Asking the hard questions about your supply chain

The Labour Inspectorate, which is part of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, has issued a not very thinly veiled warning that New Zealand’s large companies need to be doing more to ensure employees at the end of their supply chains are being looked after. Organisations need to be asking the hard questions of their suppliers and, MBIE says, the longer your supply chain the greater the risk that employment standards are being breached.

In the wake of the news last year that some Chorus subcontactors had breached a range of minimum employment standards throughout the broadband cabling rollout, MBIE’s Employment Services general manager George Mason issued a statement, recently, saying it was appropriate that Chorus was taking a leadership role in addressing the worker exploitation issues found in its supply chain and calling for other large companies to do the same.

The Labour Inspectorate is currently taking a large number of compliance actions against Chorus subcontractors who breached a range of minimum employment