Help! Awkward travel pay issue with a genuinely amazing family. Advice?
TLDR: Family paying a flat rate of only $200/travel day despite contract noting FSLA law. They're nice but I need to address it.
Hey everyone, I really need some advice. I'm in a super awkward situation with my nanny family over travel pay and I'm stressed because they are yruly the sweetest, most flexible people, which makes this so much harder.
We found each other through an agency and used a HomeWork Solutions contract and I'm W2. My regular rate is $30/hr (guaranteed 40 hrs Mon-Fri) and overtime is $45/hr. The contract says "Holidays Travel rate: minimum $200/day" but also explicitly mandates FLSA compliance (hourly pay for every hour worked, time-and-a-half over 40 hours in a 7-day workweek).
We just did a Saturday-Monday trip. I'd already hit 40 hours for the week. On the trip, I logged 5 hours of airport/travel time alone on Saturday. Then was with the NK from 100pm to 1200am. Not directly alone for half of it, but it wasn't a break either. Sunday I worked 1100am to 1100pm. Even if we consider the time where I was directly alone with NK it sums to about 13 hours across both days.
They zelled me $600 the day after we got back. Since the contract says minimum $200/day, i figured they were being nice and giving me the per diem fee directly; their prior nanny said they did this. However, when I got paid this last Friday there were no overtime hours on it.
I was terrified to bring it up, but right before leaving yesterday, I forced myself to say, “Hey, ND zelled me $600 for the trip, but I didn't see the rest of the time on my paycheck - the hourly overtime."
The mom paused, apologized for the misunderstanding, but explained that the flat $200 covered the whole day. She said since it's hard to dictate when "direct care" is happening like when NK is sleeping, or all of us are together, or how to dictate time if i have to hold NK for a moment - they figured the $200 covered about 5-6 hours of “active work”.
I froze and just said something like "okay…..yeah..” and left. I was hoping it was just an honest mistake on their end and they didn't know how industry travel laws work.
But looking at the contract, it says "minimum" $200/day, and under "engaged to wait" laws, I'm still working even if NK is asleep, we're all together, or we're traveling on the plane. Not to mention FSLA states I'm hourly.
How do I bring this up again over text without making them feel bad or sounding aggressive? They're affluent so I'm unsure if it's a money thing. Should I loop my agency coordinator in if they stay confused?
Any text scripts or articles I could send them. would be amazing.