I'm surprised to read that. Here in the UK, having a live-in au pair doesn't excuse you from paying the minimum wage for all the hours that they're working (approx $2300/month for a 35 hour week). You can deduct an amount to account for the fact that you're providing accomodation but it's strictly limited (approx $400/month).

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swiftcoder 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Netherlands has a weird and exploitative setup where you can classify your au pair as a "cultural exchange", and then pay them literal peanuts (room and board plus a token amount of "pocket money")

	▲	__alexs 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Another weird cultural quirk of the Dutch that will hopefully go the way of Zwarte Piet one day.

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retired 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From what I can see online, the average compensation that an au-pair in The Netherlands receives is 300 euro per month, with living expenses being covered by the family. There is no minimum wage requirement for au-pairs like in the UK or the US.

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spockz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The added cost of having an additional person to provide room and food for way exceeds that €300/month. Especially, when taking into consideration that you might have to extend/renovate the house to lodge another person. Adding an extra bedroom and possibly bathroom is not cheap.

	▲	jjcob 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Even if you assume the cost of lodging was 1000€ (which it isn't) then the au-pair would still be significantly underpaid. A normal full time employee costs at least 2000€ a month (salary, tax, pension plan, health insurance, etc). If you are paying less than that you are definietly exploiting them.
	▲	3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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aianus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A semi-skilled English-speaking customer service agent in PH makes less than $700 a month to put this into perspective.

Working abroad is a totally reasonable proposition compared to working in the Philippines.

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throwthrowuknow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So in reality you’re paying for their food, electricity and heat, letting them rent a room for free, and allowing them the use of the other facilities in your home and on top of that you’re giving them a spending allowance of 300 euro.

	▲	swiftcoder 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The marginal cost of food/electricity/bed for adding one additional person to a family is drastically less than those things would cost for a person living alone. Whichever way you slice this, the employer is making out like a bandit under this scheme.
	▲	balamatom 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In fact, you could do this for a homeless person today, in any city on the globe! And never even ask them to do anything for you!

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redsocksfan45 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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