WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6. 1986 PAGE 9 Judy Kent and her daughter Kristal are seen here amid thousands of tiny vending capsules which she stuffs to the tune of $5 per 1,000 capsules. Free Press Staff Photo finding woi By JAN DODGE regularly watching for Free Press Staff something new. There's a whole new She had a home job labour pool right here in assembling toys in capsules Durham Region, impatien- for vending machines, but tly waiting to be discovered. she refuses to take another Judy Kent, a Whitby consignment. At $5 per 1,000 mother of three, pointed it "you'd bave to go like nuts out when she wrote a letter to get 800 done in an hour." to the editor to the Free It usually took her two Press to offer a solution to hours to do 1,000 which the daycare crisis. means she was paid $2,50 an She suggested that if hour, if she didn't count the "real jobs" were created so cost of pickup and delivery mothers could work at at Woodbine and Steeles home, families and gover- Ave. in Toronto, which she nments could forget about also provided. nannies and crowded Bey Gordon, who respon- daycare. ded to Kent's letter, takes Within days 21 wonen two children regularly for from Scarborough to daycare and one Iess often. Oshawa called Kent to sup- For this she earns from $100 port her position. to $150 a week and bas at For many working out- least three nine-and-a-balf- side the home just doesn't hour days. Besides the low pay when they have the ex- pay and long hours, looking pense of daycare as well. after other people's Kent recently had a chance cbildren ties you down, she to learn computer says. engraving at an office at Gordon, who bas Kennedy Rd. and Eglinton. previously worked for Bell At the $5 per hour rate of Canada as an operator and pay she calculated that with a bookkeeper says sbe gas, lunches, car doesn't think employers are depreciation, and daycare aware of the possibilities of she would be $100 behind at having women work from the end of the month. And their homes. she wouldn't have needed a "I've only ever had one lot of new clothes for that caîl for (work at bore) job either. from an employer," says Jobs available at horne Linda Mantzell, a councillor tend 'to be limited to for Whitby Employment babysitting, telemarketing, Services since 1972. That and sewing Kent says. She was a request for a checks newspapers bookkeeper. rk's a difficult job Dorothy Brown, em- ployment market advisor for the Oshawa office said the only employer she knows who does this is Paula Lishman, who has several women knitting with fur for her cottage in- dustry in Port Perry. As Kent points out this practise could also help employers. They could cut back expenses on space, furniture, lunch rooms and wasted time. Julie Meinster has tried approaching companies in Whitby to see if they would be willing to provide her with work at home. She has offered to do typing, phoning, to pick up and deliver her work plus some deliveries, but so far has found nothing. Em- ployers all say they want their employees on the premises. Meinster is tugged in two directions. She wants to stay home with her seven- month-old daughter who has had some health problems, but she doesn't want to lose contact with the working world. She plans to return to work out- side her home when her daughter is in school. For her, gainful employment at home would be the perfect solution. There are lots of jobs that could be done in the home Kent says. One job she has done which was financially worthwhile, although in- consistent, was making teflon bands for heat sealing machines. She speculates that small assembly, sorting, packaging, labelling, soldering, typing and bookkeeping are some of the jobs that might be per- formed at home for com- panies. "The quality of work done in a person's home is probably better than having it done in a stuffy factory," Kent says. "Atmosphere is very important when you're doing a repetitious job ... and the employer is not paying by the hour, but by the piece." She adds, "bad workers can be weeded out by the amount of work produced." One woman, responding to Kent's letter suggested the government might offer a grant to employers on a trial basis to encourage them to develop this kind of employment. Durham Region itself employs women at home, albeit in the traditional area of daycare. Diane Hamre, chairman of health and social ser- vices, says some women have contracts with the social services department to provide private home daycare. The fee schedule, which is now $12 a child for a nine- hour day, depending on the age of the child, is negotiated between the social services department and the care providers. The department offers training and workshops to the providers; it provides some supervision and sets basic standards e.g. fire and safety. Social services will place a maximum of five children in private home daycare. Moya Beall, women's researcher for the NDP, says she more often hears about women being ex- ploited by working at home, than she hears about women looking for ways to work at home. That's why she says the thrust of her party has been to push for child care and training or retraining of the parent to get back into the job market. An employer who hires a home employee must obtain a permit from the director of employment standards for the Ministry of Labour. The employer is then required to keep records of wages so that the ministry can see that each employee is earning a minimum wage. The employer may or may not pay benefits depending on the job classification. SEE PAGE 11