>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 Kelly 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.
>
>Kelley, I looked up the original Harper's article online:
>
>http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/1799_300/61291582/p1/article.jhtml
>
>and it seems like Wojtek is right and it's you who are misremembering
>Ehrenreich. She says:
>
> The customers of cleaning services are probably no
> stingier than the employers of independents; they just don't know
> their cleaning people and probably wouldn't even recognize them on
> the street. Plus, customers probably assume that the fee they pay
> the service--$25 per person-hour in the case of The Maids
> franchise I worked for--goes largely to the workers who do the
> actual cleaning.
>
>To repeat: that's $25 a person-hour. Or $100 for 4. Of which she as
>a
>worker got $6.63.
What also seems odd is that one of the maids who works for Merry Maids much prefer working for Merry Maids than working as an independent.
If she could pull in, say, $10/hr off the books, why would she be happier at $6.63, even with modest benefits. If Mainers are paying even more than my guess of $10 and they're paying San Francisco wages that Joanna pays, then she's screwing herself even more, presumably.
National chain business model don't seem to be particularly competitive as you suggest. In Maine, if you want someone to clean your house, you can hire off the books. Let's say the off the books rate is, oh, $10 for one maid/one hour. Since, according to Ehrenreich, 25-30% of the market is for cleaning services, the rest for independent contractors, then probably even in Maine, as in Syracuse, Cortland and Ithaca, you can find the networks of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that will hook you up with a maid you'll trust. So, Merry Maids is charging $100/hr for four maids. I'm trying to figure out how Merry Maids thinks they can compete when you can probably get four maids on the black market for $40?
Well, I'm going to call them tomorrow, cause now you've got me curious. I'll also have to call my old boss in Ithaca and ask her how it worked. She hired Merry Maids, too. And I _know_ Ithaca has a huge black market in maids.
and Joanna, do you want to know why my own experience working off the books suggests it sucks and why I disagree, in principle, that paying black market wages, cheating the social security and unemployment insurance systems in the entire country out of social security taxes and unemployment taxes paid by an employer is a good thing? It would be nice to know why you think it is a good thing, rather than reading a mere assertion. If you make the assertion, I can't much argue with it because I don't know your reasons. So, you didn't stop arguing with me, the argument never began.
Michael and I had nice long agreeable phone conversation yesterday. Help me cheat my boss out of long distance he pays and I'll call you and we can discuss this in a reasonable way.
Kelley
>On the larger empirical point about
>the lower average wages of off-the-books employees, you could
>conceivably
>be right (and Ehrenreich wrong). But I personally can't understand
>how
>these companies can be expanding their market share if they charge so
>much
>more -- up to 5 times more, on your figures -- as the independent
>contractors they're competing with. That seems to violate the laws of
>economics.
>
>Michael
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