To: Law makers
Live-in Mother's helpers must be better protected in private accommodation
Live-in Mothers helpers and au pairs should have protection from local councils. Employers often exploit their live-in employees and do not keep the their live-in domestic workers safe, and often give very low pay. Local councils, should be legally obliged to interview and assess employers of live-in Mother's helpers and au pairs and the local council staff should be legally obliged to give live-in domestic helpers contact details so the live -in domestic helpers can report issues of exploitation and other human rights abuse.
Why is this important?
I had been employed as a 17 year old teenager at a private address in South Kensington, London, the job had been advertised in "The Lady" magazine. I had wrote off to apply and had received a request to travel to London for the interview, then told I could begin mid September 1973. I had not been given an employment contract., I had been prevented me from registering with an NHS g.p. doctor and that I should suffer an illness, in that case I would be seen by my employers private doctor. If I had been allowed to register with an NHS, g.p. doctor, I would have been able to talk about personal issues affecting me....something that I would not have been allowed to do with my employer's private doctor. My employer had exploited me. I had been told that I would be provided free meals, yet on my day off, if I had been going out for the day, I had not been provided with money to buy food and so I had to buy my own food out of my wage of just £9.00 a week . My employer had not paid money to me when I had been asked to babysit in the evening if my employer was taking his wife out. My employer had taken his wife abroad for two weeks holiday, leaving me alone in his house to look after his two very young children, without any extra support, (the holiday had not been mentioned at the job interview)
