>
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Kelley wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Well, she could also be an outlier. We all have to be wary of drawing
> a
> curve through one point. She might have been just starting out and
> have
> gotten a nut on her one time out on her own.
i admit i'm having trouble here understanding kelley's question in the context of her own experience (about which i know not the dets). but i'm also floating in and out of this conversation, so i may have missed something and i apologize, anyway, for that.
<snip>
>> 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.
>
> I'll be interested myself. One possible solution is that there is a
> segmented market in maids -- and that services are only competing in
> the
> top half.
i'm not convinced that the wealthiest people use a service on a regular basis, although they might for a deep clean, or to prep a house for/after a party, something like that. that might be enough to keep these businesses afloat, though.
<snip>
> I have to say, since I now know your experience from talking on the
> phone,
> that drawing an analogy from it might not be entirely apt. This may
> not
> be primarily a matter of working on/off the books so much as for/not
> for a
> subcontractor.
>
> When I was a word processor working for a service the 1980s, I was paid
> $18/hr and the company that hired me paid the service thirty. The
> company
> then asked me to work directly for them and we split the difference --
> they paid me $24/hr. In this case I was on the books in both
> instances.
> The difference was simply my getting some of what the service had been
> taking.
this is exactly my experience working as a contractor over the last few years. mostly i was able to negotiate rates directly with my client, but in one case they agreed with me that i was to do the job, but officially i was contracting for a separate company who took a cut of the rate and paid me 1099 pay. i argued with the client about this, precisely because i got no benefits out of it AND lost the cut going to the contracting firm, which i believe was 10% or thereabouts. they gave me some stuff about insurance (they were a professional services firm -- so what was my coverage if one of their clients sued about something related to me) and the like, nevermind that it takes a lot off their books to do it this way. they simply pay the contracting company (which in this case was a spin-off of their org, anyway, and probably owned by them), and the contracting company deals with everything with to do with me.
>
> The reason people like me worked for services was because it was almost
> impossible to find jobs on your own -- you only ever found them working
> through a service. It might be the same for poor women trying to get
> jobs
> in rich neighborhoods. They might also end up cutting similar deals.
>
> I think the issue of paying taxes can be considered separately. I
> think
> its quite possible for you and Johanna to both be right: for her to be
> right that independent contractors make appreciably more per hour than
> maids who work for services; and for you to still be able to argue that
> employers of independent contractors ought to pay their maids' taxes
> for
> their maids' sake (and not only because it's required by law) because
> off
> the books work is much worse for workers' welfare than is commonly
> appreciated.
fwiw, this makes sense to me.
j