How to approach MB about PTO

[Anonymous]

I've been working with this family almost 5 months. Im horrible about sitting down and talking about these things face to face because i get intimidated. I'm thinking of sending an email. I know it's late but I feel like I really to sit down and talk with them about:

PTO and sick days- I've been sick a few times since I started this position and have never said a word about it and still came to work. I've never wanted to call out because once it hits me its mostly the night before and I think that's to short of notice. What should I do. I still need to be paid.

Paid vacation- they are planning a week long vacation and I believe they are planning on just not paying me for the entire week. For me this will not work out. I have a monthly budget and this will set me back if we do do so.

I have sat down and talked to MB about a similar topic (Guaranteed hours) and it somewhat got resolved. It works for them, not so much for me We came to the conclusion that if there was ever a time she didn't need me she would calculate the hours and I would make them up. For example if she came home early or decided to stay home. Now that I think about this a kinda feel like an indentured servant and that she should be paying for my availability on the days and times she stated she would need me. I have decided to let this go and go with the flow because I should have added what I wanted in the contract in the beginning and went over this at the interview. So I know for next time.

I work for this family 30 hours a week
Three days

[Anonymous]

What you worked out isn't guaranteed hours. It's banking hours, in reverse.

Honestly, there isn't much. You can make requests, but unfortunately you learned a lesson the hard way: you have to work this out in advance.

[Anonymous]

OP, these issues need to be addressed ASAP. Set a meeting time, and have your draft agreement ready, with an extra copy for them. There is no good reason to ignore these important matters. Slavery is outlawed in the US. As soon as you determine that you are ready to be treated like an adult human being, these people will treat you like one.
If it would give you more confidence, you can start looking at other job options.

[Anonymous]

This is not unusual for a part time, three day a week position. At any rate, it sounds like you've already addressed this issue with the family and it was resolved: You agreed that they would let you make up the 30 hours before or after their vacation. You can, of course, tell them that you made a mistake and this does not work for you after all, and that you will need to find another job. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not unusual for a part time, three day a week position. At any rate, it sounds like you've already addressed this issue with the family and it was resolved: You agreed that they would let you make up the 30 hours before or after their vacation. You can, of course, tell them that you made a mistake and this does not work for you after all, and that you will need to find another job. Good luck.

I disagree - three, ten hour days is 30 hours a week. Throw in an evening of babysitting and that qualifies as a FT job. I believe OP's job should not have banked hours, should have guaranteed hours, and should have PTO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, these issues need to be addressed ASAP. Set a meeting time, and have your draft agreement ready, with an extra copy for them. There is no good reason to ignore these important matters. Slavery is outlawed in the US. As soon as you determine that you are ready to be treated like an adult human being, these people will treat you like one.
If it would give you more confidence, you can start looking at other job options.

To the poster who always defaults to the "slavery is outlawed, nannies are not slaves" position: Your comments are incredibly ignorant and insensitive. Slaves were property with no freedom to chose how they spent their days. Nannies are free to take and leave jobs as they please. Slaves did not get paid. Nannies may feel underpaid, but their wages are in fact driven by a free market. Show a little respect for yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, these issues need to be addressed ASAP. Set a meeting time, and have your draft agreement ready, with an extra copy for them. There is no good reason to ignore these important matters. Slavery is outlawed in the US. As soon as you determine that you are ready to be treated like an adult human being, these people will treat you like one.
If it would give you more confidence, you can start looking at other job options.

To the poster who always defaults to the "slavery is outlawed, nannies are not slaves" position: Your comments are incredibly ignorant and insensitive. Slaves were property with no freedom to chose how they spent their days. Nannies are free to take and leave jobs as they please. Slaves did not get paid. Nannies may feel underpaid, but their wages are in fact driven by a free market. Show a little respect for yourself.

+1

[Anonymous]

Illegal immigrants are often treated as slave girls, because they know of no other option.

[Anonymous]

What many nannies fail to grasp is that a great many professional jobs don't have guaranteed hours and paid vacation in the way you think of it. Parents are not trying to take advantage of you by declining to pay you for six weeks leave (theirs, yours, sick days, holidays), they are just passing on their own economic realities.

Some examples: My husband is self-employed. If he does not work, he does not make money to pay you. However, he will have to work extra hours before and after his days off, and we are happy to pay you for those hours provided that you work.

I work as a lawyer. Like many lawyers employed by firms, I can basically take off as much as I want as long as I am meeting client needs and hitting an annual billable hour target of about 2000 hours. Billable hours means hours that my firm can bill to its clients. I also have plenty of administrative and business development responsibilities, such that in order to produce 2000 billable hours I have to work at least 2500 hours.

The upshot of this is if I take a week off, my work will wait for me and I will need to work late nights and probably some weekends to catch up on stuff that didn't get done while I was on vacation. I will need child care during those extra hours, and my nanny will expect to be paid overtime, even though I don't get overtime pay when I work late or on a weekend or on a holiday. If she wants guaranteed hours on top of the overtime pay, she will need to accept a lower hourly rate that factors in the time I will be paying her but not using her. Otherwise, she just becomes cost-prohibitve.

Some nannies prefer the stability of getting paid the same amount every week, while others want a higher hourly rate and/or time and a half and can stomach the fluctuations.

Instead of obsessing about hourly rates and guaranteed hours and how you are being treated sooo badly, start evaluating your compensation based on your annual gross pay relative to annual hours worked. And keep in mind that very few of your employers get guaranteed hours plus pay for every hour worked. We are expected to work until the job is done, even if that means nights and weekends. We are not taking advantage of you by passing on the same terms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, these issues need to be addressed ASAP. Set a meeting time, and have your draft agreement ready, with an extra copy for them. There is no good reason to ignore these important matters. Slavery is outlawed in the US. As soon as you determine that you are ready to be treated like an adult human being, these people will treat you like one.
If it would give you more confidence, you can start looking at other job options.

To the poster who always defaults to the "slavery is outlawed, nannies are not slaves" position: Your comments are incredibly ignorant and insensitive. Slaves are property with no freedom to chose how they spend their days. Nannies are free to take and leave jobs as they please. Slaves do not get paid. Nannies may feel underpaid, but their wages are in fact driven by a free market. Show a little respect for yourself.

Change everything to present tense and I'll give a +1000000.

There are modern-day slaves, even here in the US. They come over on the promise of work and are forced to surrender their passports and wages to their "employer," trapped in a cycle of servitude and abuse. Some of them may even be performing childcare - others housework, manual labor, or farm work.

Slavery-poster, you are correct, nannies are not slaves. So we don't need to bring it up any more, k? We all understand what you're saying, but it is hugely disrespectful to everyone who has endured or is enduring the experience of slavery to suggest that an employer who takes advantage of a naive nanny is the same as a slave owner. Neither is a good person, clearly, but I think we should be able to agree that there is a distinct difference between the two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What many nannies fail to grasp is that a great many professional jobs don't have guaranteed hours and paid vacation in the way you think of it. Parents are not trying to take advantage of you by declining to pay you for six weeks leave (theirs, yours, sick days, holidays), they are just passing on their own economic realities.

Some examples: My husband is self-employed. If he does not work, he does not make money to pay you. However, he will have to work extra hours before and after his days off, and we are happy to pay you for those hours provided that you work.

I work as a lawyer. Like many lawyers employed by firms, I can basically take off as much as I want as long as I am meeting client needs and hitting an annual billable hour target of about 2000 hours. Billable hours means hours that my firm can bill to its clients. I also have plenty of administrative and business development responsibilities, such that in order to produce 2000 billable hours I have to work at least 2500 hours.

The upshot of this is if I take a week off, my work will wait for me and I will need to work late nights and probably some weekends to catch up on stuff that didn't get done while I was on vacation. I will need child care during those extra hours, and my nanny will expect to be paid overtime, even though I don't get overtime pay when I work late or on a weekend or on a holiday. If she wants guaranteed hours on top of the overtime pay, she will need to accept a lower hourly rate that factors in the time I will be paying her but not using her. Otherwise, she just becomes cost-prohibitve.

Some nannies prefer the stability of getting paid the same amount every week, while others want a higher hourly rate and/or time and a half and can stomach the fluctuations.

Instead of obsessing about hourly rates and guaranteed hours and how you are being treated sooo badly, start evaluating your compensation based on your annual gross pay relative to annual hours worked. And keep in mind that very few of your employers get guaranteed hours plus pay for every hour worked. We are expected to work until the job is done, even if that means nights and weekends. We are not taking advantage of you by passing on the same terms.

Of course you have "guaranteed hours," you just call it by another name - A SALARY.

Guaranteed hours only exists to ensure that nannies will be able to bring home enough money to pay their bills. While we are hourly employees by law, some nanny employers do "salarize" their nannies in order to account for the issues you address. I had a job that was booked for 60 hours a week with an annual salary rather than a stipulated hourly rate - I didn't work all of those hours each week, but I kept them open in order to accomodate my boss' needs, and was guaranteed agreed-upon weekly wages regardless. I had a separate hourly rate for evenings and weekends.

If you are asking a nanny to have a flexible schedule but are guaranteeing a minimum monthly take-home, that's no problem. Without guaranteed hours OR a salary, however, a nanny can lose a couple thousand dollars a year in employer vacation time, early dismissals, grandparent visits, and so on - a huge percentage of her income.

[Anonymous]

22:12, you are missing the point. A nanny is not "losing a couple thousand dollars a year in employer vacatino time, early dismissals, grandparent visits, etc." unless you assume that she should be getting paid for work that she does not do, which is not a reasonable assumption unless a certain number of days of paid time off is priced into the hourly rate, just as it is priced into a professional's salary.

It is true that salaried employees have guaranteed minimum hours, meaning that we get paid for a full week whether we work it or not. But we don't get paid for hours we work over and above a standard week. In other words, we don't have a "separate hourly rate" when we have to work overtime to make up for our salaried time off. You do, and the cost of that benefit is either schedule shifting in lieu of guaranteed hours, or a lower rate to offset the "separate hourly rate" we have to pay you for hours over and above your usual week.

[Anonymous]

Slavery-poster, you are correct, nannies are not slaves. So we don't need to bring it up any more, k? We all understand what you're saying, but it is hugely disrespectful to everyone who has endured or is enduring the experience of slavery to suggest that an employer who takes advantage of a naive nanny is the same as a slave owner. Neither is a good person, clearly, but I think we should be able to agree that there is a distinct difference between the two.

+1

back to topic - OP, you have a problem because these are all issues you should have negotiated up front. You are now trying to renegotiate on the fly. As an MB I would be really pissed at hiring someone on X terms only to have her keep renegotiating them only a few months in. It shows really bad faith and would make me feel scammed. (FWIW, my nanny does have guaranteed hours - for a specific hr range 5 days a week; vacation, holidays and sick leave paid so I'm not arguing that those benefits aren't good.) I would wait to 6 months and request a formal sit-down. You need to be apologetic for not bringing this stuff up when you negotiated at the get-go, but you can be honest that it is becoming an issue and you need a way to regularize your pay. MB may counter that she needs to pay you a lower rate per hour. That is not unreasonable and you need to be ready to be OK with that if your real priority is guaranteed hours - you are asking for a better compensation package than the one they offered you when they hired you. It does not automaticlaly fall to them to improve it just because you did not raise these issues when you were hired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:22:12, you are missing the point. A nanny is not "losing a couple thousand dollars a year in employer vacatino time, early dismissals, grandparent visits, etc." unless you assume that she should be getting paid for work that she does not do, which is not a reasonable assumption unless a certain number of days of paid time off is priced into the hourly rate, just as it is priced into a professional's salary.

It is true that salaried employees have guaranteed minimum hours, meaning that we get paid for a full week whether we work it or not. But we don't get paid for hours we work over and above a standard week. In other words, we don't have a "separate hourly rate" when we have to work overtime to make up for our salaried time off. You do, and the cost of that benefit is either schedule shifting in lieu of guaranteed hours, or a lower rate to offset the "separate hourly rate" we have to pay you for hours over and above your usual week.

Sorry, I should have clarified. The "salarized" job I had (I don't believe that is a word, but it is bandied about by my agency as though it is...), had I worked out the equivalent hourly pay, would have been significantly lower than market rate. That was acceptable because I rarely worked the entire 60 hours and because I was guaranteed my annual salary within the hours of 7am-7pm Mon-Fri. So just as you say, it was priced into my salary ahead of time. The contract did not include any nights or weekends, so we had to agree on an hourly rate for those if they wanted them (as opposed to charging OT rates, which I did not do).

If I wanted to work random weekends or until 11pm again, I'd go back into research, teaching, nonprofits, or social services - but I don't, so I am back to being a nanny

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Illegal immigrants are often treated as slave girls, because they know of no other option.

Good, and they should.. I have no respect for illegals so when a family takes advantage of them, they deserve it every ounch of it. I might sound harsh but it's how I feel ;p