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[quote=Anonymous]Nannies are classified as hourly employees by law because they are covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA was designed to protect workers by entitling them to overtime pay from which executive and other such positions are exempt.

You may not be trying to be snarky, but your implicit point that salaried employees are somehow superior to hourly and deserving of benefits that some nannies "seem to think" they can "reap" is as condescending and insulting as it is arrogant and ill-informed. Your nanny's hourly IRS status, when coupled with the appropriate contract designating her minimum number of work-hours (this being the basic definition of a salaried position), actually entitles her to MORE benefits than your FLSA-exempt salary. If you find a nanny's requirement of a set minimum number of hours unpalatable, you are certainly able to find some that don't have one. However, given the obvious need to not have your employer take an impromptu month-long vacation during which you will not be paid generally means that most committed, career nannies are going to require a contract with that minimum.

Where the hourly status becomes relevant is not in whether or not a nanny has a set minimum and is therefore entitled to "reap the benefits" of a salary (and this is not a salary, incidentally, it is just that - a minimum number of hours, each of which she is paid for on an hourly basis). Instead, hourly status matters because, in keeping with the FLSA, nannies are legally allowed to, and should, track overtime hours. All those times your employers come home late? The US Department of Labor has designed free apps that use the GPS on your cell phone to track the days and hours you work, and many states have free hotlines you can call to consult on any grievance, including unpaid hours and overtime, and through which you will be assisted in filing formal complaints. In New York, over 75% of those complaints have settled for cash payments.

I find it, first and foremost, fundamentally bizarre that so many people are able to reconcile under-valuing and dehumanizing another person who, in the same breath, is in their life specifically to care for their children. But, beyond that, it is a profoundly disturbing remnant of our history that parents associate "employing" their nannies with "owning" their nannies. Fortunately our laws have progressed ever-so-slightly more efficiently than our mentality on this issue, and there is adequate protection out there that, yes, includes being defined as an 'hourly employee' by law.[/quote]

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