Nanny questions

[To-Fu]

For those of you who employ nannies and have more than one kid, I was wondering what you do about payment when the nanny only has one of the children in her/his care?

There have been some times when I stayed home and took care of the baby while I worked (he's only 4mo, so he nurses and naps a lot) while she played with the toddler. And then the LLL conference for my state is coming up soon and I'd like to take the baby and leave the toddler. Would I pay her the full rate? What would/have you done in similar circumstances?

[Anna Phor]

We have a nanny share set up, so our situation is a bit different--two kids from two different families. Our framework is basically that her bills and rent don't decrease if we just need her to take care of one child, so she gets the same rate of pay if for example my kid is sick & I stay home with him. If neither family needs her, we'd ask her to take vacation time (e.g. around the holidays if both families are visiting grandparents). This is all specified in our contract. If both kids happened to be sick and we called her that morning and said that we didn't need her to work, she'd still get paid for that day (this has never happened, btw, so we might ask her to count it as a paid vacation day, but she would, under her contract, have the right to say no to that).

[hakeber]

Yeah, I probably would give her the same rate...but when I was sitting I had already established before I started working that 1 kid was 10$/hour and each additional kid was another 2 dollars per hour.

If you haven't discussed that, she would probably assume her rate is a flat rate, not per child.

[JudiAU]

Is she a close to full time employee? Works fixed hours? Then yes, her rate is the same. If she is more of a babysitter with occasional hours or no fixed hours, then you negotaiate anything.

We pay our nanny hourly with a set schedule. She makes the same rate watching both kids or one kid or if I take them both the park and she waits for the repairman. I think it is really unfair to pay her less because you want to play with the baby one day. This is her job. My job doesn't pay me less because it doesn't feel like it.

[lunarlady]

We would pay her the same unless she has no kids. Then she gets paid for only 8 hours (normal day for us is 9) but obviously also doesn't have to work. This is in her contract.

[lisalu100]

As a nanny, I always get paid the same rate. If you have a lighter work-load, do you get paid less? What does your contract say?