“Sounding the Contractual Hurdles of Filipino Migrant Workers in New Zealand”

…On December 20, mere days before Christmas, Boy and more than 700 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were laid off after recruitment firm ELE Group of Companies suddenly went bust…

…the emergency aid that migrant groups have been demanding from the Philippine government remains in limbo even months later…

The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) has long packaged New Zealand as a migration idyll, with its progressive education system and liberal policymaking….

ELE’s closure amplified the sting of these expenses tenfold. Later investigations found that ELE had been financially struggling halfway into 2023 when it lodged a request for additional funding to Deloitte, the network that represents it…in spite of this, ELE stepped up recruitment of Filipino migrants…

Deloitte relayed to ex-ELE workers the computations of their final pay last month and Migrante Aotearoa expects distribution of payments by March…

The labor shortage generated by the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes prompted labor hires to fill this vacuum with migrant manpower…

Multiple labor-hire firms emerged from the woodwork. Residential developers embraced labor-hires’ tripartite labor arrangement to elude direct employment…

However, in 2023, twin surges in mortgage rates and material costs rocked the market. Dozens of construction firms–prime clients of labor-hires–went bust…