Re: janitorial, hired work, L&I, liability | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
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 _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
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