Helper issues. help please

[Gracey]

My Mummymoo -- By decent, I mean minimal and decent. Nobody is saying the helper should get imported special food or a private room, especially from a poor family.
But coming from a HK family, I've (very sadly) seen helpers sit around watching the whole family eat, just to have the mom set aside a very small bowl of leftovers for her to eat afterwards.
My own helper comes to me with tales of her friends who are given just a loaf of white bread to parse out for themselves, and who are actually physically hungry and weak unless they dip into their own savings to fill up. On Sundays, my helper often brings nice food and leftovers from our house, and they call her the "rich one."
Of course, everyone should follow the law. But many HK families do not. And since it's a one-on-one case, it's very hard for the authorities to check that every helper is being decently fed.
As for the family with the grandpa -- I feel bad for them. My point is that the government should help these sorts of people.
But if (and this is a big if, as I don't know them)... if they or anyone other family can't afford to feed another mouth decently, then they should not bring a full-time helper into their home.
Maybe this is or is not the case of the grandpa family.
But I've seen families who seem otherwise very nice and decent in all other ways still treating Filipinas or Indonesians in a way that they would never do to a fellow Hong Kong.
I have one lovely older relative who makes her helper work 7 days a week. She has a good reason -- they aren't rich, there are two elderly people who need care -- but her daughter tells her she's still wrong. This lady's life is hard, but it's not fair to spread her misery to an employee who came to HK seeking decent treatment.
Her daughter said, "Wouldn't you be upset if I got hired overseas and didn't have a vacation for a year?"
But this traditional HK woman just insisted that -- if her needs were great enough, the rights of the helper didn't matter.
These attitudes are very common.

 

[mummymoo]

My issue is not cases where it is clearly wrong and the helper has not been given enough to eat but cases where people seem to want to pass judgement on others and be right in terms of what they think is appropriate or decent food for a helper. The way I see it - it is the INTENTION which is important. If a family eats poorly and with not much meat _which is what started this whole discussion anyway, and the helper as a consequence doesn't get much meat, then I don't think you can automatically say the family is not being decent. In fact, for me personally, I would conclude that the helpers diet is much the same as the family's and although I don't think it is a nutritious diet, I'm not always right and have no right to dictate what another family should or should not eat.

In terms of seeing for yourself the ill treatment and food deprivation of some helpers, then I think not taking a stand is somehow worse than not seeing it. I had a problem with my MIL and FIL who used to give adequate amounts of food to their helper but would only allow the helper to eat after the family has eaten, and sometimes although there was a meat dish, vegetables and a fish dish, only the head of the fish and some bones of this fish in addition to the meat and veggies would be left. I took a stand and repeatedly told them how wrong I though this was and eventually my MIL has now started giving the helper a food allowance as she didn't want to have to deal with me. It wasn't wrong per se for the helper to be eating left overs - our whole family eats leftovers as do our helpers BUT in my MIL and FIL's home they never ate leftovers, and I don't feel that you should make someone a second class citizen by insisting they only eat leftovers when you don't. That's hypocrisy pure and simple.

It wasn't easy to change my MIL and FIL but eventually I did. Even my husband notices that now they are more kind and polite to their helpers instead of just 'seeing though them'.

In terms of your elderly relative, well all I can say is that her daughter can try to do more, like pay for someone to fill in on Sundays if she really feels strongly about the helpers case. Look the old lady and her hubby are just looking out for number one, but if an outsider sees that and appreciates it's unjust then they should try and do something about it.

Unlike you, I have never encountered any of my friends or family's helpers who did not have enough to eat so I can't speak from experience. My helpers have never told me that any of their friends have gone hungry, although they have told me of their starvation when they were back in the Phillipines. Food is so cheap here that I struggle to see how one could starve in Hong Kong but I accept your experiences, and know in an intellectual way anyway that there is great poverty in Hong Kong. I have seen but one example only.

At the end of the day, Gracey you say the attitudes towards and treatment of helpers here is not great but I guess that means its up to us as a collective to change this, even if it means having to do some work/fork out some money ourselves or be a bit more outspoken. Otherwise things will never chnage and we'll always be bemoaning the ill treatment of helpers on some forum like this........

 

[Portia]

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[Gracey]

Hi Mummymoo. I agree with you. This elderly relatives' kids have tried to intervene, offering money for a part-time (which she refused out of pride), offering extra help, talking to her about treating someone well. It's not really my place to, since I am quite a distant and minor relative, and she would take offense. I talk to her kids about it, and try to offer support from the side.
In any case, it's just not getting through. Not surprisingly, she also goes through alot of helpers - I think they just quit on her. She's elderly herself and stubborn.
I try to help out as much as possible. I am very nice to my own helper. When I hear someone bragging how their maid works 7 days, or 14-hour-days, I gently say that that's not very nice. If I have the chance to engage in a conversation, I turn it around by saying that they may harm their child if the help is really too weak / exhausted to do a good job. (This sometimes does it. They do care about their children, if not the amah)
But I also can't rave around angry and lecturing at everyone all the time. I don't want to be that crazy judgmental aunt everyone has in their family!
I'm going to say that 50% of the older women in my family mistreat their help. I can think of several families where they clearly break the law in terms of days off, vacations, food, payment and even abuse. I feel a bit helpless because, unless I become a full=time social worker, there's just no way I have the time and energy to convince a sprawling Hong Kong family to treat their helpers well. Plus, I just get yelled at to "mind my business" when I bring it up.
They even make up lies to justify their behavior, like "It's legal to pay Indonesians less than minimum wage because they're so poor at home" or "My maid doesn't want to go home for three years to see her children."