‘Own your failings’: Gloriavale leavers say work accidents the norm inside commune
Gloriavale leaders – facing $40 million worth of employment claims sought by dozens of former members – were being urged to “accept accountability for their failings”, one of the claimants says.
A group of 61 Gloriavale leavers has filed Employment Relations Authority claims against the Christian community’s overseeing shepherd for lost wages, entitlements, compensation and damages totalling almost $40 million for work they say amounted to modern day slavery.
In applications lodged on Wednesday, the former Gloriavale members said the overseeing shepherd failed to provide them with minimum basic employment entitlements including wages, holiday pay, compulsory KiwiSaver contributions, parental leave and written individual employment agreements.
They want compensation for breach of the statutory duty of good faith and breach of contract and have sought leave to raise personal grievances out of time because of a lack of knowledge about their employment rights and the failure of the Labour Inspectorate.
“For applicants work conditions amounted to modern day slavery, including forced child labour, forced labour and servitude in breach of the Employment Relations Act and New Zealand’s international human rights treaty obligations,” the documents said.
“For most of their working life in Gloriavale the applicants were trapped.
“The applicants did not enjoy a good faith employment relationship but were in a sustained exploitative employment environment.”
Former Gloriavale member Gideon Benjamin was one of the 61 applicants seeking compensation.
Benjamin told RNZ work accidents inside Gloriavale happened frequently and weren’t taken seriously by leaders.
“A lot of accidents that happened in the workplace, unless it was just about life threatening, was just sort of hushed away. Going to a hospital wasn’t a thing,” he said.
“I worked down in the swamp from a very young age and boys falling off racks that were two-and-a-half metres high, even jumping off. Not seeing that someone had just dug a pitchfork into the ground by its handle and the pitchfork went up just above their eye. These are just some of the things.”
Young boys were tasked with operating dangerous industrial machinery with limited adult supervision, Benjamin said.
“Accidents were just that common. Minor and semi-major accidents were common. So common that you just looked at accidents and sort of shrugged them off.”
Benjamin said Gloriavale’s leaders had to take accountability and “ownership of their failings”.
“That’s what we’re pushing for. That’s what we’re wanting.”
Barrister Stephen Patterson said he calculated that 41 percent of the men involved in the claims had debilitating, life-long injuries, including hands crushed in machines, amputated fingers and scalded arms and legs, while many women suffered back problems.
Former Gloriavale member Anna Courage said there was a sense of relief that there was a legal pathway for leavers.
“We can keep doing it again and again for all the leavers that are to come and for anyone who didn’t get in the first time.
“Maybe more people leave Gloriavale between now and when the next [application is made]. It’s a relief to have the courts and justice system acknowledge that for us.”
The fresh legal bid followed two landmark Employment Court rulings in 2022 and 2023 that found three men and six women were Gloriavale employees, rather than volunteers, working in factories, on farms or on the community’s domestic teams.
The court found the women were required to work from a young age, work was effectively assigned from birth and they had no real choice about working on the teams in Gloriavale’s commercial-sized kitchen and laundry.
They were required to obey male leaders in a patriarchal community with a strict hierarchy and worked “extremely hard” under “punishing conditions”, leaving “deep scars”, the court said.
In the men’s case, the court found that they were employees from the age of six until they left Gloriavale, ready access to child labour was a significant factor in the success of the community’s business model and none of them had a choice as to if and where they worked.
They were subjected to rigourous, sometimes violent supervision in their work and were hit if they were not working hard or fast enough, with some children denied food and publicly shamed.
The nine former members previously lodged claims for lost wages and compensation totalling $5.2m.
Documents filed with the authority on behalf of the other 61 leavers said they lived in the same controlled, authoritarian environment that did not permit dissenting voices and compelled obedience through fear, including the requirement to work from an early age.
In a statement, a Gloriavale spokesman said “To our knowledge, the Overseeing Shepherd Stephen Standfast has not been served and he is unable to comment at this time.”