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[quote=Anonymous]I agree that you seem to lack a bare minimum of insight and knowledge to be worth dignifying on this, but as one of the hysterical PPs, I nonetheless feel compelled to respond to your contributions here:

1. I don't recall anyone using the term "human rights issue" before you and, frankly, that is the only abstract, nebulous terminology being applied. Regardless of how the reference to The Emancipation Proclamation was phrased, OP asked a) if her nanny had a say, and b) what the laws were. That reference, unlike your nonspecific summation, offers a directly-related answer to the questions by clarifying, "yes, she has a say; no, you cannot loan her out; legally The Emancipation Proclamation prohibits the total-control ownership required to do so." That said, if you want to debate the relevance of human rights, you are going to need significantly more background information and education than you appear to have; beginning with the 4th point on this list.

2. You are being awfully nonchalant about OP "deciding" to "set a job requirement" 9-months into a contract that ends in October. Do you even understand the purpose of a contract? It is to protect both parties so that, for example, one cannot change the rules in their own favor three quarters of the way through the contract period. By your logic the nanny could show up one morning and say "Guess what! my services are now $6,000 per hour - deal with it or go without childcare!"

3. It is not just "ill-advised". Ill-advised would be repeatedly coming home late without explanation or apology, leaving your nanny without enough formula and/or supplies, or otherwise making your nanny's job difficult and unpleasant. Ill-advised would be the kind of nuisance that would lead empowered nannies with the privilege of obtaining work elsewhere to quietly do so. This request, no matter how she says it, will make her nanny feel obligated to comply with something that is absolutely not legal or ethical. You need to review the laws and research regarding abuse of formal vs. informal power dynamics, narcissistic leadership, and hostile work environments.

4. Your offense at the references to slavery here, much like your flippant dismissal of the link between domestic work and human rights, is coming from a place of ignorance and privilege. That you can so casually suggest that her nanny decline the work elsewhere or leave her job for a new one speaks to a strong and likely well-founded sense of empowerment. I'm going to guess that you don't encounter an overwhelming amount of abuse as a domestic employee - either because you don't tolerate it or because you are not otherwise disenfranchised, discriminated against, or disempowered. This is good news - the fewer of those experiences there are in the world, the better place it will be for all of us.

That said, it is not the case for all, and arguably not even most, nannies. You are entitled to disagree with my rhetorical approach to that problem, but you do not get to rewrite history or empirical facts in the process to bolster that point. The study of domestic work in a global economy is a rich and thriving area of academic research on which millions of dollars in government and private grant money have been spent. That you find some of these comments incendiary or counter-productive is a subjective opinion, but your claim that slavery is wholly unrelated and offensive is not only ridiculous given the aforementioned relevance to OP's question, but also completely ignorant of historic and scientific fact. Similarly, your claims about similar occurrences in business settings are unfounded (as noted by PP), and, again, your suggestion that this nanny "deal with it or leave" ignores overwhelming evidence regarding the social status and position of most nannies.

Please educate yourself on what the plight of domestic workers actually is before you presume to know the total effects and what is needed to address them (spoiler: the answer is NOT a different tone on internet message boards). A quick search on Google Scholar will reveal thousands of empirical articles on the matter, but I'm including two references here. The first is an excerpt from a 3-year collaborative study from Barnard College that responds to your suggestion that slavery is somehow wholly unrelated to the history of the work you do (I am frankly sad for what it says of our education system that this even has to be spelled out for you); and the 2nd is a published report of the first-ever large-scale national survey of domestic workers. Please see pages 11-12 (xi-xii) for a summary of their findings as the study, published less than one year ago, demonstrates without question that low pay is a systemic problem in the industry, domestic workers rarely receive employment benefits, and that they experience acute financial hardship, disrespect, and abuse. Please also read in greater detail the facts and experiences that allow such patterns to persist then consider the role of OP in perpetuating those dynamics before defending this question and criticizing the well-justified and perfectly-clear responses.

Excerpt:

Domestic service is a degraded occupation. Its low 
status is informed in part by the gendered and racialized 
composition of the workforce. For most of US history, 
paid domestic work was performed by African American 
and immigrant women.

In the 1930s in New York City, in the midst of the 
Great Depression, black domestic workers desperate 
for employment gathered on street corners to offer 
their services to prospective employers. These 
informal centers of employment—dubbed the “Bronx 
Slave Markets” by two African American activists 
and journalists, Marvel Cooke and Ella Baker—came 
to symbolize the particular vulnerability of domestic 
workers (Baker and Cooke 1935). Exploiting their 
desperation, employers bargained to pay as small a fee 
as possible. If they were paid at all—and some weren't—
domestic workers went home after ten or eleven hours 
of back-breaking labor with as little as fifteen, twenty, or 
twenty-five cents an hour.

References:

http://bcrw.barnard.edu/wp-content/nfs/reports/NFS5-Valuing-Domestic-Work.pdf

http://www.domesticworkers.org/pdfs/HomeEconomicsEnglish.pdf

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