Unwaged au pair

OK. I'm going to be flames for this but here it goes. I am doing worse than the woman in that ad and had no idea until I read this thread.

We live in London and rented our large attic suite to a lodger for £750pcm. I used to pay an after school nanny £9 an hour to care for my kids for 20 hours a week. Put lodger asked if she could do it for £200 discount if her rent. I said sure.

So I don't pay for child are and I collect rent. All suggested by the person who you would all see as wronged. It honestly never occurred to me to say "no, let's call you an au pair and I will pay you £500 more". Maybe I should do that but it seems so odd given how we got here.

Just because these people have claimed/decided that the hours are "non-traditional" it doesn't mean that they don't have to pay!!! I noticed that the dad is a pilot, I'm presuming that he would be fine if he was told that he would no longer receive a paycheck because the airline pays for his hotel room on overnights and because of his schedule he has plenty of time to work a second job.
The mum is correct in saying that it's not an au pair job because it's clear that they're looking for a part-time qualified nanny.
When one of my friend's was a full-time student she lived with a single mum and instead of paying rent she babysat three nights a week when the mum went to college. Worked out great. However there's a huge difference between babysitting and nannying. What this family have described are nursery duties such as arranging and facilitating playdates and cooking and cleaning for the kids. She claims that the lucky candidate will be able to work another job, but if they are required to do nursery pickups and drop offs they are obviously working set hours.
There are plenty of paid au pair jobs out there that allow the au pair to study or take on another job. I guess providing Amazon Prime and samples of yummy roast dinners is suitable payment for a qualified nanny????

Gawd Jezebel I hope you shopped them for illegal employment practices!

There was other thread like this recently. Seems this is rife on Gumtree.

So their children have had several nannies and they're under 4. I wonder why? :(

Poor kids with such foul parents

Hello Anon

Seems no one noticed a different gumtree ad were employers are asking for a pair of au pair to do childcare and clean their house AND work in their pub and spend a couple of hours a day cleaning the pub. I was horrified when I read that. Think it was £90-100 a week. That's an awful thing to ask if you ask me

Au pairs work 30 hrs and should receive £70-£85 per week and board and lodgings. 22/30 x £70 = £51/week pocket money.

(Whether you live in east sheen, hammersmith, Buckingham palace or on the moon).

22 hours' work at minimum wage would pay you £143 per week gross. I would be interested to know if you can find anywhere in a safe, green, pleasant part of London where you can rent a delightful double room, pay all your bills & buy food to last a whole week for £143.

1. nannying is not supposed to be a minimum wage job.
2. this family are still just offering a room in east sheen. Property prices may have increased, but a room in east sheen is just a room in east sheen, whether it is 1974, 1998 or 2015.

Awful, awful, awful, awful.

I grew up in east sheen. Take away the property prices and it is just a pleasant but ordinary suburb of London with more cars than parking spaces. Richmond park is of course lovely, but it's no more lovely than it was before house prices went mad.

It may be 30 mins from waterloo, but how are you going to get there if you have no money?.

Whatever the cost of their house, they are still just offering her a room. I au paired in the centre of Paris, somewhere far more glamourous than east sheen - nobody said "ah but this is paris! You cannot want money - surely your reward is paris itself!" - and that was pretty much next to the louvre.

I think in comparison this au pair will find sheen lane centre with its library and community activities rather underwhelming.

I have an au pair and pay her correctly. I'm saying if this particular mum rewords the advert and doesn't write au pair, there could be people interested.

I calculated it by adding up cost of food, rent, bills, Internet, line rental etc. Then dividing this by 100 hours per month. I personally wouldn't do this and I give my au pair weekly pocket money.However, I think the arrangement advertised can be mutually beneficial, if the childcarer is not exploited. And the hours are respected.

It's not the norm I agree, but it doesn't work out as less than minimum wage if you offset cost of living.

grandma
did you not realise that au pairs get board, lodging AND a modest salary too? There is no reason whatsoever why Mr and Mrs Smug from East Sheen should think their childcarer doesn't need paying!

I would have thought this would be more fair if they were only asking 10-12 hours a week, but 22 hours a week whether it be over 2-3 days OR 5 is more like au pair hours where they would get board/meals and about £70 per week 'pocket money'

I did the calculations and I think people are being a bit unfair. I appreciate this is not an au pair role but for the right person it can work really well. As long as the hours are those stated.

I had to double check this ad cos I was convinced it was going to be the people I worked for in my very first nanny job (in East Sheen). I worked 60h a week, 6 days a week for an entire year except for the odd (unpaid of course) bank holiday. If I asked to leave 10 min early for a special event I had to add it on to the next day (mum didn't work). I was told I wasn't entitled to any annual leave in the year I worked for them as I'd gone on holiday with them for 2 weeks. During which time I worked every day and got no extra money. Their kids are a bit older now so I wouldn't have been surprised if it was them. Seems East Sheen is just a hotbed of exploitation!

I like the way she contrasts "green, pleasant" East Sheen with "grotty" Hammersmith. At least Hammersmith is in bloody London.

I worked for board & lodging on a farm in NZ (so opposite way to this). It was only for about 5 weeks though (& they gave me cash at the end - as they said I'd worked hard - like most NZ farmers they were broke though).

It was fine, but I wouldn't have wanted to do more than a month really - would have run out of cash as well. (Was in the middle of nowhere do nothing to spend it on).

I helped cook the yummy roasts.

Pirate
Is she coming here? I want the recipe for her very special roast!

We do not view ours as a 'classic' au pair job

I bet you don't, dear

I have emailed her the link to this thread...be interesting if she shows up....

OK FOLKS! I emailed her and she replied to me! This is what she said:

Thank you for your concern. In hindsight, I should not have tagged au pair onto my job description as that obviously has a very specific job description and, when we require a traditional au pair, I will happily appoint one under the government guidelines.

I can assure you that our offer of board & lodging in exchange for 22 hours' nanny work per week is based on sound calculations of the difference in pay between live-in & live-out nannies. We have employed live-in nannies, the first was paid £300 per week net (in addition to board & lodging) to look after 1 child full-time (3 years ago). Given that a comparable daily rate for a live-out nanny would have been £100 per day, it would seem a logical conclusion that you could say that live-in nannies work 2 days per week for board & lodging and the other 3 days for standard pay.

We have already successfully had a part-time Spanish nanny on the same conditions as we are currently advertising. She used her 3 free weekdays to do an internship in Central London that resulted in a full-time job after 6 months & allowed her to fulfil her ambition of securing a job in London commensurate with her graduate status.

We do not view ours as a 'classic' au pair job as we do not expect our nanny to be available 5 days a week for our family, as is the case for au pairs, she will be able to take on another part job as our hours will be on only 2-3 days, to be agreed with her. Nor do we expect up to two nights per week babysitting. We need a babysitter only once or twice per month.

We have had more than 50 applications for this position, including many from people who would like to combine it with supply teaching, Masters studies etc. Our position offers excellent value compared to earning the minimum wage: 22 hours' work at minimum wage would pay you £143 per week gross. I would be interested to know if you can find anywhere in a safe, green, pleasant part of London where you can rent a delightful double room, pay all your bills & buy food to last a whole week for £143. Our first nanny was paying £650 PCM to share a grotty house in Hammersmith when her contract finished with us and she decided to live-out and do supply teaching, that was before bills and food expenses.

You might also like to note that organisations such as Workaway view 5 hours' work per day, 5 days a week, as a fair deal in exchange for board & lodging.

We have no intention of being exploitative of our nannies. We are offering a genuine chance to become part of our family and have free time to do another job or pursue studies. We had a very strong field of applicants and a super Kiwi girl will join our family shortly.

I suppose you get what you don't pay for.

My thoughts exactly Laurie.
Lovely area for a family but not for a young person who wants to experience London. It will be too costy to commute to london.

She is full of herself, it is funny. I can not see anything erm very unique about their life.
Can someone tell her that most families have a roast sometimes?
I mean i am not much into cooking, we are not financially comfortable, we are not a unique lol family and.....we have roasts!

Amazing how arrogantsome people are!

It would be very interested to hear from the 'happy' former au pairs!