A central question was when the employment actually ended. The company’s Australia-based director said the workers were given notice on 20 November and paid to 29 November. The Authority preferred other evidence, finding in Manase v Marshall [2026] NZERA 374 that the jobs ended on 5 December 2024, when the operations manager phoned the workers to say there was no money and no more pay.
That operations manager, who was also a director at the time, argued he was not a person involved in the breaches. He said he had agreed to step down and described himself as “a mere messenger”. The Authority rejected that, finding he had spent the previous week working through the situation with the two other…