Thanks for all the responses. To clarify: her minimum weekly amount of $880 is based on a 40 hour work week, with 20 of those hours at a 2-child rate. She has only worked for us for 3 weeks, and in those 3 weeks it turns out we are using her more like 50 hours per week.

Last week (the week of September 15th) she worked a total of 36.5 hours (10 hours with 1 baby, 18 hours with the other baby solo, and 8.5 hours of share with both babies). When you multiply those hours by the applicable rate per hour ($19 for solo hours and $25 for share hours), the total comes out to $745 for the week. She had 1 vacation day on that week. We paid her the minimum of $880. But it sounds like the concensus on this board is that we should be paying her $745 + $176 (1/5 of the weekly minimum).

We really didn't think that our contract with her worked that way -- if we give her a guaranteed weekly minimum AND we pay her a daily rate for 10 vacation days, 10 holidays, and 5 sick days, we are talking about an additional $4,400/year. I thought that was the whole point of having a minimum. Anyways, thanks for your help - all of this is so confusing!

The other alternative is to count the vacation time as less than one full day. Unless that would just make things more complicated for you. We are used to it, as our nanny worked a variable schedule, so her PTO was counted in hours. If she worked four long days, and had a vacation day, she just got her regular guaranteed pay, but was only our half a days vacation.

The bottom line is that vacation time is literally payment for hours you didn't work. So, you need to count how many hours she "didn't work." If you are only paying for 4 unworked hours, and a week is 50, she still gets 96 more hours of vacation. If you don't want to keep track in that detail, you need to pay her for 10 "unworked hours" (in my example) if you want to deduct a whole day's vacation from the pot.

OP, if you nanny worked extra hours on the non-vacation days then you pay the minimum plus the extra hours. If she worked her normal schedule, then her pay stays the same for the week.

For example, if she stayed longer one day but her total hours for the week were still under her normal schedule, you would still pay extra ONLY IF both her pay and hours are guaranteed. In contrast, if she is paid $880 for up to X number of hours at any time during the week then you don't owe anything extra. I have never seen a full time nanny agree to that but throwing it out there in case that's your situation.

This is why nannies should not accept guarantees for less than their regular schedule. If you do, the family gets to pay you less whenever you or they take vacation or have a holiday, and they don't have to pay OT even if you work 9+ hours the other days. Why should you take a penalty for vacation/holidays? Don't agree to this, it is purely a benefit for them!

OP, your vacation day is already covered in the minimum, unless she worked overtime, which you said she did not.

Legally you don't have to pay an overtime rate for vacation or sick days, only actual hours worked.

It sounds like she worked extra hours on the days she did work though.

If it was me I would pay her the hourly rate for all the hours. This means the hours she worked and whatever a normal day would have been on the vacation days.

PP again. I wanted to explain this a bit because I think people are confused by the original post.

So I work 5 hours per day or 25 per week - guaranteed. Sometimes I work extra hours so up to 6 or 7 per day.

For example:
Monday - 6 hours
Tuesday - 5 hours
Wednesday - 6 hours
Thursday - family vacation day - 5 hours
Friday - family vacation day - 5 hours

So the OP would want to pay the 25 hours minimum. But as you can see the total hours should be 27. The nanny is available and would normally work the 5 hour minimum per day, so that's how many hours the vacation/holiday/sick days are worth. Not less, just because she worked extra hours on the other days.

The nanny is right. This is why in our contract I specified the total number of guaranteed hours by the week and per day. You are not being fair. If nanny had worked for you those 2 days she would have worked her full daily hours. So you pay her for them.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, she is asking that we pay her $176 for each vacation day...but those amounts would count toward her minimum. So for example:

Week 1 - she is owed $673 for hours she actually worked. My 2 vacation days feel during that week. Under our calculation, we pay her $880 (bc she didn't hit the minimum). But under HER calculation, we would pay her $1,025 ($673 + $176 + $176).

What is her hourly rate? How many hours does she work/day? For simplicity's sake, say her rate is $10/hour and she works 8 hours/day. You owe her $673 + $80 + $80 (aka whatever she would make during that day if she was working her normal number of hours)

Anonymous wrote:Yes, she is asking that we pay her $176 for each vacation day...but those amounts would count toward her minimum. So for example:

Week 1 - she is owed $673 for hours she actually worked. My 2 vacation days feel during that week. Under our calculation, we pay her $880 (bc she didn't hit the minimum). But under HER calculation, we would pay her $1,025 ($673 + $176 + $176).

How many hours a day does Nanny work in a normal week? IOW, how many hours does she work to earn $176?

And how many hours did she work the "vacation" week to have earned $673?

Although I'd like to know the answer to my questions, I think Nanny has it right. It sounds as if she worked extra hours your vacation week, if you owed her $673 for hours worked. You owe her $176 per vacation day and standard workday, plus additional money for additional hours.

Yes, she is asking that we pay her $176 for each vacation day...but those amounts would count toward her minimum. So for example:

Week 1 - she is owed $673 for hours she actually worked. My 2 vacation days feel during that week. Under our calculation, we pay her $880 (bc she didn't hit the minimum). But under HER calculation, we would pay her $1,025 ($673 + $176 + $176).

Is she asking for the $176/day on top of her regular pay? I don't understand why it would come out to more if it really is 1/5 and she had 1 out of 5 days off.

If I understand correctly the situation: you gave nanny two days of vacation, but then asked work more than normal on other days? Say, nanny's rate is $22/hr and she is guaranteed 40 hr a per week. Some weeks could be more, but that's overtime. Nanny is given two full days of vacation, but is asked to work 9 hrs on 3 days of the week. The question is whether she has to be paid for 16 + 9*3 = 43 hours (basically pay 8 hrs for vacation days) or just for 40 hrs because that is what she guaranteed?

Honestly, I'd pay for 43, because vacation day in my mind means whatever regular hours are on that day.

you pay her $880 per week, no matter what. if you go over the hours, you pay extra.

for example: 40 hours/week = $880 but you took a vacation day and she only worked 33 hours...she still gets paid $880

if you took a vacation day but asked her to stay 2 hours extra on thursday, you need to pay $880 + those 2 hours

Help please! New mom here and totally confused about how to pay our nanny for vacation, sick days, and holiday. We pay our nanny for actual number of hours worked per week, but we guarantee a weekly minimum of $880. She gets 10 paid vacation days per year (5 selected by her, 5 selected by us), 10 paid holidays, and 5 paid sick days. Of the 5 vacation days selected by "us", I pick 3 and the other mom (that I do a part-time nanny share with) picks 2 days.

Over the course of the last 2 weeks, I used 2 vacation days during week 1, and 1 vacation day during week 2. When we calculated her hours for this two-week timeframe, she worked less than the minimum (obviously, bc of the vacation), but we paid her her weekly minimum amount of $880/week. My questions:

1. She thinks that we should actually be paying her a day rate of 1/5 of the weekly minimum ($176) for each vacation day. Although I see her point, that doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, because if we took all 5 of our vacation days in a row, she would get paid $880. But somehow because we split the days, she would get paid more. But is that how it typically works?? [And yes, we do have a contract but the contract didn't get into this level of detail and it turns out she didn't understand how the minimum worked).

2. Do I actually pay her a day rate for sick days and holidays? I was thinking no, that it's just part of the weekly minimum, but now I'm very confused.

Thanks so much - we just want to do what is right.