IHC workers who sleep over in clients' homes should be paid the minimum wage for an overnight shift and not just a one-off allowance, the Employment Relations Authority has ruled.
The findings of the case, taken by IHC community support worker Phillip Dickson, are likely to push up costs for the organisation which gets more than 98 percent of its funding from the Government.
Mr Dickson works in Otaki and Levin for Idea Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IHC which provides support for 3300 people nationally, many living in group homes.
IHC had developed the group home concept with the "laudable" aim of integrating intellectually disabled people into normal life and society as much as possible, said authority member Greg Wood, who heard the case.
However, he found that an allowance of $34 per sleepover was insufficient, and that the minimum wage should be paid for the duration of the overnight shift.
He accepted that while Idea Services provided a comfortable bed and sleeping environment for its overnight workers, it was not the same as being in their own homes.
Community support workers were entitled to claim a minimum one hour's payment if they had to help a client during the night, but they had to justify the claim by logging an incident report.
Only about 4 percent of workers claimed for work actually done, with most being loathe to claim for small amounts of work, Mr Wood said.
While most nights Mr Dickson's sleep is uninterrupted, the work still restricts his lifestyle in that he cannot be responsible for his own family's needs when on a sleepover.
He also cannot drink alcohol, take sleeping pills, have visitors without permission, and must sleep on the premises, "which greatly limits other activities of a personal nature that he might want to undertake", Mr Wood found.
The overnight staff remained responsible for the people in their care, whether they were asleep or not, he said. Mr Wood ruled that the restrictions Mr Dickson worked under on a sleepover were "so pervasive as to constitute works for the purposes of the Minimum Wage Act".
He said the issue of how much overnight IHC staff should be paid had been simmering since 2001 and he was concerned it had taken so long for a claim to come before the authority.
