To charge ap for *another* ruined item of clothing and trashed iron or not?

[kittywise]

Ok, I've had my AP since Dec. We've had ups and downs and some of you might remember my posts on the subject!
Against all odds it has worked out pretty ok.
She is very dippy and has no common sense but has learned from her many mistakes and she plays really well with the younger children.
She has to leave in April to go on another language course.

Now my dilema is that she has managed to spoil a number of items of clothing by putting them in the tumble drier when she was told again and again that they shouldn't go in. Items like jumpers, fleeces and tracksuit bottoms. The first couple of times I patiently explained and then started to get cross. She actiully said to me that she would have been crosser than me in the same situation!!

Anyway yesterday she comes to me saying the the hot iron must have fallen into the basket underneath the ironing board which contains pile of clothes waiting to be ironed.
She says she hadn't noticed that it had fallen. She had turned it off and gone upstairs ( how can you not notice that the iron is no longer on the ironing board?)

Consequently the iron has ruined 2 items of clothing, I'm amazed that it was only 2, one expensive gap fleece, and of course the iron is covered in burnt plastic and is now unusable. Not to mention the potential dire consequences of burning clothes.
There is a huge tank of heating oil in the basement where all the laundry stuff is. I can't begin to contemplate what would have happened to us if a fire had started down there

Now I am pissed off, it was so so careless and dangerous of her and I am faced with replacing yet more clothing.

I want to ask her to contribute towards the cost of a new fleece and say that next time I will ask her to pay the full amount for any items that need replacing because she has shrunk, burnt etc them.

What do you think? What would you do in this circ?

Ta

Live-in employees are exempt from minimum wage laws. It has nothin to do with what visa has granted them the right to work here.

But it does mean the girl is an employee rather than an au pair though doesn't it?

I think that is true for most of "au pairs" people talk about on here and elsewhere. Most of them come from the EU, and don't require a visa. A lot of them come in on a holday maker visa, which has now been replaced by the tier 5.. or is it 5? And, I think the au pair visa is now defunct.

I thought that whether or not someone was an employee was determined by whether or not the make over the £90 odd threshold for tax. I'm not really sure because I have only employed nannies to date and obviously always paid over this threshold.

I think people get hung up on the term "au pair" when actually a true au pair coming into the country on an au pair visa is a thing of the past.

Surely it can't be based on how much money you earn though? When I was a teenager with a part time job I earned less than £90 a week but was still an employee.

Maybe this is a subject for a different thread, but I am quite interested now that there is no specific visa if an au pair is an employee or not. My feeling is that they are - as nannynick has said in the past, the job title is a bit irrelevant and they may as well be called a mother's help. They may earn too little to be taxed, and NMW doesn't apply as they live-in, but as employees (or at the very least, as workers) they do have certain legal rights. I would think those rights would include sick pay and not having unauthorised deductions from wages.

Employment law and tax law are different, so in theory someone could be an employee under employment law, but not under tax law.
The term 'Au-Pair' was an immigration category. It no longer exists, so there is no such thing in England now as an 'au-pair' - in my view. Live-In Mothers Help may be a better Job Title.
We have various job titles for people working in domestic homes... maybe it's time not to have so many different job titles - it gets too confusing.

Docking pocket money (wages) in this particular case may well fall down to whatever contract/agreement is in place. I wouldn't get too hung up over legal things though... concentrate more on the relationship between parent and live-in helper.

Yes, the discussion may not be appropriate to this thread, but I am quite interested generally in the legal/employment status of "au pairs".

The title describes the deal you've got with the person in question - there is no longer such a thing as an au pair visa in the UK and in plenty of countries there never has been. I've had au pairs, whom I paid 80 euros pw plus bed, board and transport, to do the school run and around 3 hours of child entertaining every day. They were sort of quasi part of the family (I think how much this is really true depends on how much you click with the person). I've had nanny/housekeepers who I paid 200 euros pw plus bed and board to do all the chores plus some babysitting. They were much less part of the family and more like domestic servants. By the way, these are standard rates and assumptions in Italy where I live. Either way they only did tasks that were contractually agreed and I never docked pay, including for very expensive car crashes and mindlessly daft laundry accidents! These things happen - it's the price you pay for the convenience of having domestic help.

If you're interested in the legal status etc, you should also think about insurance status, not only for damage to you and your stuff, but for if the ap has an accident in your house.