gallagher says Fu Wah's employment contracts for migrant workers are exploitative and their pay should be at least $7 more an hour.

Fu Wah's lawyer showed Gallagher the contracts at a meeting two weeks ago.

The employment contracts were not good enough to attract local tradespeople, he said, so the union could not support its application for an approval in principal (AIP) licence where a genuine effort to hire local workers must be justified.

At the meeting, the lawyer indicated he did not have the authority to negotiate the terms of the employment contracts, Gallagher said.

123RF Market rates for quality tilers and painters are about $32 per hour minimum.

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (CTU) national secretary Sam Huggard said it would support E tū's decision not to back Fu Wah's application.

CTU would tell Immigration to decline its accredited employer status application on Thursday.

However, Fu Wah could still be granted an AIP application despite unions pulling their support.



The AIP approval process requires consultation with unions. The licence to recruit overseas workers for jobs where skills shortages were common was only granted if an attempt to hire local workers first was proved.



Huggard said union advice was noted but rarely affected decisions. Often, Immigration did not notify the CTU of application outcomes, he said.

CAMERON BURNELL/STUFF Fu Wah general manager Richard Aitken says the company advertised the jobs before Christmas, but had received little interest.

Fu Wah applied for the licence on February 9. The CTU was notified of the application two weeks later.

Huggard said Fu Wah consulted with the CTU before filing the Immigration application, which was "unusual".

The union took Fu Wah's word that it wanted to work with it to attract local talent, but consultation since then had "disappointed" the CTU, he said.

"In the end, their commitment to paying the local market rate is just not there."

Fu Wah New Zealand general manager Richard Aitken said the company had advertised the 174 jobs locally before Christmas, but could not find the number and quality of workers it needed.