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[quote=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.[/quote]

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