Babysitter Blues

Fini Goodman
September 4, 2011 Posted by Fini Goodman finigoodman@netscape.net

California State Legislator Tom Amiano

Tom Amiano

I have to say that I really admire the California legislature.  I really do.  I am in total awe of the imagination it takes them to find ways to get crazier and crazier but they have managed to outdo themselves yet again.

There is a bill pending in the senate now dubbed “the babysitter bill”.  This bill was written by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco.  It has passed the Assembly and doesn’t look like it will have any opposition from the Senate:  not one Republican has supported it but that really doesn’t matter as Republicans have no voice in the California political system.

It is now Senate Bill 889 and there are conflicting reports about the requirements in the bill (the actual text of the bill reads like the health care bill: dense with big words and legalese to be vague and confusing and thus pointedly vague) but the bottom line of the bill is this:
If a parent hires a babysitter for the night who is over the age of 18: we’re talking a part time babysitter, not a full time nanny, the parents are now required to do a myriad of impossible things.
First, you have to give the babysitter an official bi-weekly pay stub with an accurate itemized statement showing gross wages earned: total hours worked; the number of piece rate units earned and any applicable piece rate if the employee is paid on a piece rate basis;  (I don’t know what a piece rate is so I don’t know hard this will be); all deductions, provided that all deductions made on written orders of the employee can be aggregated and shown on one item; the dates the employee is paid; the name of the employee and his or her social security number; the name and address of employer; and, all applicable hourly rates during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate by the employee.

You have to pay them overtime and at least minimum wage.  Lastly, you have to provide them with workman’s comp insurance if they are injured on the job.

These are crazy, but the craziest one is that you have to give them a 10 minute break after either 2 or 4 hours of work (I keep getting conflicting reports on this one) and give them a half hour lunch break after either 4 to 5 hours of work, which means you’re either going to have to keep coming back or provide a second person to relieve the first person.   At least they took out the provision that required an hour of paid vacation time for every 30 hours worked.  Basically, as a parent in California, we are never going to go out again if we want to do it legally.

Off course, the Legislature doesn’t take into account that with a baby I am too sleep deprived to do math, let alone figure out how to do entirely legal pay stubs.  Plus, basically it looks like I’m hiring a babysitter so that I can get away to fill out all of these forms.  Great.   And I need to get away sometimes:  you have no idea.  I’m basically a shut in with a bossy midget.  My idea of a good time is watching Lifetime movies.  I’m looking forward to getting back to “The Stranger Beside Me,”later today.  God help me, why can’t California let me go out and be an adult for more than four hours without major consequences???

Hilda Solis

Tom Ammiano is a gay former schoolteacher who lives in San Francisco.  I don’t know what his angle is.  Is he incredibly out of touch with the needs of normal parents or did he work with so many parents he hated during his tenure as a schoolteacher that he is finally able to exact his revenge on all parents with this bill?  Or maybe this is just being done so that both the employee and employer have to provide taxable income and the information that pertains to it to the state so that they have more of our personal information.

Or maybe it just backs up what Hilda Solis said from the department of labor about Obama’s Dream Act:  if you’re an illegal alien and an employee, you can stay in the United States.  Is this thus just a way to get more illegal aliens to stay in the United States?  I don’t know.  I can’t tell if California is out of touch or nefarious but all I know is yet again they are directly inconveniencing me, a member of their population.

What will they think of next?

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This entry was posted on September 4, 2011 at 7:30 am and is filed under Economy, Fini Goodman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to Babysitter Blues

  1. The Libertarian: Nanny State for the Nanny on October 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    [...] Nanny State Nanny Law Potential benefits for CA caregivers: Workers’ comp, OT | HR Morning .. A Hollywood Republican » Babysitter Blues Bill would extend workers’ comp coverage … to babysitters? | Sa.. Proposed California [...]

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