Proposal: Allow Work on Behalf of Another Household in the Pay-or-Work Agreement

Date:

Proposed

Amend the Pay-or-Work Agreement (as amended August 26, 2012) by inserting the following sentence directly after:

Hours worked by a resident may be credited to another member of the same household.

New sentence:

A resident may also work on behalf of a member of another household to help that household meet a temporary difficulty. This work must be in addition to what the donor would otherwise contribute to the community that month. The goal is that total community work increases to cover the gap, rather than existing work simply being reassigned from one household to another.

All other provisions of the Pay-or-Work Agreement remain unchanged.

Background Summary

The Pay-or-Work Agreement currently allows hours to be credited only between members of the same household. In the spirit of cohousing, residents want to be able to help a neighboring household get through a temporary hardship, such as illness, injury, or a family emergency, by contributing work on that household's behalf. This is not currently addressed by the Pay or Work agreement.

How This Proposal Intends to Address the Issue

This proposal permits residents to work on behalf of another household during a temporary difficulty, while protecting the purpose of the Pay-or-Work requirement: spreading community labor across all households rather than concentrating it among the most active contributors. By requiring that donated work be in addition to what the donor would otherwise contribute, this proposal aims to ensure that community work as a whole increases to cover a household's gap. Donated hours should represent real, additional work.

Pros

Allows neighbors to support one another through short-term hardship
Preserves the intent of the hours requirement by requiring donated work to be additional, not a substitution
Requires no new tracking system, approval process, or committee oversight

Cons

Relies on the honor system to determine what a donor "would otherwise" have contributed
Does not guarantee that the specific task a struggling household would have done is actually the task that gets covered
Does not address whether or when reliance on donated hours should prompt a household to bring its situation to Management or the community
May be largely unnecessary for households that regularly do more than the minimum required community work hours
Even if donated hours satisfy the minimum monthly hour requirement on paper, the actual tasks the community needs done may still not get covered