Reply to Au pair -- indentured servitude or cultural exchange

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you really want to be heard, it would help if you knew anything about the program and had some experience with it. Oh, and didn't use inflammatory and incomparable terms like indentured servitude and slave.

2, 5, 6, 9, and 10 are already in the rules.

Au pairs choose their families and many, many turn down families with more than two kids. Ask a family with four kids how challenging it is to find an au pair. If any au pair doesnt want a family with more than two kids, she doesn't have to have one.

The issue with the weekends and holidays point is that most host families are in the program for the flexibility. Remove that and there are even fewer host families interested. There are already way more au pairs than host families willing to take on the expense and risk. Again, host families are required to be up front with their schedules from the beginning and au pairs make the choice of family when they are matching.

I would personally be fine paying my au pair more in stipend, but would not pay more for the program overall. The program also includes an $8,000 agency fee, $500 towards classes, and housing and food expenses for the year.  Most host families also pay for a cell phone, provide a car and pay for car insurance and licensing fees. But you know this because every time something like this is posted, we tell you this and you ignore it.

What is your proposal for how these expenses will be folded into your minimum wage proposal?  Or do you expect that host families would pay minimum wage and then also all of these additional expenses plus hosting a young, foreign adult and treating her like part of the family?

Also, what about those of us who use fewer than 45 hours?  Our au pairs work 30 hours a week most weeks. If I have to pay minimum wage by the hour, do I pay the full amount of the stipend you're proposing anyway or does it become truly an hourly job?

When you respond, please take into account the additional facts presented here and develop proposals for how this would actually look instead of being broad and non-specific and inflammatory.

Also, please identify your relationship to the program and what research you've done to ensure that your proposals would be effective and welcomed by the au pair community. As it stands, your proposals would kill the program. I think you'd have thousands of very unhappy au pairs if that happened. But perhaps that's your intention?

Know that it's not your opinion itself that is the reason you are banned from the main board. We would welcome reforms to the program that make sense and make it better for all. Happy to hear from you with those if you have them.

If you do not respond having thought through these additional issues, then we will know you're not truly trying to solve anything and we can continue to ignore you on this board and go back to trying to make the board useful by eliminating people like you who are trying to ruin it. [/quote]

Excellent post. Thank you for shutting that nonsense OP keeps spouting down.[/quote]

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