Some examples of the type of harassment that can be encountered at work in New Zealand include minimising and condescending tones meant to diminish and disrespect the person, with treatment that goes from passive aggressive to plain aggressive behaviour. At the early stages of workplace harassment, you may notice unequal treatment and subtle remarks. For example, one co-worker may be allowed to take a lot of time off, while another one is expected to carry the extra load (yes, often it is the foreigner, good guess!).
This harassment could happen in ANY type of work, from blue collar construction and factory workers to professional settings, such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects.
I have personally heard complaints about workplace bullying from all these learned professions both in New Zealand and abroad. One engineer I know was supposed to get a company car which was in her employment contract, after 6 months of probation. She was later on offered a choice of SUVs, which she preferred, but the employer then bought her a used vehicle, unlike her white kiwi male engineer co-workers who got brand new trucks (utes, as they are called in New Zealand). The employer (Crane Civil, based in Auckland) ended up getting his karma when the vehicle he bought turned out to be a scam, he lost $10,000 in this “deal” and when she refused to go to work, he offered to buy her the brand new Ute she was initially OFFERED to quit her job and go work for this company. Funny enough, he was shocked when she resigned from her job a year and a half later, after making a lot of profit for this company and getting a $100 gift certificate for Christmas one year, and the next year a plastic laundry basket full of biscuits, fruit and cheap chocolate from the Warehouse, as did everyone else.
Other forms of harassment include spreading rumours behind your back, demoting the person by making him / her do jobs below their level, isolating the person from their peers by talking to them in a way that lets them know there is something wrong with the bullied person (which prompts collective bullying), yelling at the person or using very high and diminishing tones, making them feel as if they were a lesser person, interrupting when the employee is speaking, all the time, just to name a few example.
Horror stories I have heard and/or experience involve taking credit for the foreigner’s work, ignoring your contributions in a team discussion, sometimes even insulting and embarrassing you in public, unfairly treating you as inferior with respect to others, letting another employee (often another white kiwi male) take credit for an amazing job or innovative idea, rather than giving praise for your achievements. In one occasion, a friend of mine was in a particularly difficult project nobody wanted to touch. They put her in charge to make it right, and once she had already fixed the most challenging parts, instead of getting someone to help her, they put a white kiwi male above her as Project Direct to take all the credit for the project approval by the Council. You can almost predict this will happen when you are in such a toxic environment as a foreigner and start making an exceptionally good job. It often does not lead to recognition but to get you in trouble and getting someone else to take the credit. This could happen to women, maori and white kiwis who are not as “cool” too.
In construction, I have also heard many cases of foreigners who work really hard and do great work being unnecessarily blocked from progress, if the person is making them look bad. Some other forms of harassment include denying the person from doing any work, making their work more difficult, asking them to do work that is outside their area of work, not as an exception to help out, but either as a way to make them carry the work of others, or as a demotion to your normal role without a real good reason.
There are other forms of harassment that can be disguised as jokes, which if you complain about, will make you sound as if you are “too sensitive”. Such passive aggressive behaviour can include embarrassing you publicly through mocking any physical traits or a disability, telling “harmless” jokes that are meant to ridicule you not as a one-off incident, but persistently, causing others at work to lose respect for you and engaging in similar toxic and disgusting behaviour.
Some form of harassing behaviour is not only considered bullying but can also constitute modern day slavery, such as denying lunch breaks, forcing someone to eat lunch at their desk, denying going on holidays or denying privileges and legal rights that are allowed to all other team members (such as working from home), not allowing time to look after a loved one despite being the law, forcing them to work long hours without breaks, etc.. Some forms of harassment constitute human rights violations, such as discrimination, humiliation and unequal treatment due to race, religion, gender or national origin and these cases can and should be raised with the Human Rights Commission.
It is often obvious to see the difference between a harassing behaviour and a harmless joke about cultural differences. If it is persistent and targeted, it is often passive aggressive discrimination and should be addressed. Please be aware that HR in New Zealand may often try to dismiss these incidents as being harmless, or being only your perception, in particular if done by a manager, so as to avoid any acknowledgement of bullying or harassment and protect the company from liability, rather than addressing the incident to improve the work environment.
