Re: janitorial, hired work, L&I, liability
From: Lynn Nadeau (welcomeolympus.net)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 15:12:01 -0600 (MDT)
Jim at New View wrote about their arrangements. Lynn at RoseWind (Port 
Townsend WA) responds.

>Then, a volunteer arranges the households on a calendar, one household per
>two-week rotation. 

So does this person (or couple) then have cleaning responsibility for 
everything but the event/meal clean-up? In our case, that would be 
cleaning all the rooms (2 lavs, kid, rec, foyer, great room, kitchen, and 
pantry) plus the porch areas. Seems like a whole lot. 

>There isn't much to the 'contract' for the paid cleaning: it's done by one
>person who happens to live here, who individually contracts with each
>household to do their share of the cleaning for $60

per year? month? or?

More important: Is the cleaning person working for New View? Or being 
hired by the individuals who are paying $60? If it's New View (or if you 
are a reader who is in a group which is hiring help), have you considered 
getting Labor and Industry (State workman's comp) insurance to cover such 
an employee? If this person slips and falls while cleaning, incurs 
medical bills way beyond their insurance coverage, can't work for months, 
needs physical therapy for years.... you get the picture. L&I insurance 
can be just pennies per hour, plus some record keeping. We are looking 
into getting it even for RW volunteers, when they are doing mowing, 
construction work, and the like, after we've just spent an exhausting six 
months dealing with an employee injury which is ending up costing us 
"only" hundreds of hours of volunteer committee work and about $17,000. 
At one point it looked like it could be up to $400,000 (WAY beyond any 
money we had) --- and that was without even any claim of negligence or 
fault regarding the accident itself. 

Consider too what your liability coverage is. Our liability insurance 
covers visitors to RoseWind, but not members, and not employees. We like 
to think that our friends and colleagues wouldn't dream of instituting 
proceedings against us, but it can be a shocking surprise. 

And then there is the issue of being an employer. Unless you carefully 
arrange it so that the person is NOT being paid by the organization, you 
may need to be doing Social Security and all. If so, and you don't, and a 
person lists your pay on their income tax, then you are liable not only 
for back premiums, but for penalties. 

In the past, we have rather casually paid members for various tasks 
beyond what they would ordinarily volunteer to do, and considered it both 
a favor to the worker and in some cases a financial savings to the 
organization. After our recent worker accident debacle, and all the time 
and money it consumed, we are much more conscious. If anyone can learn 
from our mistakes, so much the better!

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com

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