There were other problems too. Her employer expected her to keep her apartment spotless. When he had visitors, he liked to show them her apartment. On the weekends, when Karen had her days off, she would be asked to baby sit the children. Sometimes this happened when she was on the way out the door. She was not paid extra for this work.

Karen's employer came to Canada from another country. He decided to visit his home country for six weeks. His children went to live at his brother's house. Karen still lived in the basement apartment of her employer's house. Now, she had to leave at 7:00 am every morning and travel across town to get her employer's children ready for school and pack their lunches. She did housework all day. She looked after the children after school until the adults returned from work. Then she went back to her apartment. The money that Karen spent on busses came out of her own pocket. The time she spent travelling did not count as part of her work.

Things Can Be Different

In 1985, Karen met Sister Lorraine Michael of the Catholic Social Action Commission. She introduced Karen to people in the Coalition for Equality, a group of union and other labour organizations. Unions are groups of people who work in the same jobs. A union tries to make sure that people are treated fairly in their jobs, and that they get the best wages they can. Karen also met people from the St. John's Women's Centre. By now she knew her employer was treating her unfairly. These people began to talk to her about what she could do to change things.

Around this time, the provincial Department of Labour held some public hearings into working conditions in the province. A hearing is a meeting where people can explain how they feel about an issue. The Department of Labour wanted workers to talk about how they were being treated by their employers. No one was talking about domestic work, so Karen was asked to speak. She did, and soon found out that her employer had broken the law when he took her rent out of her pay. After that, Karen made a formal complaint to the Department of Labour against her former employer.

There were two minimum wages in Newfoundland and Labrador until 1991. One was for almost all workers, but there was a lower minimum wage for domestic workers—the people who did housework and full time babysitting. This system was called the two-tiered minimum wage. In 1988, the minimum wage was $4.25 an hour for everyone except domestic workers. The minimum wage for domestic workers was $3 an hour. The law also prevented employers from taking living expenses, such as room and board, out of this salary. This was because domestic workers were paid such a low minimum wage and many lived where they worked.