Ms. Eyl,

I’m sorry that you interpreted my tone as hostile.  When I asked you (a representative of your organization) to please not waste everyone’s time by not listing compensation levels I was asking the organization to be transparent.  I had assumed actually that the postings without compensation levels was perhaps just an oversight by the KID Museum without ill intent.  However, now that I know that the KID Museum has a specific policy to not list compensation I feel that the job posts are even more problematic.  I am happy to read that you too agree that transparency of salary information is necessary.  However, I find it sad that somehow my tone is deemed hostile yet the policy of a museum to not be transparent should be seen as acceptable or just simply ignored.  That the KID Museum has a policy indicates to me that leadership has had conversations about this and have actively and specifically decided that the museum will not be transparent about pay scales.  That seems to be far more hostile than the tone I expressed in my post.  It is wasting the time of both the applicant AND the museum staff to post a job, have applicants draft resumes, collect resumes, setup interviews, interview, and then offer a job to a person only for them to find out it doesn’t pay a living wage.  

Just so you know, I passed along your job announcement to people who I thought might be interested only to be told by them that they didn’t see the point in applying if they had no idea what the pay was.  

I wish you the best of luck in filling the positions.  I suspect that you will get plenty of applicants and that you will no doubt hire people to fill the positions.  I hope that your organization will rethink its policy to not list compensation levels with the goal of not only being more transparent but doing the right thing for you, your future employees, and for the museum field as a whole.

Thank you for starting the dialog with the job postings.  It is a clear indication that our field has a long way to go.  I fear we have emerged from the pandemic, during which time many museum employees lost their jobs, to be faced with institutions bent on remaining as clouded and unresponsive to the needs of employees as ever.  The fact that the KID Museum’s pay structure is as you state, “competitive in the market” still doesn’t mean the museum pays a living wage.  Good people are leaving the museum field in droves (some forced to and other electing to leave) because the field can’t sustain a work force that needs a living wage.  That is a big problem.  A problem that we are all responsible for and need to address.

All the best,
Jerry

Jerry Foust

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