By Patrick Gower
Disability support worker Phil Dickson gets $34 dollars for a so-called "sleep over" shift.
A four-year court battle has changed that - he'll now get the minimum wage.
Dickson and his colleagues will now get $100 dollars for an overnight - but the big bonus will be four years of back pay.
And that means serving the Government a hefty bill.
It expects costs of:
- $350 million - in Back pay
- $50 million - Annual wage increases
Meaning a total of $500m over three years.
And the Health Minister says it could get worse with the ruling possibly applying to other workers who sleep over.
“If a teacher goes and sleeps over on a school camp, potentially, they would have to receive the minimum wage while they are sleeping,” says Tony Ryall.
With 4500 workers who sleep over, the IHC says the ruling could put it out of business.
“At the moment we are looking at insolvency, because we have a wage bill that is significant that we can't afford to pay,” says IHC CEO Ralph Jones.
Rules are usually rules, except when you are the Government, and you can simply change the law.
And Mr Ryall admitted that's an option.
“It would be irresponsible of me at this stage before we've fully considered the decision to rule in or out anything,” he says.
Unions say a law change would unfairly rule out up to 10,000 people from pay they deserve.
And Labour says that's wrong.
“He doesn't need to jump into legislation that would be grossly unfair to these families,” says Labour’s health spokesperson Grant Robertson.
A law change would ordinarily seem like the "nuclear option" to get out of a wage increase, but Mr Ryall has been keeping an extraordinarily tight rein on pay in the public sector.
And it's clear he really does not want to pay a half-a billion dollar bill.
3 News