Even Marco Rubio wrote a nasty letter about abusers of domestic workers rights, specifically naming Anne Bakilana and others.

Bernie said it: This [au pair] program is a scam,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2013. “It is not a cultural-exchange program.”

There needs to be some sort of IQ-EQ test that roots out these little despots right out of the program. Maybe they should set up a fake dcum post for an au pair wanting fair wage and a cultural experience. Then all the a Ivankas frothing still the mouth would be eliminated like a to catch a predator, au pair indentured servitude edition. Leave the program to decent people. Go abuse someone who can sue you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever read “Nickel and Dined in America”? Regular workers spend most of their paychecks on food housing and transportation. All provided by the host family.

This is tiresome. You read the MA opinion and any bill of rights and you’ll see why that’s wrong. But intuitively too, remember the days of the company store? When factory workers worked and then paid rent to sleep in the company housing and then bought food and clothes in the company store? You know that’s illegal, right? We call indentured... oh why bother

You live in a dream world. Most low paid workers spend it all on food housing transportation and the occasional doctor bill. It adds up. But if you can’t get that those are expenses you must still be living with Mom. Poor Mom.

These are not low paid workers, you momster. They are young people, often well educated, on a cultural exchange program. You don’t get to make the rules to suit you since you decide who gets what based on keeping people in adequate poverty. Luckily at least in DC the days are numbered.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here again. In addition to the pay, we pay for her phone, insurance, and has access to our car. We also have her on the Uber family plan so she can go wherever she wants.

We pay for all her food, and of course cover room and board. She can work up to 45 hours per week as per the program, but has never even worked 40 hours per week with us.

So, the $200/week is play money for her.

Just say no and ask for a rematch. She’s not a guest. But she’s acting like one. Lift a finger. Better go home. Covid is not the time for a cultural exchange.

Au pair Program IS a cultural exchange, Ivanka. Soon we’ll have laws that will make your sort of nonsense illegal — read the papers you signed, you have made commitments too. Meanwhile, the young lady can go to MA. Plenty of demand!

Dumbo she signed an agreement also. Not to be a paid house guest. She can easily relocate to MA if anyone wants an au pair who does nothing but wants more pay.

Weak sauce. No uniform figures in derision on our side, huh? Dumbo is the best you got? I could list yours for pages. Anyway, either it’s a cultural exchange or a domestic worker. If it’s a cultural exchange you have to treat fairly and do all these other things, if it’s a domestic worker you have to treat fairly and pay more and can’t deduct expenses. Which is it? Days of state-sponsored modern-day abuse of the program by people who are not suited to it and can’t afford it are over!

Here’s another stellar local mom that could be a poster child for your no need to pay fairly we feed them movement; quite literally was on an FBI wanted poster — Anne Bakilana, a neighbor and a wealthy economist:
www.courthousenews.com/couple-still-faces-claims-of-modern-day-slavery/
Recognize any claims? Anne made them all before? Until the FBI had her on secret tapes proving what her nanny had said

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever read “Nickel and Dined in America”? Regular workers spend most of their paychecks on food housing and transportation. All provided by the host family.

This is tiresome. You read the MA opinion and any bill of rights and you’ll see why that’s wrong. But intuitively too, remember the days of the company store? When factory workers worked and then paid rent to sleep in the company housing and then bought food and clothes in the company store? You know that’s illegal, right? We call indentured... oh why bother

You live in a dream world. Most low paid workers spend it all on food housing transportation and the occasional doctor bill. It adds up. But if you can’t get that those are expenses you must still be living with Mom. Poor Mom.

Link to the 81 page ruling also explaining why families won’t opt out if the have to pay fairly:
https://www.universalhub.com/files/aupair-ruling.pdf
and why you can’t deduct expenses (because they live with you)
http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/17-2140P-01A.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here again. In addition to the pay, we pay for her phone, insurance, and has access to our car. We also have her on the Uber family plan so she can go wherever she wants.

We pay for all her food, and of course cover room and board. She can work up to 45 hours per week as per the program, but has never even worked 40 hours per week with us.

So, the $200/week is play money for her.

Just say no and ask for a rematch. She’s not a guest. But she’s acting like one. Lift a finger. Better go home. Covid is not the time for a cultural exchange.

Au pair Program IS a cultural exchange, Ivanka. Soon we’ll have laws that will make your sort of nonsense illegal — read the papers you signed, you have made commitments too. Meanwhile, the young lady can go to MA. Plenty of demand!

Dumbo she signed an agreement also. Not to be a paid house guest. She can easily relocate to MA if anyone wants an au pair who does nothing but wants more pay.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes there are exploitative host families that should be weeded out. There are also plenty of big law partners or single parents with demanding jobs who need fewer hours but at odd times, like a few hours before school or after school driving kids to and from activities. Even if you paid someone else a $15/hr wage for working those 15 hours a week, you get to $225/wk. but then that person would need to find other work to be able to afford to live, and what nanny wants to take a 7-8 am and 4-6 on shift?? The au pair I know who has this cushy 15 hr wk job lives in a McMansion with housekeeping service and her own suite with own kitchen/fridge. She would never be able to afford that working her hours at $15/hr on her own. On top of that she has a luxury car she has full access to.

One of my au pair’s friend’s biggest complaint about her host family is that they do their own thing at night (IE have to work after putting kids to bed) and are NOT around to hang out with her. She thinks of them as like her real surrogate parents / family and actually legitimately wants to spend time with them. I think of my au pair as a younger cousin and our relationship is as such. My preschooler can sing and count in her native language (he is actually in full time preschool so he is not even her charge, but she spends a lot of time with us off the clock on her own volition) and we’ve hosted several cultural night dinners where my au pair and her friends have made a variety of traditional foods they wanted to share with us. In turn, she’s learned about American football, our insane political system, Halloween, thanksgiving, etc. she has been a godsend this year when school was closed and we will dearly miss her. We pay 300/wk because we use 45 hours / wk for a toddler. When we go on vacation we take grandparents for babysitting and she is not on the clock.

For all the horrible examples you have read, I just want to poin t out there are plenty of good, mutually acceptable situations as well. Many au pairs are here to travel / have a new experience for a year or two, although I realize my experience is with European au pairs so there may be a difference for others. For those I know, it is not really about money but more the ability to explore.

+1. This is my experience. Our au pair lived a lovely upper class life with plenty of time and money to travel. She had light childcare duties, with lots of time to go to the gym and take classes. The cries that most au pairs are exploited or indentured servants just do not ring true. There are a few bad apples on both sides and agencies should be forced to act more swiftly to weed these folks out of the program, but in my experience most au pairs are happy with their experience.

In the 8 years we have been in the program, I've known my fair share of horror stories. There are really some bad families, and they're not as rare as they should be.

That said, I've also always known it to be quite easy for APs to get out through re-matching. They have plenty of leverage to leave a bad situation. The picture that some people paint, of a scared young woman in fear for losing her visa, is not in touch with reality. It's not like they're asylum seekers. Even if they go home early, it's not a crisis situation.

It’s a moral crisis situation if we are sending kids home to either save a few $ per hour or avoid cutting their hours. If you can’t pay $10-$15/hr for 45 hrs, fine. Pay for 20 and enjoy the cultural exchange. That’s what this is. 45 hrs is a long time — we have bankers working less.

I do agree the stipend should factor in number of kids. but the spirit of the program is a combination exchange student / childcare situation which is what you’re missing in trying to compare this to a domestic help scenario. You are dealing with young people who will need help setting up social security, getting an American drivers license, a bank account, a phone plan, paying their taxes. All of which is totally doable but more exchange student type stuff rather than an independent professional childcare provider. They also go on your car insurance which is cringeworthy to your premium. If they get in an accident, you are their first call. You are also responsible for their well-being and you remember that their parents are worried about them too in a foreign country, dealing with homesickness and all that.

My au pair is very family oriented and despite us telling her many times in the beginning she was “off the clock” and hinting she can leave, she actually prefers to hang around after hours while we’re playing with kids, making dinner, attempting to feed dinner and cleaning up after. After dinner when kids go up, she goes to see friends / do her own thing. If we’re off work early we “relieve” her early as well. We have flexed our schedules to give her a day off for a weekend trip with last minute notice because she is awesome and we want her to be happy and get the experience she came for. We have never asked her to clean up aside from kid laundry but she was raised in a household where you pitch in and so she does. Baby takes a two hour nap during the day and she has downtime. She is truly a family member (in our Christmas card too). We have had a great experience and I think she has as well (covid aside). I recognize that we are privileged and so perhaps this is not a universal experience but I don’t think it’s fully unusual.

But I don’t understand why you seem to think people should pay $15/hour and then still not charge anything for food and room and board? How can you compare discretionary spending to a live out worker who actually has to pay for groceries and rent and utilities. Those are real costs you’re ignoring. At 45 hours a week at even stipend, daycare in the DMV is essentially a wash and probably actually cheaper as you cannot leave out the $10k in agency fees.

Anonymous wrote:The J-1 visa permits Au Pair in America participants to reside legally in the United States for 12 months while caring for children in a program-approved host family. The problem seems to be that the au pair expects a cultural exchange while the host family is often only looking for cheap labor. Politico.com did a well-written expose and pointed out that lobbyists for the involved employment agencies spend a great deal of money to defeat any proposed reforms.

A friend of mine has an au pair and estimates her total annual cost at 30K....not exactly cheap labor.

All true. MA case has been won.

From Politico:"
Initially, it was run out of the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency, which advocated reforming the program because the work hours were too long for it to be classified as a cultural exchange. (Congress then passed legislation to prevent the agency from limiting work hours.) In 1990, the General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog agency, concluded au pairs shouldn’t receive J-1 visas, saying it was inappropriate to bring workers to the U.S. under this visa because it wasn’t meant for labor programs. In 2012, a State Department Inspector General report criticized the entire J-1 visa program, because sanctioning sponsors who break the rules “rarely results in meaningful consequences.” The report recommended transferring oversight of the au pair program to the Department of Labor, and said the program had “significant issues.”

In 2013, the Senate debated a bill that would have prohibited companies from charging au pairs recruitment fees, which can range from $500 to $3,000 and can leave au pairs in debt. (Au pair companies also charge families roughly $8,000 per au pair.) “This program is a scam,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, during Senate debate over the au pair reform bill. “It is not a cultural-exchange program.” But the agencies lobbied vigorously against the measure; Congress voted it down.

This [au pair] program is a scam,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2013. “It is not a cultural-exchange program.”

Most higher profile recent controversies involve wages. Au pair companies set au pair wages at $195.75 per week for 45 hours of work, or $4.35 an hour—a number that comes from subtracting 40 percent from federal minimum wage for room and board. Labor rights organizations call this a legally dubious arrangement for several reasons, including because deducting housing costs in programs where providing housing primarily benefits the employer (like the au pair program) isn’t allowed by law. In 2015, several au pairs sued 15 companies (one company joined the program after the suit was filed) in a Federal District Court in Colorado, claiming they were illegally denied full minimum wage and au pair companies engage in illegal price fixing. “Our clients allege [their wages have] been fixed by anti-competitive conduct, maintained through fraud, and violates federal, state and local wage and hour laws,” said Nina DiSalvo, executive director of the nonprofit Towards Justice, which is representing the au pairs. The case is still pending.

There’s another lawsuit in Massachusetts. Theoretically, au pairs are entitled to the minimum wage in the state where they live, which can be higher than the federal minimum wage. But even though that rule is advertised in State Department materials for au pairs, until recently, no state enforced it. In 2015, the Massachusetts Legislature passed workers rights legislation entitling au pairs to that state’s $11 minimum wage plus overtime (with a situational deduction for room and board that is much less than 40 percent). Cultural Care Au Pair sued to block the law, arguing au pairs aren’t “domestic workers” and provide only “limited child care services,” and therefore aren’t entitled to the minimum wage. “Because au pairs are protected by the [Fair Labor Standards Act], they are protected by state minimum wage laws as well,” wrote the Massachusetts attorney general’s office in its legal response to Cultural Care’s lawsuit. The office argues au pairs are entitled to expanded labor rights in many areas. But it’s unclear how many au pairs are contacting the Massachusetts attorney general’s office to enforce their rights. The case is still ongoing.

But these attempts at reform don’t address the program’s biggest problem. The au pairs I spoke with said a raise would be nice, but the real issue is that some hosts ignore already existing regulations—and so do the au pair companies supposedly responsible for their well-being.

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. Which is precisely the point missed by the OP & Co. Who kicked off a massive thread using the word extortion to avoid paying more than $4.46 per hour! They are willing to pay more in fact IF the au pair would do more work (patently prohibited under the State Dpt rules). What is not prohibited is the au pair negotiating for more. Yet. There’s a cabal of moms disparaging the au pair and literally writing scripts on how to intimidate the au pair into NOT being able to negotiate which is HER RIGHT. That is what’s so awful.

This!

The J-1 visa permits Au Pair in America participants to reside legally in the United States for 12 months while caring for children in a program-approved host family. The problem seems to be that the au pair expects a cultural exchange while the host family is often only looking for cheap labor. Politico.com did a well-written expose and pointed out that lobbyists for the involved employment agencies spend a great deal of money to defeat any proposed reforms.