Alice Doesn’t Work Here Anymore

Doug LaMalfa, senator for the Great Counties of Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Nevada, Placer, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, and Yuba in the Great State of California, is getting some play on Fox Nation today:

How will parents react when they find out they will be expected to provide workers’ compensation benefits, rest and meal breaks and paid vacation time for…babysitters? Dinner and a movie night may soon become much more complicated.

Assembly Bill 889, authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, will require these protections for all “domestic employees,” including nannies, housekeepers and caregivers.

Of course, that’s just the first two grafs. Let’s go to Graf 4 for the details:

Under AB 889, household “employers” (aka “parents”) who hire a babysitter on a Friday night will be legally obligated to pay at least minimum wage to any sitter over the age of 18 (unless it is a family member), provide a substitute caregiver every two hours to cover rest and meal breaks, in addition to workers’ compensation coverage, overtime pay, and a meticulously calculated timecard/paycheck.

Okay, so we’re not talking about the teenager down the block. And a quick read of the bill shows that we’re not talking about a number of other caregivers, either. Heck, we’ll just guess (subject to hearing something more definitive) that we’re really talking about real “domestic employees”.

You know, the kind that rich folks hire.

Maybe they should call it the Alice Protection Act. It might play better.