AGL - Accordant Group. was previously AWF Madison, Allied...

[minimoke]

Yes, I do recall that sad state of affairs now

Things haven't changed much

They say they didn't know what there managers were doing back then. If the alleged illegal contract is true then they dont know what there mangers are doing today. I hear on the news tonight there is a possibility one employment agreement went to the Immigration department and another version went to the employee. That would not surprise me in the least.

[winner69]

They say they didn't know what there managers were doing back then. If the alleged illegal contract is true then they dont know what there mangers are doing today. I hear on the news tonight there is a possibility one employment agreement went to the Immigration department and another version went to the employee. That would not surprise me in the least.

That's really dodgy sounding ......hmmm

[minimoke]

There is of course the possibility that Immigration didnt read the employment agreement. Possible. Of the two options I'd err slightly in favour of Immigration.

No matter what AWF, is not going to come out of this unscathed.

We already know they have been non-compliant with some legal stuff - thats why they spent so much money becoming compliant. I suspect they probably didnt do a full job on this so expect more costs here. Their Annual Report should be pretty transparent on this issue.

It is safe to assume (given the Immigration dept exposure) that every Minister will be asking their departments if they use labour hire agencies and if so what they do to ensure workers are not being exploited. The obvious fallout is AWF wont be on any govt department tender lists.

We also know most large organisation supply processes ask the question "have you ever been investigated by a government department and been prosecuted or received an improvement notice". AWF are going to have difficulty answering that.

Safe to assume no large corporate chief executive wants to be called to a Select Committee (like BP) and asked why do you use labour hire agencies that exploit labour. We can probably extend the same to City and Regional councils, hospital boards etc.

Madison will be working hard to disengage from the links they have to AWF. How they succeed only time will tell. But think it is fair to say they wont find it easy.

[minimoke]

And just wondering if the AWF manager is the same person who left a dunedin construction company in liquidation owing near $600,000

[Snoopy]

Snoops will see some good in that article I reckon

"AWF pre-emptive in having construction workers available in a market crying out for labour."

That could equally well have been the headline.

Jeez putting 24 adult males in a four bedroom house doesn’t seem good practice.

It was another company that did that Winner, according to the article. But AWF have nevertheless 'taken action' over this. Accommodation solved!

SNOOPY

[Snoopy]

Well. I've just had a chat to the tea lady here is what she says.
- they had a contract which is why they bought the workers in. But lost the contract.
- 16 workers at $20 an hour for 30 hours a week for 3 months is $115200 off the bottom line. She didn't know how many hours had to be billed to make up this lost NP ( I was pretty impressed with her math , a trick she she learnt hocking gingernuts off with the coffee. She reckoned she would need a supermarket full of Griffins to make up the loss)
- the recruitment agents spend all day playing solitaire rather than finding work for these people
- saw a dictionary open on a desk and the words "pastoral care" were underlined

16 x $20/hr x (30 x 9) hr = $86,400.

Reduction in profit because of this expense based on 30% (seems typical for AWF) tax. $86,400 x 0.7 = $64,480

Does the tea lady need to stick to selling gingernuts?

I can't verify whether anything the tea lady relays is true. But assuming it is, this doesn't seem a big price to pay to have ready labour on hand. Presumably AWF didn't expect to lose the contract, but sometimes these things happen. There is obviously plenty of construction work out there, so you couldn't say it was foolish to bring these workers over.

It may not be the job of these particular AWF 'placement workers' to negotiate big contracts with the bigger construction companies. Don't workers at Xero spend their down time racing down a child's slide? Playing solitaire does sound more of an appropriate recreational task as it is still all to do with placement of people (albeit Kings, Queens and Jacks) ;-P.

And the fact that a dictionary is open at the definition of pastoral care shows real empathy for their contract employees!

- the illegal anti-union clause isn't the only illegal non compliant thing they do.
- A union car was spotted out the front with baseball bats in the boot. Apparently workers are worth more than $20 an hour
- The boss's secretary was busy booking a flight for the boss to go to wellington and an uber had been booked for parliament offices
- a newsman had a fat notebook with lots of yellow stickies poking out of it

Then she had to go because a BMW turned up with apparently leagle beagles in it and she has to given them their trim Lattes.

So Simon Bennett is front footing the problem? What is wrong with that?

SNOOPY

[Te Whetu]

16 x $20/hr x (30 x 9) hr = $86,400.

Reduction in profit because of this expense based on 30% (seems typical for AWF) tax. $86,400 x 0.7 = $64,480

Snoopy, shouldn't it be:

16 x $20/hr x 30 hr/week x 4.3 week/month x 3 months = $123,840 (pre-tax)

Your calculation is for only 9 weeks, which means only three weeks per month.

I assume the tea lady based her calculation on four weeks per month.

[minimoke]

I assume the tea lady based her calculation on four weeks per month.

Shes a tea lady not a mathematician. Ask her what a decimal point is and she thinks its a rock outcrop along a shoreline. But she did say the bean counters were after a strong brew and were muttering something about holiday pay mutter mutter ACC mutter

[winner69]

Allied need to conveniently conceptualize backward-compatible metrics to make investors more confident they on the right track

[Snoopy]

Snoopy, shouldn't it be:

16 x $20/hr x 30 hr/week x 4.3 week/month x 3 months = $123,840 (pre-tax)

Your calculation is for only 9 weeks, which means only three weeks per month.

I assume the tea lady based her calculation on four weeks per month.

And just to finish the exercise based on a 30% tax rate:

$123,840 x 0.7 = $86,688 (money off net profit).

Of course these are the bare wage figures without any allowance for holiday pay. Also AWF may have incurred some significant expense bringing the workers to New Zealand, and may have done all the legal paperwork for them. And that last bit may have incurred extra liabilities as yet uncosted ;-P. Add in all that and our tea lady's estimate of $115,200 might not be too far off the mark.

Sigh! Good to hear from you again star man and as usual with your contributions you are right.

Ah well, back to my new job:

"Cup of tea anyone, gingernuts?"

SNOOPY