Hello (or, hallo, as they say in Belgium)! This diary was inspired by Lightbulb's wonderful series at Daily Kos, "Confessions of a retail worker." Maybe it will become a series, also? I don't know. It is my first real diary and I'm going to take it day by day.
We moved to Belgium in June of 2010. "We" equals my husband (Dutch man, self-employed fix-it guy) and me (American woman) and a fair number of cats. In May of 2010, after 5 years of marriage, Dutch language courses, and low-wage work in the Netherlands, I became a Dutch citizen. (I didn't give up my American citizenship, though, because I consider it the Duty of every civic-minded world citizen to vote against Republicans in American elections if they are able to do so.) There was a nice ceremony at City Hall, I picked up my passport, and we emigrated over the border.
(emigrate over the squiggle to read more...)
UPDATE: huh? rec list? wow! ongeloofelijk. (say "UHN- ghuh- LO- fuh- luk" -- that's Dutch for "unbelievable")
Thanks everyone, now my husband will have to sort his own receipts tonight, because I have other responsibilities :-)
Yes, there were tears in my eyes. The Netherlands had been my home for 6 years, but it wasn't that. It was the passport! That little credit-card-shaped piece of plastic meant that I would always have health care and never have to live under a bridge.... and it also meant that I could live anywhere in Europe. My husband and I both thought that we would be happier in Belgium. Holland is nice, but the housing situation is crazy. For less rent, we now have a bigger house with a garage and a large work space, and I don't have to trip over Mr. Averblue's tools in the living room anymore. I'm very happy about that.
But when we arrived there was a lot of stress. We didn't have the money to hire a moving company, so we did it all ourselves. Mr. A's work remained mostly in Holland, so he was commuting those 2 hours a lot, and sleeping a lot in the back of his truck. The rental agency at our old house in the Netherlands had "lost" our security deposit (6000 Euro!) and it took several months and threatening letters from a lawyer to get it back. Some of the cats got sick, my old car broke down, and well..., you know the drill. Typical musing for 2010: "A client paid us this morning, so now do I take the cat to the vet, the car to the garage, buy some food, order some heating oil, or save the money to pay the rent next week....?"
I really hate living like that. It takes so much mental and emotional energy, which I could use for far more interesting and creative things.
My dream was to be self-employed in Belgium like Mr. A (with a Shiatsu practice in our new workspace) but we had to remodel, first, and there was no time or money for that in the beginning. I needed income, any income, and fast. Although my Dutch is quite good, it isn't good enough for most decent-paying jobs here. I could maybe find a job using my English skills at a multinational company, but then I would be working for a multinational company. I thought about a retail job in a small grocery store (that is the work I had done in the Netherlands), but the hours are really hard to combine with a practice. So I thought: let's check out the house-cleaning options.
In Belgium, they have a very interesting system, called "Dienstencheques" or service-checks. Here is how it works. A person who needs help cleaning house calls a number or goes online and orders a package of dienstencheques. They pay 7.50 Euro per check, or about $9.50. Then they contact a temp agency that works with dienstencheques and ask the agency to send along some candidate housekeepers. The candidates go chat and if it is a good match, everyone signs on the dotted line. The cleaner shows up at the agreed upon time each week, collects one check for every worked hour, and turns the checks into the temp agency several times a month. The temp agency handles all the paperwork and pays the cleaner (minus withholding for taxes, health insurance, etc.) Following me so far?
Here's where it gets interesting, though. The Belgian government subsidizes this whole system. The person who hires a house cleaner gets a €2.25 refund on every check when they do their taxes. The temp agency gets paid for its services, though I don't know how much. And the housekeeper earns, before withholding, €9.67 per hour starting salary, and gets all the usual perks of working in a civilized country. I'll tell more about those benefits below.
Why does the government do this? I'm not entirely sure, but I think it has to do with a desire to cut down on illegal work. Apparently many people in the past collected the equivalent of welfare or unemployment insurance from the government, and then did housecleaning on the side to earn more money. The government didn't collect any taxes on these earnings, and the people didn't build up any retirement savings. Plus people working illegally this way were often exploited (financially, sexually, etc.) and were powerless to complain. Since they started this system a few years ago, Belgium has cut illegal housecleaning work down to practically nil. There's no market for it! Why would anyone pay 10 Euro per hour for a housekeeper "in the black" when they can pay €5.25 per hour for a fully insured and legal person?
Personally, I think the government is a bit too generous. There are limits on how many checks you can buy per year (these limits translate into a max of about 8 hours of cleaning per week.) I think they should add limits based on income. It is great that older, low-income people can get help around the house and delay moving to a nursing home -- 2 of my families fall in that category. But another family has 2 high-income wage earners, and they could easily afford to pay the full cost of my services.
From my perspective, though, dienstencheques have been a life-saver. It is rather dull work, not easy on the back or shoulders, and sometimes I get rather put-out at the teenagers who throw their dirty clothes on the ground for me, and at their parents who don't remind them that the clothes hamper exists for a reason. BUT I get paid. In the beginning (during my "trial" 3 months) they paid me every week. Now I get paid twice a month, and it is almost 800 Euro per month ($1000) for 20 hours per week of work. After working for one year, I got an automatic 6% raise. But here are the other benefits, many of which are standard for all workers in Belgium:
* I can choose whom I work for -- I turned down a family that smokes and another that wanted me to iron in a basement that smelled of heating oil.
* I can get to all my clients by bicycle -- very handy when my car is in the garage.
* I can choose my hours and don't have to work at 7 a.m. or on weekends, like I did in retail.
* I don't have to budget anything for nice work clothes.
* The temp agency even gave me a t-shirt and a pair of rubber boots (and at Christmas, a scarf and a flashlight...)
* I am fully insured in case I break anything or injure myself.
* If I ever have an employer who makes sexual advances or gets aggressive, I know the temp agency will handle it.
* I get reimbursed for travel expenses (a set amount per kilometer.)
* If I get sick, and bring a note from the doctor, I still get paid.
* I get 5 weeks paid vacation.
* I get this European thing called "vakantie geld" -- money that is withheld all year from your paycheck and paid out to you in May, so that you can use it while on your summer vacation. I think vakantie geld is a standard amount, like 8% of your income before withholding.
* I get automatic raises every year, plus cost-of-living increases whenever some particular government index goes up (that happened randomly once last year, for a 1% increase, I think.)
* I can arrange unpaid time off with clients and the temp agency whenever I want.
* If my clients go on vacation and I therefore can't work through no fault of my own, I don't get paid by the temp agency, but I do get unemployment compensation (around 70% of what I would have earned otherwise.)
* I got a Christmas bonus (with the politically correct name of "13th month payment.")
* I have health insurance (although I would still have health insurance if I wasn't employed. Everyone has health insurance, just if you are employed they take a small percent of your earnings to help pay for it, around 5% I think.)
* I can't be fired (unless I do something stupid like stealing.) Even if there is no work for me, I have a guaranteed 10 hours per week salary.
* I have a pension. I don't know how much that is -- certainly not enough to live on because I've just entered the system, but at least it is something.
I often wonder if there would be a way to apply something like the dienstencheque system in America. It would cost the government something, but personally I think it would be worth it. Basically, it is a way for someone who would otherwise be unemployed, to be self-employed without the paperwork and the risks. Someone else gets you insurance, screens employers, does the bookkeeping.... In Belgium, I believe they are considering an expansion of the system to include other "unskilled" work, like gardening and babysitting. (By the way, the subsidies only apply to households, not businesses, doctor's waiting rooms, etc.)
Of course, without universal healthcare insurance, any check-system would be less attractive in America than here, but still better than other options in America I think. And it would also make life more difficult for people who are living in the country illegally. Here, there was a problem with many legal residents working illegally, but in America there are also many illegal residents working illegally. If, say, the US government subsidized homeowners who wanted to hire independent, legal gardeners, it could drive illegal gardeners out of business. I feel bad for the illegal residents -- there really needs to be immigration reform. But if someone could propose a check-system that (among other things) rewards legal immigrants over illegal immigrants, it might at least get some Republican support.
But I defer this topic to those at DK who know more about economy, immigration, etc. I'm really no expert at all on those things, just a humble housekeeper with a bit of hope for the future. And I do like writing and telling stories, so who knows, maybe I'll continue in that area...