In late 2014, I came to Australia from Germany to work as an au pair. I was 18, and I had set up the job before I arrived here with an agency in Germany. I expected to be living with a family, getting a wage, seeing the culture in Australia and to see how kids grew up in that culture.
When I arrived I didn’t know anybody but I was excited to start with my family because it was a single mum family, and I was raised by a single mum. It was a nice house, near the beach in Sydney; we don’t have much of that in Germany.
The mum was nice to start with but pretty soon she ended up drunk, almost every night. She started to ignore me, she didn’t talk to me, wouldn’t eat with me, never thanked me for any of the work. The letter from my agency said that in exchange for the work I did, I would get paid $250 a week, a car with petrol and that my food would be paid for.
The mum was nice to start with but pretty soon she ended up drunk, almost every night. She started to ignore me.
Pretty soon she had taken away the car and I was having to pay for my own food, sometimes when I didn’t have any money at all. One week I would get paid $180, another $150, and when they went on holidays, $50, which I had to make last for that week to buy food. I never knew how much it would be.
I was supposed to work 35 hours a week. There were three kids but mostly it was looking after the little boy, taking him out to the playground or cinemas, picking him up from kindy, things like that. I also did housework, cleaning, laundry, vacuuming, cooking dinner, bathing the kids, putting the kids to bed. Twice or three times a week it would be twelve hours of work a day, depending on how she was feeling. She never had an idea of how many hours I’d done.
While I was working with them I also got really sick. I called the woman to say I was sick, and could I please drop off the kids to their dad, and she said no. The kids called her too, saying that I had a fever and needed to go the doctor; that I couldn’t look after them. She again said no, and was really angry.
Selina Groll, on Insight. Source: Insight
On Sunday night at about midnight, I had decided enough was enough, I couldn’t take it anymore. She had ignored me and been mean – I hadn’t expected to have such a negative experience. I packed my stuff up, called the second agency which I had applied to for a new family, and the woman who ran that agency came and picked me up around midnight and got me out of there. I had lasted five weeks. I told the mum I was leaving. She looked at me and told me that my mum would be ashamed of me. I will never forget that.
I went on to live with two more families who were both so lovely ... most of all they treated me as though I was part of the family.
Not only was my first experience of being an au pair in Australia more work for less money than what I agreed to, I felt like I was taken for granted. Other people I know also have au pair horror stories, but mostly people don’t want to talk about it. After what happened to me I felt like I didn’t really have the ability to speak up about it.
I wanted to give up au pairing, but the second agency I ended up with, My Au Pair Australia, promised they’d find me a good family. Summer, the woman who ran that agency, found me work and I went on to live with two more families who were both so lovely, so great. They paid me much better; I even had a car with petrol. But most of all they treated me as though I was part of the family.
Selina Groll is a guest on Insight's Fair Work, Fair Pay, looking at exploitation and forced labour among Australia's most vulnerable workers | Catch-up online now:
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