Just before Christmas, the Immigration Minister unveiled a set of significant tweaks to the rules for Accredited Employer Work Visas (AEWVs). Some of this looks a bit technical, but it will make a real-world difference both to migrants and to their employers if it is implemented as it is described.
The hope is that some of this will reduce the workload for visa staff, and cut down on needless red tape for employers. That remains to be seen. What is clear right now is that the time to get someone onto a Work Visa is too long – it could be 7 to 10 months as things stand. This is harming New Zealand’s reputation and is even contributing to the net “brain drain” of people in professional and management roles.
The new settings will apparently roll out during 2025. The black-letter policy has not been released yet, but here is some of what we have been told.
Labour Hire Industry
First out of the blocks in January is reducing the “domestic workforce threshold” for labour hire companies which supply workers to job sites for other companies. Previously, they had to show that 35% of their workers are Kiwi Citizens or Residents. That is being cut to 15% for some yet-to-be-specified construction jobs, presumably because the higher percentage was simply not attainable owing to the lack of reliable local workers.
Most of the other amendments below will not show up until March or April.
Dumping the Median Wage
Since AEWV came out in 2022, most migrants could not get a Work Visa unless the employer was prepared to pay them at least the NZ median wage, which is artificially set at $29.66 per hour for Work Visas. This has created a headache for applicants, for employers, and for visa staff. There are exceptions for certain jobs in health care, transport and so on. There are numerous pieces of the visa rules that have had to be sliced up in order to accommodate this wage setting. It is not even the same rate as that used for Resident Visas, which is $31.61. And it goes on.
Instead, Immigration will revert to asking whether an employer is offering the market rate for the job. This begs the question of what the market rate is for a certain occupation, and even in a certain town. Those of us who have been around a while have seen this before; it will be familiar territory. It could clog up the Job Check stage of the AEWV process in arguments with Immigration New Zealand. Still, it hopefully takes away the labour relations issue of paying overseas workers more than New Zealanders, as has been happening around town in the last few years.
Lower Skilled Workers
When Immigration talks about “lower stilled”, they mean jobs found at Level 4 or 5 on the ANZSCO classification system. Broadly speaking, this means people providing personal care, office workers, many in hospitality and retail, labourers, truck drivers and factory staff.
Right now, migrants applying for these jobs must prove that they have at least 3 years’ past experience in that sort of job. This will be wound back to 2 years, which is a bit of common sense. After all, if the job is supposedly low-skilled, why do you need so many years behind you in order to do it?
Lower-skilled applicants who currently only get a 2-year visa will soon be able to get 3 years. For most new applicants, this lines up with the maximum continuous stay for these sorts of jobs, which is also 3 years. Up to now they have had to apply for a further 1-year visa to use up the balance, so setting the 3-year duration at the outset should take out some of the visa traffic with INZ. If that speeds up the painfully slow process of getting a Work Visa even a little bit, that is a good thing.
Easing the Burden on Employers
A company doing a Job Check to show that no NZ workers are available is currently expected to list the job with Work & Income NZ (WINZ) if it is for a low-skilled role, to do so for 21 days, and to prove that WINZ could not supply anyone suitable. This is in addition to advertising the job for 21 days. This is to be replaced by a simple declaration by the employer when filing the Job Check application that they have listed the vacancy with WINZ without success. There is an inconsistency between the Minister’s press release and the associated INZ announcement, because the statement from the Beehive says that employers must “demonstrate that they considered New Zealanders who applied for any role in good faith”, rather than just make a declaration. This draws attention to the risk that, in reality, INZ may go behind the employer declaration and expect many employers to front up with the evidence that they did what they said they had done. We will have to see how this apparently sensible simplification plays out in practice.
Another good move is removing the requirement for bosses to ensure that new migrant staff have completed the Employee Modules on Employment NZ’s website, and keep a record that they have done so. Instead, INZ will simply send visa holders and their bosses links to resources explaining employment rights and duties. This is welcome news because it takes away yet another box-ticking exercise from the HR people or managers in these companies. Oh, and this is another one coming up shortly, on 27 January in fact.
Working on Interim Visas
People applying for an AEWV who are already on a Student Visa with work conditions, or on any other type of Work Visa, will transition to an Interim Visa with open Work rights when their old visa expires. At present, most of these only get Visitor conditions while their AEWV is being decided, which has been creating hardship not only for them through having to stop work in the meantime, but also for their employer if they already have a job. This change is meant to happen in April.
It is not spelled out yet, but we presume that someone already on an AEWV who wants a new AEWV for another company can go onto an Interim Visa with open Work rights as well. This means that a job candidate could start with the new employer as soon as the Interim Visa kicks in while they are waiting. On its own, this could really cut down the time a business has to wait before it can get a candidate into its workforce.
Final Thought
The press release also promised a redesign of the Job Check system to speed up processing for “low risk employers”. If this eventuates, it would be nice to see. What makes a company low-risk is not spelt out, though. As with so much else described in this blog, the all-important detail is missing.
We will publish our thoughts on these initiatives when the rules are published, so subscribe now to this blog and to our Newsletters to hear more us about these developments.