The nursery has clear times that it is "open". I must drop off my child between A and B O'clock in the morning, and I must collect them between X and Y O'clock in the afternoon. Like a shop - they are allowed to have opening hours.

The issue is that they can't just close when they want if there's a child still there. So they have to have some way of enforcing these rules on parents. A "per minute" fine seems appropriate, so that it's more the later you are. And you need the fine to be enough that it is punitive enough, when considered against the income of your parents. Otherwise it provides no incentive. Ours is not $300 (more like $30), but it seems fair.

That's largely in line with unplanned or off-hours work for many professionals in the area of a city. If you want for example, plumbing done after normal business hours $300 per hour is a typical rate. In at least one case I paid $50 just to get a supply shop to open their doors after hours to get the needed parts to repair my own home.

It sounds like a great policy. Good news is that you can choose to be on time or pay the penalty or choose another provider who hasn't decided to implement this...yet.

I'm shocked by your question. I honestly would like to hear why you think this should not be acceptable. Why should they continue working overtime and cut into their own personal/family time because of the parent's failure?

How much does it cost to keep the facility open for 1 minute? Power, staff, etc.

And then there's the challenge of keeping people on staff at all when parents consistently make the staff work late.

Beyond that, it seems like a good way to achieve the objective of convincing parents to not offload externalities onto others by being late.

How is being late acceptable?

Let's say you have a job interview. You're 5min late, so they either don't hire you, or the receptionist says the interviewer is now not available. Are you now due the salary, because you being this late 5min cost you a lot of money?

If you in a private contract reject the terms of paying $5 per minute late, well then the other party now knows you plan to be late a lot, so they'll be glad if you take your business elsewhere.

Keeping people from being able to go home after their workday, effectively forced overtime, is incredibly disrespectful. And even if "it's not your fault", you are the only one that could have prevented it. So incentives should be in place that you don't. $5 per minute sounds fair.

If you force me to stay late for a full hour you'd BETTER pay me triple digits. But in this case the $300 for an hour may have to be shared among several people.

It's too late to edit my other comment, but it's shocking to me how the people downvoting that comment can have such a lack of empathy and respect for people working in daycare.

I can't understand how one can treat people like servants, forcing them into unpaid overtime, to wait until I'm good and ready to show up. And to be upset and call it "unacceptable" to compensate people when you mistreat them.