Posted by
Bizeemama
16 yrs ago
I am astounded that one of my helpers that i am releasing due to my repatriation went for an interview yesterday and was told by the potential employer that she would need to be home by 7pm on her rest day "to tidy up" .
My very polite, and hard working helper rather than offend told them that she had other work.
I have had no trouble with this lovely lady and she always works hard and is very pleasant - surely it is not too much to allow someone to have a full day off per week, isn't there a law stating that?
I am really angry that people can treat a grown adult in such a way!
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Technically, if her time off starts at 7pm on Saturday and ends at 7 pm on Sunday, the employer can ask her to tidy up after that time.
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I'm surprised that anyone is "astounded" that an employer would ask if a helper could return on Sunday nights to "tidy up".
Nearly all the helpers I have interviewed over the last 17 years, and I would say, 100% of those employed by Chinese families, were expected home on Sunday night to tidy up or even to cook the Sunday evening meal.
My recollection of the 24 hour rest day provision is that the employer is compelled to allow the employee this time off. However, the employee can elect to return home early and to work if she so chooses. So, the employer in this situation was correct to find out whether the helper was prepared to work on Sunday nights and the helper fully entitled to refuse the position because she did not want to undertake this extra work.
Better that the parties understand each others' expectations at the interview than after the commencement of the contract.
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Peggy Wong
I mean that 100% of the helpers I have interviewed who had previously worked for Chinese families - a small sample for sure and obviously I have not interviewed any helpers working for you and your friends.
I do not mean that all Chinese families have their helpers work on Sunday nights but it does seem to be to be a very common practice in HK.
I also think that having your helper work on Sunday nights does not mean that you do not respect their rights (in fact about 99% of the helpers I hired who had previously worked for Chinese families and had worked on Sunday nights enjoyed good relations with those employers!) as long as the helper goes into the relationship agreeing to those terms.
My point is that it is a common practice in HK and therefore not surprising that it would come up in an interview.
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we ask our helper to return home by 10:00pm on sunday night so that others in the home are not disturbed at a late time. however she always comes back earlier than that, apparantly because all her friends are all gone then. if we are tidying up when she comes back she ususally VOLUNTARILY helps us but we don't really expect that and she's free to do it or not.
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I don't see how you can count Saturday evening as part of the 24 hours off, surely no one expects there helper to work 24 hours a day so when a helper is finished on saturday that is part of her saturday rest period not her 24 hours off. I would always start my helpers 24 hours from what time she normally starts work with us . Ie 7.30 am is her normal start time so she starts work again Monday morning at 7.30. She finishes each evening at 6.00 so if we are not going out saturday she is free as she would be any other night but i think it very unfair to make that part of her day off.
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When I first hired our helper, I fully intended for her not to work on her rest day (Sunday). However, over the months, I have become guilty of relying on her to return around 8'ish and help me out with some final things before turning in. At first when she came in, she would start to help and I would say "no no it's ok" but she never seemed to mind and now, I have to admit I am no longer stopping her and even to some extent, relying on it.
For example, I will always cook our Sunday dinner (if we eat in) and wash up afterwards - but if she comes back early, she will offer to take over which I will guiltily accept. Also if she comes back just after we finish bathing our baby, she will clean up the bathroom for us - which again I guiltily accept.
Does this make me a bad employer? Perhaps. But at the same time, when I take our baby to his weekly playgroup on Friday, I'm happy for her to go down to Central to take care of her own affairs in Worldwide House and on Satursdays, when we go out as a family, she is free to go out herself for some personal shopping time. Admittedly this "extra" time is at our convenience, but it's my small way of making up for the extra work she does for us on Sunday nights.
I think that flexibility is an important part of what makes the employer-helper relationship work and while it's never perfect, I think good intentions (on both sides) do go a long way.
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also agreed with housed, and actually have a similar situation in my home -- my helper often voluntarily helps out when she comes back on Sunday evening, and we often give her several hours off on Saturday afternoon especially when we go out. as long as both parties are happy i really don't care what the 24-hour rule says (though i know i'm not breaching the law technically as she works on Sunday voluntarily). after all don't a lot of us also need to work overtime from time to time? as long as i feel i'm respected and my efforts appreciated by my employer, i don't have any resentment. there were also a couple times when we needed our helper on Sunday and offered to swap another rest day, but it turned out she had very little to do on the alternative day as all her friends were working and she would rather stay at home and work. we then paid her double-overtime for (voluntarily) not taking the alternative rest day.
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I believe it vital my helper has proper rest and time to herself if i need her to work well the rest of the time. I know i need some time to catch up myself so she must do too.
She also used to offer to help when she came home but i told her no and that we as a family needed to do this stuff and she should just do her own thing, she still kept trying and i had to insist, When i talked to her about it she said that it is hard not to feel she should offer to help out as her other employers had expected it so she felt i would think her lazy or something if she didn't do this. People are not robots and get tired and ratty if they don't get enough rest so i consider it a major part of my helpers week that she has her full day off and as much other free time as we can genuinely give or i wouldn't feel comfortable her caring for my kids when I'm not around.
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also agreed with optimistic that helpers need to get good rest and relaxing time both for their own health and well being and their job performance. the practice about sunday evening work, though, may differ from family to family; even though housed and I do not stop our helpers helping out sometimes, we do make sure they are not overworked. for our family, we do the following:
1. we don't give our helper any pressure to come home early on sunday to help; she probably voluntarily does it half of the time; for the other half we've either finished everything when she's back or she's got her own stuff to do and we don't call her to help;
2. even when she does help with the tidy up, we do it together with her and it never takes more than 1 hour; and
3. we also give her other time off when possible, such as saturday afternoon quite often, which we know she likes to use to do a big grocery shopping and cook a lot of food for her sunday outing.
point is that even though sometimes we may not be following the 24-hour rule strictly we still stick to the spirit that helpers are entitled to good time off which employers should not take away and that when helpers make any additional contribution to the household appreciation should be shown.
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