In recent years, there have been several media accounts of the exploitation of workers and in particular, the exploitation of migrant workers, in New Zealand. Workplace exploitation ranges from instances of wage abuse through to forced labour. In 2016, there was the first human trafficking conviction in New Zealand. Faroz Ali was convicted of 15 human trafficking charges in the Auckland High Court. This has been described as the ‘tip of the iceberg’.

The purpose of this study is to investigate worker exploitation in New Zealand. This project comprised two stages. The first stage was a desk review of secondary sources to understand what we know (2005 to 2015) about worker exploitation in New Zealand. The second stage involved 105 semi-structured interviews with workers – predominantly temporary migrant workers – from a range of industries.