So You Came Here For Cheap Labor

 

     There are plenty of good reasons to hire domestic help; in the US that’s nearly impossible unless you employ illegal immigrants.

     Coming here, practically the first thing every American does is to hire domestic help.  As I say, there can be good reasons for it–as well as some fairly ugly ones.  When we first came here, faced with the problems of all we had to do to establish ourselves in a foreign country as well as the immense challenges of buying land and building a house, we hired the next-door neighbor to clean for us.  We were in a furnished rental house, half of our stuff was still in boxes on the 2nd floor, we had 5 animals with us, two of whom needed medical attention, and very little time.  Help was for us a relief.

     We had no real idea what to pay, so we wound up paying double the going rate, in our ignorance, for 4 hours a week.  $2/hr.  To give you an idea, skilled construction labor, such as an electrician, at that time was probably making $1.50–at most, $1.75.  We, of course, didn’t know.  Big, big mistake.

     One thing our helpful American neighbor warned us about that we have seen come true again and again is that you can’t let Panamanians, whether they’re workers or contractors, feel as if they’ve “gotten ahead” of you.  If you do, he warned, they’ll lose all respect for you and take advantage of you.  It isn’t true of all, but it’s something you must keep in mind, because it’s a very widespread attitude.

     That’s what happened to us with this muchacha.  I won’t go into all of it, but what she found to her amazement, clearly, was that we paid for time worked.  Dumb Americans, you know.  Suddenly, she no longer could finish what she had done easily in 4 hours (we were asking just a bare minimum to keep plague from breaking out).  I fell for it the first time, since we were in David almost every day, buying construction materials and taking care of other business.  She made the mistake, however, of doing it again.  This time, I did not have her work the extra hour, but just sent her home.

     So, the next time she came, I stayed home and Mary went into David.  Sure enough, within 15 minutes of the truck leaving, her husband appeared at the fence and called to her to come over.  She replied in Spanish so fast and so excited that I didn’t catch what she said but the meaning was clear enough–he turned immediately and walked away very rapidly.  You don’t have to be fluent in a language to interpret that.  We had a little talk, she and I, about whether or not she liked her job and if she had to stay at home and couldn’t work for us, that was too bad but that we would understand.  She understood me perfectly, and for a while, there was no more trouble.  We never left her alone again, though.

     But she became arrogant in various ways, and one day I’d had enough.  I informed her politely that we had no more need of her services.  So, to show us who was whom, and what terrible people we were, she used to turn her back whenever she saw us or pretend she didn’t see us.  There’s a wonderful revenge for that–it’s called killing them with kindness. What did St. Paul say?  Be good to your enemies and thus heap coals of fire on their heads?  Something like that.  And so I made a point of saying good morning to her or greeting her politely and with a smile every time we met.  It clearly infuriated her, so I did it up until the day we moved into our new house.

     I just reminded Mary of this story, and we both giggled over breakfast, remembering.  Mary actually is a much nicer person than I am, but we’ve lived together for too long and she’s picked up some bad habits.

     This whole episode took place over a period of about 4 months or less, during which time we were learning by leaps and bounds what we had to know to survive here.  We made careful inquiries, found out what we did wrong, listened to our helpful neighbor, so that by the time we were ready to hire someone new, we knew what to do.

     The muchacha we hired was the daughter of someone who worked for a friend (typically the best way to find help).  She was intelligent, highly organized and responsible.  She worked for us for almost 3 years, during which time we increased her wage from $1/hr to $1.25/hr as well as supplying her with lunch.  This is at the very high end for domestic labor, but she was definitely worth it.

Then, as happens so commonly here, she wound up with “man troubles”, as a Panamanian friend put it.  As Panamanians say, “La cabeza no está en el trabajo“.  She broke things, she irreparably damaged other things–and she started to conceal damage from us as well as lie.  For 3 months we tried to work with her but to no avail.  With great regret, we had to let her go.

     Under Panamanian law, if you fire someone, there are certain steps you must take, and, depending on circumstances, you can be liable for a really significant amount of severance pay.  Panamanian labor law does not make the distinction between private employers and businesses.  If you hire someone full time and terminate their employment except under restricted circumstances, if they’ve worked for you for any amount of time, you can owe thousands of dollars in severance pay.  There are also certain documents you have to provide.  I sent a draft of our official termination letter to our lawyer, asking her to calculate the severance pay owed; while she had only worked one day a week for us, still by law under most circumstances we were legally obliged to pay severance pay.  Our lawyer replied that we owed nothing, since the damages amounted to hundreds of dollars and we had tried to work with our employee.  We had fulfilled the special circumstances without knowing it.

     Note the amount: hundreds of dollars.  Suddenly, cheap labor isn’t quite so cheap.

     The saga continues.