Unsocial hours and equity are emphasised in pay claims for working over the millennium weekend. But the reality is that the more profitable the company and the smaller the numbers involved, the more money people can expect to be paid.
The Irish Bank Officials' Association set a headline of "£2,000 for the Year 2000", but few have been able to match it. Most of the £2,000 will go to the relatively small numbers of information technology specialists.
The IBOA was able to strike a noticeably better bargain in Ulster Bank, with its smaller network, than at Bank of Ireland and AIB, where payments of between £500 and £1,000 are nearer the norm.
All of these figures are in stark contrast with the health service. Few would argue that a hospital doctor, nurse or porter is as essential as a full ATM machine on New Year's Eve, but there are likely to be 25,000 of them rostered at the taxpayers' expense over the two days, compared with fewer than a tenth of that number of IT staff in the State's largest financial institutions.
Whether people like it or not, the rules of the market apply as rigorously as we enter the third millennium of the Christian era as at any other time. Certainly no Christian virtues come into play.
One senior trade union negotiator, who has cut a substantial deal for his members in the commercial sector in the past few days, said: "There comes a point where all the haggling becomes unseemly."
His concern was not so much that he would not get enough for his members who were working, but that they would get far too much, as far as their colleagues who were not working were concerned. The latter form the vast majority in most cases.
At least in the public service the financial burden of rewarding people for working on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day is spread across the whole community. In the commercial sector the extra money going to the lucky few will affect profits, operating margins and, ultimately, wages for other employees.
In the semi-states, by far the best package has gone to the ESB's power-generation and transmission workers, who will earn between £250 and £800.
Power-generation is, of course, vital, but it is the division of the company where least progress has been made in embracing new work practices and attitudes. It is also the area of the company most vulunerable to competition.
In Aer Lingus an element of social equity was introduced into the millennium package, agreed only yesterday, by ensuring minimum payments for young staff members rostered who are at the bottom of the pay scale.
But here again it is the IT specialists and maintenance staff on standby who are due to gain most. While many employees will earn millennium bonuses of £40 or £60, those on standby will receive £300.
Staff working between 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve and 6 a.m. on New Year's Day will receive £70 an hour, plus standby allowances of up to £700. Staff in CIE will receive the equivalent of six days' pay - about £250 - for millennium shifts.
Eircom, which is now part of the private sector, will pay up to £2,000 for key staff, but their colleagues in An Post will receive only between £150 and £600 to maintain the postal service. Again, the underlying financial state of the companies determines remuneration.
Of course, there are low-paid workers in the private sector as well. SIPTU negotiated a deal worth up to six days' pay for members in the security industry.
But this could be worth less than £30 an hour and some non-unionised security staff will be working for as little as £10 an hour.
Mandate, which represents bar staff, has rejected the latest offer from publicans of a week's pay, or £247, to work through the millennium. It now seems likely that most pubs will remain closed, or have limited opening hours of 12 noon to 6 p.m. on both days - veritable sabbatical hours to welcome in the new millennium.
The cost to the Exchequer of the health service deal, and the inevitable knock-on claims from other sectors of the public service, has yet to be calculated - and cannot be known ahead of today's meetings between management and unions. The Garda representative bodies will be engaged in separate talks with the public service unions.
However, it is expected that the offer to health-service workers will be applied without any significant changes to the other groups. Given the estimated increase in the additional health service pay bill, it can reasonably be expected that the total cost of millennium pay in the public service will be about £68 million, including normal bank holiday premiums, and could be much more.
Whatever else has been achieved, the dispute over millennium payments has not brought us a step nearer to the vision of a "fairer society", which the social partners are emphasising must be the aim of any new agreement to succeed Partnership 2000.