The Court of Appeal decision in the case involving payment for "sleepovers" by staff in disability community care homes involved a carer who was required to be at the home overnight to be on hand to deal with any issues that may arise.
He was paid $34 per sleepover, effectively between $3.40 and $4.30 per hour.
His claim sought payment of at least the minimum hourly wage.
The Employment Relations Authority upheld the claim, which was then appealed by the IHC employer to the Employment Court, whose three judges agreed with the authority that sleepovers constituted work and that the minimum rate of pay applied.
That decision was taken to the Court of Appeal, which has upheld it.
In short, there has been near-unanimity at every stage of the legal test of the matter.
One important issue was whether the caregiver was "working" during the sleepovers.
Throughout the duration of sleepovers, he had certain continuous responsibilities, including for the safety and wellbeing of residents and property security.
The Employment Court held the carer was working, adding quite sensibly that the question had to be approached in an "intensely practical" way and citing the example of firefighters and ambulance drivers who are fully paid while waiting for call-outs.
The Court of Appeal had no doubts that the worker cited in the case "was clearly working when engaged in a sleepover".
There were significant restraints on his freedom and important duties placed on him with regard to the residents, and therefore his employer gained substantial benefit from the worker's role as a night carer.
It may well be that as a result of this case the Government will be under pressure to redefine in legislation what "work" actually means in 2011, and the court has given some guidance: "the preferable and correct approach is to interpret `work' as meaning the `application of physical or mental exertion in the performance of one's duties'."
But the court did not think the decision would have "profound implications" for the labour market.
"We think it unlikely that Parliament would have intended the minimum wage legislation not to apply to a shop assistant waiting for a customer, a call centre operator waiting for a call, or a fruit picker waiting for the rain to stop.
Furthermore, "Parliament did not intend employers and employees to be able to contract out of the legislation by agreeing between themselves that an employee's functions are not `work'."
In short: pay up.
But how is that to be done, and who is to pay? In 2009, the IHC considered if it lost the case it could be bankrupted if it was forced to pay $80 million for up to six years of back pay and an extra $20 million a year in wages.
The Ministry of Health is IHC's primary funder and the cost estimate seems to have grown exponentially: after last year's Employment Court decision the ministry said the ruling would cost between $400 million and $500 million to cover five years of back pay for all providers, including the IHC.
The Minister of Health has said the extra continuing cost to the public health system could be up to $40 million a year.
The case may have implications for other employees, such as those who look after the elderly in rest-homes, because of the possible precedential flow-on effects for private care providers. The argument is surely one about fair standards.
Had the IHC set fair pay rates initially, the claim would not have been sustainable.
So much of our health services for so many years - particularly for the less privileged - have been carried out "on the cheap" that it cannot be to anyone a surprise that this sin of cheapness has eventually caught up with reality.
There may well be historical reasons why so much has been carried on for so long at such unrealistic cost.
The impact of unpaid volunteers doing the work could be one factor; the true costs hidden in institutional care before the switch to community care another; intrinsic attitudes towards those unable to care for themselves a third, but this decision means, finally, that the day of reckoning has arrived.
Even where wage rates for many carers of those with physical or mental disabilities are today more precisely aligned with reality in such places as rest-homes and end-of-life hospitals, they are still generally at the lowest possible scale, despite the expectations of responsibility outlined with such clarity by the Court of Appeal.
Nor can the decision by the court come as such a great shock to the Government as some have presented it, since the legal action has been current for years and the rulings at Employment Court level surely signalled the likely outcome.
Facing up to that, and its costs, is now the manifest duty of the State - and of those who provide care services for the disabled.
