Telco contractors petition Chorus and Visionstream over '21st century slavery'

Friday, 2 August 2019

Less than four months after Chorus promised to ensure all its subcontractors could earn a 'decent living', a group of linesmen have launched an online petition, accusing the company and its main contractor Visionstream of reducing pay and 'not keeping to the rules' in their contracts.

The Telecommunications Contractors Association of New Zealand, which is understood to have been set up by a group of disgruntled subcontractors in November, said a new contract offered by Visionstream in July had put them on worse terms.

Because contractors had needed to invest tens of thousands of dollars in their businesses and buy Chorus-branded vans, they were tied down into '21st century slavery' by Chorus and Visionstream, according to the petition which had gathered 1887 signatories less than day after its launch.

'Many contractors have gone under due to the reduction of codes during the last contracting period, without consultation as per the signed contract,' the petition stated.

**READ MORE:

* Chorus keeps relationship with Visionstream as it signs contracts worth $450m

* Chorus promises improvement after failing to prevent exploitation

* NZ boss of Chorus contractor Visionstream to leave company

* E tū union gets in behind proposed 'class action' lawsuit against Chorus' main UFB contractor**

'As contractors we carry all the risks in the telecommunications industry. The contractor carries any risk which can occur on the Chorus network to anything that can go wrong in the customer premises. Yet the payment to the contractors does not even try to match these risks which we bear,' the petition also said.

Visionstream's new contract reduced some pay rates by 63 per cent and forced contractors into carrying out unpaid work on Chorus' network, it said.

'Chorus and Visionstream do not keep the rules in their contract they have made us commit to.'

Visionstream said in a statement that it had been made aware of the petition 'from some of its contracting partners'. 

'In July this year Visionstream issued new contracts to all its contracting partners in New Zealand. The main change was the inclusion of a new code of practice, developed in consultation with Chorus.

'The code of practice is aimed at the protection of worker rights, including sustainability, conditions and the ability to work in New Zealand,' it said. 'Visionstream is committed to the code of practice, and our contracting partners have been requested to sign up to this code, stating their commitment to protecting workers.'

Visionstream had concluded a review of rates for copper network technicians following 'significant consultation', it said. 

'Our UFB contracting partners are and will have the opportunity to be involved in the review of their payment rates, and the next stage in that process is for the review to be shared with Chorus,' it said.

Chorus spokesman Nathan Beaumont initially referred comment on the petition to Visionstream, but clarified that the commitments Chorus made in April remained, and said it was 'working hard to make changes'.

'We will provide a very fulsome update in September when everyone can make their own conclusions about the progress that has been made.

'It takes time to make substantial changes to the current culture but be assured we are determined to make that change and this work remains very much top of mind for us,' he said.

The Telecommunications Contractors Association is understood to be coordinated by a migrant telecommunications contractor living in Auckland who was unable to speak to Stuff when contacted on Friday morning.

E tū union organiser Joe Gallagher said he had met with the association, which he estimated had a few hundreds members, and said the union was trying to support the group and encourage their members to back a class action lawsuit that Australian-owned law firm has said it intends to bring against Visionstream.

'It is the same old story – all the cost and pressure is laid on these guys, but they are all frightened.'

Gallagher agreed conditions for subcontractors had got worse, not better, since April.

'Chorus said they were going to do a lot to straighten the practices … and I haven't seen any evidence of that so far.

'When they say they are going to make sure people have enough to survive on – those contractors haven't got enough to survive on.'

One subcontractor who spoke to Stuff in June said the situation was getting 'worse every week'.

Another who left the industry that month said a new rule that meant subcontractors could be called back to jobs on the copper network 28 days after they were completed, if anything went wrong, was causing situations that appeared unfair.

The situation was far worse than imagined and that had led to a situation of 'dog eat dog', he said.

Chorus promised to improve conditions in the industry after the Labour Inspectorate reported the widespread exploitation of migrant subcontractors carrying out work on its ultrafast broadband network, which led Chorus to commission a report from financial services firm MartinJenkins.

That report concluded that Chorus and contractors Visionstream and UCG had failed to sufficiently protect 1600 mostly-migrant workers hooking up homes to Chorus' UFB network from exploitation by their employers.

Evidence was presented to Chorus' board in 2016 that 'with hindsight' should have alerted it to the risk of migrant exploitation, the report's author Doug Martin said.

Former Shine lawyer Tim Gunn said on Friday that subcontractors were in dire straits.

'The public has to get outraged. These guys are immigrants and a lot of them keep their head down and make no money.'