“All bunkum!” declared the wife as she flung the day’s paper across the table at me. She was referring to an article published in these columns titled ‘Why You Should Pay Your Maid More’ (April 6). “Paying maids more doesn’t mean efficiency improves,” she continued, warming to the subject. Having seen a procession of maids pass through our doors over the years, she was speaking with some authority on the subject.

In fact, we often joke that all of them must have ganged up together and formed an association of ‘Those Who Worked in Our Flat’! And, on languid morning walks one can often see some of them walking on either side of the road shooting disdainful glances at us.

The laws of economics and paying ‘equilibrium market wages’ or, as the authors of that article say, ‘efficiency wages’ does not really take into account the perspective of maids. After all, the work is sheer drudgery and after slaving away in various houses, if they work in more than one place, it’s back home for more of the same stuff. The circumstances that many maids find themselves in is unfortunate. Often, the biggest bane is a drunk husband, who snatches away most of what she earns and beats her too.

So, you could be paying top dollar to ensure efficiency and that they do not shirk work but their personal situation at home will well dictate whether they turn up for work or not. We had an instance of a maid whom we thought we were paying higher than market wage, but after a tiff with her husband, she left home with her child and went to stay at her mother’s place for over a week. So, no maid.

Or, the pendulum could swing the other way. When we offered to pay the school fees of another maid’s son, she actually got suspicious that we were under-paying her and were trying to make up for it by paying the fees!

The article by the authors from a university in the US looks at wages and maids and their behaviour through a middle-class prism. In reality, the maids are looking at their circumstances through an entirely different one.

Senior Deputy Editor

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