The NZ Employment Relations Authority has ordered a disability care company to pay a former worker $35,000. Lynette Cooper challenged her former employer, Wisecare, in the Employment Relations Authority after leaving the company in December 2014. Cooper worked for the Auckland company for 10 months but left because she “felt used”. She said she was initially only getting $50 for working an entire shift overnight – well below the minimum wage on her sleep-over shifts. She was also not given any dedicated meal breaks if she worked eight hours or more. An ERA decision released this week said when Cooper raised the issue, the manager who effectively ran the company responded: “I don’t pay people to sleep”. She made multiple complaints and was eventually given the minimum rate for the shifts, though Wisecare then scrapped its $50 tax-free shift allowance. Cooper was told she was required to be awake during each shift, even though that would make it impossible to maintain her other day work. Cooper announced in December 2014 that she was leaving because Wisecare had “consistently ignored her legal rights” and she “felt used”. ERA chief James Crichton agreed with her and wrote in his decision that Cooper was entitled to wages from the employment. He said he was “satisfied on the evidence before me that Ms Cooper was unjustifiably dismissed from her employment because Wisecare had made it impossible for her to continue working for it by reason of the unsatisfactory way in which it treated her, once she began to seek to claim her legal entitlements.” Crichton ordered Wisecare to pay Cooper $5000 compensation, $14,502 in wages, $6,800 in allowances, $1,160 in unpaid holiday pay and $7500 as a result of not being able to find work for three months. He said the payments also covered the employer’s breach of good faith to Cooper. Wisecare did not participate in the ERA process.
