Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many, many APs have been abused for far too long.

True. Our AP was abused by going on vacation in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. She was forced to drive her own dedicated car (a ford - slummy!). She was forced to spend all of her evenings and weekends shopping and hanging out with friends. She suffered through having her ADU cleaned by our housekeeper, hand-rolled pasta dinners, etc. We miserly paid for an unlimited call, text, and data plan and gym membership. We selfishly let her her siblings stay with us for two weeks. We rudely took her out for dinner, family excursions, and sundry. The horrible ogres that we are, we gave $1000 towards her education (even though we were required to pay only $500). She provided 45 hours of childcare, which she bargained for before we matched. Call CPS!

Right! Yeah, ours have been so abused by going on a cruise to the Bahamas, having their own suite which we could rent for $800/month, unlimited data phone plan, Christmas in manhattan, all meals out paid for which usually is weekly, a new car to drive, but sure, she has to drive kids around for 20 hours a week so definitely call the authorities. She could easily rematch and leave her 'abuse-ridden home' if she wanted to and be placed somewhere else to be abused within weeks with free airfare anywhere she wanted to go where she matched with a family. But, yeah, omg, call CPS. She's in real danger.

Those posts are funny, doesn’t it dawn on people that while you may not be abusing your APs many may well be. Plenty of host moms here come for advice, explain their OP situation and as soon as they are told what they do isn’t in line with the program they either say it doesn’t matter because their AP is okay with it (even though AP don’t really have the freedom to say no) or get all arsy saying obviously everyone here is a nanny troll.

While you may be a good family, plenty are not. While you may go above and beyond for your AP, plenty do not, while you may respect the contract to a T plenty do not. It’s not hard to imagine that your AP’s experience isn’t the experience of every AP and that plenty of AP are taken advantage of, even if that’s not the case of your APs.

If no APs in the history of APs had ever been abused girls like Sophie Lionnet would still be alive and not dead, she was an extreme case but when such cases exists (and this one is VERY recent) pretending like abuse doesn’t exist because you don’t abuse your APs is of very bad taste. Kuddos to you for not abusing your APs, wouldn’t it be great if everyone had the same attitude to the program (and maybe then this lawsuit wouldn’t even be a thing) but it’s obviously not the case so I can’t see how acknowledging that some APs do get abuse and need more protection/stricter laws while also acknowledging that not all APs get abused is so hard to some.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reality is that many au pairs don’t get a rematch in the relatively short time that they are allowed to find a rematch. And so they get sent home.

That is not the reality, that is a really small minority who go home usually due to other issues that caused the rematch, but you don't care, do you, you here just to troll.

Why do you keep calling everyone a troll who may have differing observations and opinions on this matter? This is a discussion forum.

Because if you sound like a troll, you are one, if you create a fiction of the reality and you try to deceive on purpose then you are a troll. If you keep posting the same argument over and over again without taking other factor into account you are a troll.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reality is that many au pairs don’t get a rematch in the relatively short time that they are allowed to find a rematch. And so they get sent home.

That is not the reality, that is a really small minority who go home usually due to other issues that caused the rematch, but you don't care, do you, you here just to troll.

Why do you keep calling everyone a troll who may have differing observations and opinions on this matter? This is a discussion forum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reality is that many au pairs don’t get a rematch in the relatively short time that they are allowed to find a rematch. And so they get sent home.

That is not the reality, that is a really small minority who go home usually due to other issues that caused the rematch, but you don't care, do you, you here just to troll.

Anonymous wrote:Reality is that many au pairs don’t get a rematch in the relatively short time that they are allowed to find a rematch. And so they get sent home.

Anonymous wrote:How is it fair that when au pairs get taken advantage of, and complain, they frequently get punished by getting sent home?

Anonymous wrote:This concerns me. Why were we told to stop pushing to amend 804? Only to see the exemption die in SB7?

Anonymous wrote:SB 804, without an exemption, will lump au pairs together with other domestic workers and place them firmly under state regulation AND federal regulation. This is the current state of affairs in Massachusetts.

Thus, there was a push to add an exemption for au pairs, as they are ALREADY regulated under federal law. This was firmly rebuffed by the bill’s sponsor, Senator McClellan. The argument was that the exemption would go in SB7, which raises minimum wage.

So, today there is no exemption for au pairs in 804. If SB7, which DOES have the exemption, is killed, all that is left is bringing au pairs under state regulation through 804.

This was likely the plan all along - the out of state dark money funding this probably was betting that Virginia would have difficulty passing minimum wage increases. So they insisted that Jennifer McClellan NOT allow 804 to be amended, but instead allow it to be placed in the minimum wage bill, SB7. That is exactly what happen. Now she is threatening to kill SB7 based on a $1 an hour wage difference across regions in Virginia several years in the future. Sounds more like an excuse to kill a bill that has an exemption for the program the people paid her $300,000 to kill.

Once again, I don’t know ANYBODY who thinks domestic workers should not be paid a minimum wage, or that the minimum wage should not be increased. The real problem is using the Virginia legislature to kill a competing program with dark money. A program that is federally regulated. That is the problem.

SB7 and its companion HB395 are in conference today. We will see what happens. It’s up to the NoVa representatives in the conference to keep the exemption for au pairs in place, and the rest of the NoVa delegation to support such a bill out of conference.

Anonymous wrote:SB 804, without an exemption, will lump au pairs together with other domestic workers and place them firmly under state regulation AND federal regulation. This is the current state of affairs in Massachusetts.

Thus, there was a push to add an exemption for au pairs, as they are ALREADY regulated under federal law. This was firmly rebuffed by the bill’s sponsor, Senator McClellan. The argument was that the exemption would go in SB7, which raises minimum wage.

So, today there is no exemption for au pairs in 804. If SB7, which DOES have the exemption, is killed, all that is left is bringing au pairs under state regulation through 804.

This was likely the plan all along - the out of state dark money funding this probably was betting that Virginia would have difficulty passing minimum wage increases. So they insisted that Jennifer McClellan NOT allow 804 to be amended, but instead allow it to be placed in the minimum wage bill, SB7. That is exactly what happen. Now she is threatening to kill SB7 based on a $1 an hour wage difference across regions in Virginia several years in the future. Sounds more like an excuse to kill a bill that has an exemption for the program the people paid her $300,000 to kill.

Once again, I don’t know ANYBODY who thinks domestic workers should not be paid a minimum wage, or that the minimum wage should not be increased. The real problem is using the Virginia legislature to kill a competing program with dark money. A program that is federally regulated. That is the problem.

SB7 and its companion HB395 are in conference today. We will see what happens. It’s up to the NoVa representatives in the conference to keep the exemption for au pairs in place, and the rest of the NoVa delegation to support such a bill out of conference.

Anonymous wrote:The problem we now face is the prospect of Senator McClellan intentionally killing SB7 to ensure there is no au pair exemption. Sure, the minimum wage won’t raise, but HB804 would remain, and au pairs would now be lumped into a new worker status that would make Virginia like Massachusetts. A very good result for the competing care companies that paid $300,000 in dark money to kill the au pair program:

“The 23-member Virginia Legislative Black Caucus is lobbying to kill the Sen- ate’s regional approach. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the VLBC announced its opposition to anything but a statewide minimum wage increase, implying members would join Republicans to kill the bill if the regional approach emerged from a con- ference committee seeking to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation.”

http://m.richmondfreepress.com/news/2020/mar/06/virginia-house-senate-disagreement-threatens-propo/

Because, again, this was never about domestic workers or your local care giver. It was always about killing a competing program.

Every family I have spoken to supports an increased minimum wage for domestic workers. Don’t let this be a Trojan horse for a competing service to kill the au pair program with dark money.

Anonymous wrote:How is it fair that when au pairs get taken advantage of, and complain, they frequently get punished by getting sent home?