wrt merry maids, i've done some work with servicemaster in the past as a contractor, and one of my project leads when i was consulting was married to a woman who ran a merry maids franchise. they also hire many immigrants and have serious communication and franchise support issues around this (since all the people who own the franchises are anglos, whereas their employees are latino or eastern european and often have a hard time talking to each other as much as to their boss, or reading and understanding cleaning instructions for a given home). of course, conversely, it means the same thing for wages as it does for other immigrants, since one imagines that many of these people would be in jeopardy were they to get too rowdy.
second, more anecdotally, a friend of mine in chicago took a rec from a friend for a cleaning lady (polish, natch), and the rate was, iirc, $50 for three hours (for a sizeable two-bedroom flat), on top of which there was a "tip" that i want to say was $10, but may have been more. so the rate there is actually pretty good, but it may also be that her business (which was administered by her daughter, who spoke english, which the woman herself really didn't) was well enough established that they could charge more without worrying about not getting customers. of course, on also wonders about the precise economic relationship here between mother and daughter, but i have no dets on that.
fwiw. j
On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 08:10 AM, Kelley wrote:
> one things folks are forgetting is that everyone based their reasoning
> that maids are getting paid minimum wage at merry maids when the
> service was actually charging $25/hr to the consumer.
>
> They charged $25/hr to the consumer b/c they provided _four_ maids and
> their own equipment for each hour. Remember, if you'd read the book,
> you had to wonder why four women are riding around in a car together.
> At least they got paid for their 15, 20, 30 minutes traveling between
> jobs, which our independent contractor doesn't get paid for.
<snipping stuff about relative hourly wages>