helper just quit and left the house!

Dear All

The day I have been waiting for has finally arrived but crap its Saturday and I cannot reach Immigration. As I have never had the balls to terminate my helper, pretty relieved she just decided to quit after a slightly heated conversation..


Anyway, she's left our house with 2 bags and haven't collected her money or signed anything.


Do I need to contact the police as she technically is missing? and I don't want her to say that I dragged her across the yard to get rid of her....


I said I will text her tomorrow when to meet so she can get her money and stuff, she replied she didn't care. Still, I have no intention of keeping anything, but can you please tell me if I need to pay notice ? I dont think so as she left but I cannot find anything online?

I was thinking november salary + flight back? since renewing her contract in may, she has already had 3 weeks off, so no annual leave...


Thanks for your help


Rain

I would contact Imm online and leave a message that this helper has walked out,effectively terminating her own contract, they will acknowledge receipt when the offices are open again, also ask them if they need a handwritten letter from you. Mention circumstances leading to her leaving, and the fact she has left before you could pay her. Head the email Urgent-helper has left without serving notice. You need to inform of your intent to pay, before she conjures up a story and goes to the Labour department. You need to pay her any wages due, the cost of the cheapest airline door to door to her home, plus 100HKD per day for food for traveling allowance to get to her home. You could make a formal report to the police she left, giving them her details, If her employment is terminated she needs to leave HK within 2 weeks of her resignation.

Have you checked she has not walked out with any of your belongings?if anything is missing inform the police as well. if she had a key then get the locks changed.

AS Susie suggested, bu do cc the labour dept. and the embassy where she came from.

Be careful, she might have (illegally) recorded your conversation that led to her walking out...

If your helper quit and walked out without serving a month's notice, then i would think that she owes you a month's salary (ie, you are not obligated to pay the last month she has worked) - in the same way that if you terminate a helper's contract and ask her to leave that day, you pay a month in lieu. Perhaps this is why she left without waiting for her money.


Double-check with the labour dept with regards to the money, but my understanding of the contract is that either a month's notice must be served or payment in lieu must be made by the party that terminated the contract.


Keep records of everything and keep immigration informed.


I think you just owe flight back.

Thanks for all your messages. I ended up contacting the police Saturday night to cover myself and report that she had left without notice so that she would not say she left because of abuse and that we were keeping her stuff from her.

I asked her to come this morning to sign papers, get her money and belongings, and...:

Round number 1: she refused to sign, cried and begged me for a second chance and then tried to ask for 2 weeks of annual leave to be paid whereas she already took them last summer. I told her that I would not budge and told her to leave. That she was making a mistake because at that point the letter didn't mention that she was a bad helper and would have made it somewhat easy to get another job...

Round 2: I called immigration and said she would not sign and get her stuff; they told me I had to fill in the form ID407E myself, even without her signature, doesn't matter.

Round 3: she came back this afternoon saying she wanted to settle. She ended up signing as the police + immigration had told me for the current month salary + flight back. Because she discussed the amount for the flight, I ended up adding 500$ to get rid of her. And it took her an hour and a half to clear her room, cos on top of being a bad helper, she had holes in her pockets and bought all she could every sunday. So, now I have a pile of boxes on my terrace, which a van should pick up for her tomorrow....


And hopefully, after all that, we can really turn the page over....


So, all this to say that if it happens to you, you have to pay the current salary + flight back.

What I didn't manage to ask immigration cos I couldn't go through was:

-what if she had not come back? would I have had to transfer her money and that would have been enough for justification?

-what with her stuff? dump it on the street because at the end of the day, it's not ours and we no longer have anything to do with her? or help her to move out...


who knows?!

I hope you got an independant witness to see you handed over all her dues, many helpers are so crafty and habitually due this to employers, then have the cheek to take them to the labour dept. she should by the way leave Hk two weeks from walking out on you. I hope you have no more trouble from her.

If she does have the cheek to get future employers to contact you for a reference tell them the truth, hopefully they won't listen to her sob stories.

agree... when she gets her stuff, as with my previous post - have her sign that she already removed the items from your premises and have witnesses around so she does not create another scene

It is shocking to me that so many people do not know the law regarding earl termination of a contract.

Here it is

If you want to terminate the 2 year contract early, you give one month's written notice or one's month's salary.

The SAME law is true for the DH to you. She owed YOU one's month's salary and you ended up giving her an extra $500!

I know that you wanted to just make a clean break of it and pay her for the days worked, but believe me if the shoe was on the other foot so to speak, and you were breaking the contract, she would insist that you pay her according to HK Labour Law!

I wish more people knew this, it would save them a huge amount of money and energy. No fighting necessary, it is the law.