A construction worker’s story One of the construction workers we spoke with who was in his early 60s told us about his working life. A first-generation Pacific worker, he was born in Auckland and moved around the country. He worked mostly in different parts of the construction industry with some time outside it in other manual occupations. He left school in his mid-teens, as it didn’t hold any interest for him, and did not complete any qualifications. Instead, he started picking up casual work through people he knew, including working as a hammerhand, picking up timber and some carpentry. He worked irregular hours doing a few hours each day. For this work, he was paid cash in hand. He had no sense of how much the money was and, as a young person, it felt like a lot at the time. As a young worker, he travelled to his place of work using public transport, sometimes having to catch more than one bus to get there. He got many of his jobs through his networks. Some jobs came via family members, while others were friends or community members. Most of this work has been casual, with some stints as a permanent or semi-permanent member of staff. Many of his jobs have paid around minimum wage or slightly above it. When he was in his 40s, the cumulative impact of the physically demanding work that he had been involved in took its toll on his health. He began having angina attacks, which his doctor said was because of the heavy work that he had been doing. This meant he had to stop working and go on the sickness benefit. He received nothing from the company he had been working for at the time in acknowledgement of this. He still works in construction but now in jobs that take less of a toll on his body. His work is still insecure as he is an on-call contractor who rarely knows from one week to the next where and on what he will be working. He feels trapped in casual work and believes that the main company he works for will not put him on a permanent contract because of his age. He is now paid above minimum wage and reckons that he and his family earn just enough to make ends meet. In only one of his jobs – one for a large company – was he a union member. During his working life, he has been unaware that he could negotiate pay or raise safety and other concerns. When asked about this, he told us he wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to his bosses about these matters. For jobs where he was employed permanently, he was not aware that he was entitled to his annual leave balance in his final pay. When asked about changes that could be made to improve things, he urged young people to stay in school, get their qualifications and, if possible, go on to university. 58