An agency is a privately owned company that works one on one with nannies and families. They interview both the family and nanny so as to find what both needs.
A website does not work one on one with the nannies or the parents. You are putting your info into a datebase and putting what you want, with the two sites i work with, they just send you notices when jobs in your AREA have come up.. not based on what you want wage wise.

If an agency allowed any parent to offer me less than my stated minimum, (let alone illegal wages!), I'd never use them again. That's the entire point here.

The right agency works with you and knows what you need or depending on your experience what you can/should be asking.
The right agency does not send you to a family that can not pay that rate.
If you dont feel they are giving you what you need, then you would move on.
The same goes with these sites, if you dont like the offers or the jobs, then why would you stay? Why make yourself miserable or get angry at people you dont know just to find a job.

What would you think of an agency that allowed parents to offer illegal wages?

I tend to ignore the lower offers. I go with some people are not able to afford the money it takes for top "nannies" or "sitters" and so they offer what they can. Others just try and see if they can get away with a low offer. I am sure they will get responses, but until people stop responding and parents are not clued in, they will stay.

It is not Care.com or Urbansitter or any other sites job to tell people what to offer or not.

If the job sounds good but the offer is really low, then come back with interested and explain the problem with the pay and see if they family will pay what your rate is. If not then move on. Its not something to get offended or bitter over.

If you are truly a professional, then you know you wont always like the offers or the way people think of nannies. It is life.

Anonymous wrote:MBs should be forewarned that good nannies do not waste their time on sites that are allowed to offer illegal pay wages.

While I've never been on care.com or sittercity, I have responded to ads on CL and this site. It's easy to click on past insanely low offers.

Having hired a PT nanny care for my own child, I can attest to all the crazy responses one has to wade through to find halfway reasonably professional nanny responses. It's a lot of work for both parties to find a match.

MBs should be forewarned that good nannies do not waste their time on sites that are allowed to offer illegal pay wages.

Unfortunately, this isn't true at all. Every time someone posts where did you find your great nanny or where did you find a good job the list includes all these sites plus Craig's List. There is no point in lying that people don't use these sites as they do because there aren't that many options out there.

MB see plenty of insane, ridiculous candidates too! I think its worse for the employers because for one job ad you can get flooded with responses. As far as I can tell, nannies are not seeing 30-50 of these types of a job offers the minute they post their resume. Both nannies and MBs need to just realize that it takes a lot of screening to find he right job or person.

As nannies we can pass on using sites that allow posters below minimum wage, less qualified & inexperienced college kids can!

MBs should be forewarned that good nannies do not waste their time on sites that are allowed to offer illegal pay wages.

I agree the rates people are posting are crazy, but my guess is that care and sitter city don't want to get started down the road of warnings and other notices along the lines proposed by Nanny Deb. those are really good ideas, but unfortunately, their lawyers likely have (rightly) advised them that it is better to take no steps to regulate the postings than to take anything less than full steps to provide the legal requirements for nannies. That is, right now they don't have a duty to do anything for anyone - employers post below minimum wage jobs at their own risk and nannies accept jobs at their own risk. But if they start providing some advice, but not full advice (or they get it wrong for a certain state or don't keep up fully with every law change), people may reasonably rely on their bad advice, and open them to a lawsuit. Maybe that isn't the right thing to do, but it makes legal sense.

Good nannies just ignore the low ball jobs. My sense as an MB was that my child's nanny and others I interviewed for the position were not competing against 150 a week nannies, and if I'd been dumb enough to post such a cheap offer, none of the candidates we chose from would have bothered to respond and we'd have learned quickly. There is a big difference between the ongoing 15/hour for one kid or 20/hour for one kid debate that DCUM has about what is "market" and these 2 dollar and hour jobs that no poster here would ever be forced to consider. Maybe the former is a debate to have and a cause for bitterness of you feel underpaid. The latter shouldn't make anyone here bitter because even the MBs posting that it was a typo are not actually defending a 100/week salary.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which legal authority would be interested in hearing about care.com and sittercity illegal activity? Hasn't INA already looked into that?

It's not illegal until they pay someone less than minimum wage for working.

Posting an ad for $2/hr is not against the law.

Loophole. You own care.com, or should they be held responsible for offering illegal wages?

Anonymous wrote:Which legal authority would be interested in hearing about care.com and sittercity illegal activity? Hasn't INA already looked into that?

It's not illegal until they pay someone less than minimum wage for working.

Posting an ad for $2/hr is not against the law.

But if care.com also helps match people with home daycare, not just sitters, then a sub-min wage makes sense, right? If it's a daycare situation, then i would think the min wage requirements aren't the same since the provider could make well above min wage even in each family paid $5/hr.

I think Care.com has a $5-10 option.

Even that is too low for me.

Which legal authority would be interested in hearing about care.com and sittercity illegal activity? Hasn't INA already looked into that?