On 7/6/05, Carol Ely <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>>My personal philosophy is you give people what you can afford to pay
> them.
>
> Good thing you're not running a sweatshop!
How is that? If you pay people what you can't afford, you will go out
of business.
>Museums do often make up for low pay with more generous benefits like
>flexible hours, and that's fine, but there is a limit to how low the pay
>can go and still sustain human life.
But the reality is that there are hundreds of museum professionals
working for well below the cost of living of the area they are in so
people can survive. Not that I'm an advocate of paying as LITTLE as
you can get away with, but the harsh reality is that we can have a few
museums open that pay good salaries or have many museums open which
pay slightly below a living wage. Which would you choose? How many
historic houses, local museums, battlefields, parks and gardens would
you close to funnel that money towards the remaining museums for
increased salaries? How many of you would rather compete with 500
people for 10 jobs with higher salaries instead of 100 people for 50
jobs with lower salaries?
> And, as I've said before, the low rates of compensation of all kinds in
> this industry are a problem. Just because you can find people willing to
> work for less doesn't make that a good thing. My philosophy is, you pay
> people according to their value to the organization - and we're not
> there yet.
I'd agree with you but again, if the choice is between paying someone
what they are worth and staying open, those who are in charge will
most likely choose to keep the museum open. Museum directors should be
paid the same as CEOs but what museum makes enough money to do that,
let alone pay everyone else on the same scale?
The other harsh reality is that you'll never hear "well, if you can't
find any other job, you can always fall back on working for a museum."
Everyone in the museum profession WANTS to be there. Because museum
people are generally well-educated and the economy is good, there are
ALWAYS other jobs out there outside of the museum profession.
Likewise, because getting a museum job is so tough, people have to
really work at it to get into the profession. No one is "stuck" in a
museum job and they should know that salaries are less than
competitive in the field.
So instead of starting another group whine about how little we get
paid and how unfair it is, we should be discussing ways to increase
visitorship and revenues so we can eventually get paid more. And
personally, I think a lot of museums are stuck in a "we'll never make
any money" rutt but that's a different topic of discussion. I'd like
to hear from some of the "for-profit" type musuems like the Spy Museum
in DC to see how their business model is working and how they compare
to "traditional non-profit" museums.
Deb
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