Darleen Tana case: Former employees speak out
Saturday, 16 March 2024
This week a Green MP was suspended after Stuff asked questions about her links to alleged migrant exploitation at her husband's company. Now, other former Bikes and Beyond employees have come forward with their experiences. Steve Kilgallon reports.
“At times,” says Charles ‘Chuck’ Simpson, “I’ve thought I am the dumbest person in the world.
“I don’t think Darleen [Tana] and Christian understand they are actually causing pain in people’s lives. They come off as these ‘Green, save-the-world’ people, but they are so far from that.”
Tana, a Green MP and their Small Business spokesperson, was suspended by the party on Thursday afternoon after Stuff put questions to her about allegations of migrant exploitation.
A Stuff investigation reported how Argentinian migrant Santiago Latour Palma claimed he had worked illegally for e-bike business E-Cycles NZ Ltd, trading as Bikes and Beyond, and was owed $25,000 in missing pay.
Bikes and Beyond is owned by Tana’s husband, Hoff-Nielsen, and was founded by the couple before she relinquished her shareholding in 2019. Palma said Tana had overseen his work trial and was aware of his situation.
Palma and another migrant worker have both laid claims in the Employment Relations Authority.
Bikes and Beyond has lost twice in that arena in recent years.
In one of those cases, they were told to pay Simpson about $6200. Last week, he says, he got paid most of that money.
His advocate, Alex Kersjes, says the money, due on January 24, only arrived after he threatened to send bailiffs to the couple’s Waiheke Island home.
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Simpson says he has now been paid for his six unhappy weeks working for the couple in 2019.
Another former employee, Nick Scott, who won an ERA ruling that he was owed about $30,000 in wages, penalties and costs, says he is still waiting.
Scott worked for the company in 2021 - two years after Tana relinquished her shareholding. But he said despite that, Tana still dealt with the company’s payroll while he worked there.
Scott is also represented by Kersjes, who said he had issued a statutory demand for payment, and if that didn’t arrive within seven days, he would apply to liquidate the company.
Kersjes said bailiffs had already seized several bikes from the Newmarket store and he had hoped that would prompt negotiations.
“In both these matters he [Hoff-Nielsen] has refused to take any responsibility for his actions,” said Kersjes.
“We have not had the offer of anything [for Scott], not even $5 a week. I have been banging the drum to try and get these guys to engage with us.”
Kersjes said Scott had told him he just wanted to move on with his life, but the failure to settle was preventing that, and he had “been treated like s…”.
In a message, Hoff-Nielsen said: “Nick’s representative thinks we are a multi-national company like T7 with millions in the bank.” He said he’d offered a $5,000 settlement, but Kersjes had instead seized $25,000 in stock.
Simpson said reading Stuff’s story on Friday about Palma’s claims felt “almost identical” to his experience.
He said he’d just arrived from the US in 2019 when Tana interviewed him and offered him a job as the manager of their Blenheim store. She also wrote up his employment agreement. Before moving south, he worked at the various Bikes and Beyond Auckland branches.
He said when he arrived in Blenheim the shop had significant debts and low stock, and with most houses wanting a one-year lease he was worried the business would fail and he would be stuck there without work.
He returned to Auckland, and the double relocation cost him around $10k. He had also turned down a good job with AUT university to join the bike shop.
In a text message, Hoff-Nielsen offered him $2500 as a settlement on his owed wages.
But Simpson took it to the ERA and while he was unsuccessful in a case for constructive dismissal, won an award for $6200.
Hoff-Nielsen’s argument to the ERA was that Simpson had actually been negotiating to buy the Blenheim store and his time in Auckland was to learn the business and negotiate a deal. Simpson said that was a “complete fiction on his part”.
He said dealing with the couple had been deeply frustrating. “No matter what you say to them you are wrong and they are right.”
He said Tana had admitted in an email to him that the situation in Blenheim was “toxic” and down to the couple to fix. “So they knowingly sent me to a toxic situation.”
Hoff-Nielsen had paid $4,000 of the amount due, without a payslip or any information about whether he had withheld tax.
Hoff-Nielsen said Simpson had met the shop’s former owner and his accountants about buying the store but hadn’t been able to find the funds necessary, and he was “baffled by the ERA not seeing the encounters Chuck had with us had nothing to do with becoming an employee… more akin to due diligence”. He said the amount wasn’t worth pursuing further.
In Scott’s case, Kersjes said Scott believed he was never properly paid while working for the company and never gained access to his own payroll information.
Kersjes supplied text messages from Scott to support his assertion Tana handled the company’s finances.
One was where he had contacted the store’s operations manager about his timesheets, and received the reply “Okay. I am contacting Darleen for it now”, and another when Hoff-Nielsen told him “Darleen looked at your timesheet today for pay.”
Hoff-Nielsen earlier said of Scott that he was “completely unreliable” and simply not a good worker. He believed Scott had quit, not been dismissed, after a disagreement.
Bikes and Beyond lost both ERA cases, with Hoff-Nielsen representing the business himself.
In the two fresh cases, he has engaged legal counsel.
When Stuff previously asked him about Simpson, Hoff-Nielsen said “I shouldn’t say I laughed, but I should have taken it more seriously,” claiming he had documentation to show that he was always negotiating a sale of the business to Simpson.
“With all of the problems last year, if I had the time or energy I probably would have hired someone to defend us… we were in a really difficult situation, we were facing the complete falling through of retail and I simply didn’t have the energy or resources to take the time out that I should have to sit down and treat it more seriously. But with both of them I was going ‘what are you on about’.”
When Stuff called Hoff-Nielsen on Friday for further comment, he said he was on a ferry, “it would just have to wait”, and hung up the phone. He later texted after publication with comments which have been added to this story.
He didn’t offer comment on a legal dispute with e-bike supplier Hybrid Bikes, owned by Frank Witowski.
Witowski said he took Hoff-Nielsen to court over a dispute over eight bikes he had supplied. He said Hoff-Nielsen sold and paid for three, but did not pay for the others. He was able to repossess four, but Hoff-Nielsen had sold the fifth. He eventually was paid after sending in a bailiff. He said the process too almost two years. “He put me through hell,” Witowski said.
“Some companies may have given up on chasing the money owed to them, but not us. We were determined to have him repay some of what he owed us. He picked the wrong company to muck around with when he chose Hybrid Bikes.”
The Green Party issued a statement on Tana’s behalf, which read:“I welcome an investigation and intend to cooperate fully, and I will not be commenting further.”
Stuff then put the allegations of Simpson, Scott and Witowski to Tana via a Green spokesperson, but the Party said there would be no comment.
Meanwhile, Immigration New Zealand has refused to say whether it is investigating any of the allegations Stuff has raised or whether it would suspend E-Cycles NZ Ltd’s accreditation to hire migrant workers, which is valid until April 2025.