• 11
  • February
    2012

Imagine getting up at 4:30 in the morning, getting ready for work and getting on a bus for a long commute to your job which begins at 6:00 in the morning every day. When you get to your job, you have a long list of chores ranging from cooking meals to washing cars. As you try to complete the list of chores, you have to take care of a couple of very young children that are not your own.

After the family has their restful meal, you rush through your own in about five minutes. You have no official or even complete meal or rest periods throughout the day which ends late at night. When it is all said and done, the paycheck per week is about $200, far below the minimum wage for a normal 8 hour day. Nannies across the nation experience this every day.

Some of those nannies rallied together in Sacramento, California, this week to protest unfair treatment of nannies and household help all across the nation. They begged lawmakers to adapt laws that protect these workers and specifically asked California lawmakers to pass the Babysitter's Bill.

There are already some laws in California that protect domestic workers by requiring overtime and meal breaks. There is, however, a "personal attendants" exemption, one that many employees fall under and one that they are trying to eliminate. The new changes would not significantly alter the needs of an employer, but it would make a nannies' job so much different.

Source: News Observer, "California at forefront of debate over on-the-job protections for nannies," Patrick McGreevy, Feb. 10, 2012