13th month for housekeepers?

I always give ours a 13th plus some extra, same for our pool guy and gardener. I think its only required if they are a full time employee. I believe that is true if the person is required to be at a location for a set number of hours a day, and I think its 3 days or more a week (again, this is second-hand, old recollections of my wife explaining). Our cleaner comes once a week, the pool guy twice and the gardener maybe a couple of times a month.

It depends. 

If she is a full time, on the payroll, yes, you will have to cought it up the 13th.

Now, if she is on a per diem ( Diarista ), no, you are not under obligation. 

The cutoff hours for full time to a per diem or part time determines whether you are liable for the 13th or not.

Upper middle class gentry out here used to have a maid, actually if you look into some older apartments, and houses, you would notice some diminute bedroom and a tiny bathroom out on the back by the Laundry Den.

No longer, no one keeps in house maids, for that very reason.  They started getting organized and claiming their overdue rights and entitlements. 

Thanks for your replies.  All the houses in our neighborhood have a maid's room and bathroom which to me is rather disturbing.  Our housekeepers, and gardener/pool-guy are not on our payroll they are diaristas.  We ended up giving our gardener/pool-guy a 13th month and he teared up when he got it.  This week we will do the same to the housekeepers.  We can afford it and to them it is huge. 

12/11/22.  @Droplover.  The maid's room and bathroom are historical artfacts of a time gone by, nothing to feel particularly disturbed about.  Our apartment built in the late 1960s, has them, too, but I doubt that any of them in our building have been put to that use for going on fifty years.  We put shelves in the maid's room in ours and use it as a pantry; the bathroom is just another bathroom.

I would be disturbed to see them in new construction, but I haven't yet.

12/11/22. BTW, anyone whose Portuguese lets them enjoy Brazilian podcasts and has an interest in how the domestic help system in 20th Century Brazil could verge into a form of slavery would get a lot out of a 2022 series by journalist Chico Felitti, "A Mulher da Casa Abandonada":

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/podcasts/ … bandonada/

Margarida Bonetti was the daughter of a traditional São Paulo family, who "gave" her a young girl to be her maid when she got married.   Bonetti's husband held a number of senior executive positions in the US, and they kept the maid there as a slave for twenty years, never letting her leave the house and locking her in when they were absent.   The podcast tells the story of how the maid, with the help of a brave neighbor, was eventually freed and now lives in the US as a free woman. Bonetti's husband was arrested and jailed under the US anti-slavery laws.  Bonetti herself fled back to Brazil before she could be arrested.

Brazil will not extradite native-born citizens, and the case against Bonetti under Brazilian laws went nowhere.   Margarida Bonetti now lives as a hermit in her family's São Paulo mansion, as it falls into ruins.  It was there that Felitti saw her, and began his investigation.

Thanks for sharing that story and the link to the podcast.  Unfortunately my Portugese is not good enough to listen to the podcast but it's a fascinating story.