On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, kocanda wrote:
> personally, i've experienced it as a routine matter to be hired as a
> "consultant" or "temporary employee" so that my employers would not have
> to pay _any_ benefits, ever!.  unfortunately that's par for the course
> in this line of work.

An interesting point, since it again parallels academia:  many once-
tenure-track positions (with reasonable, if not exemplary, salaries,
benefits, and security) are now divided up among a group of instructors
or adjuncts who are paid by the course, and have no benefits.

It has been my personal experience in the museum field, however, that
"consultants," at least, do better than "temporary" employees.  At
one museum at which I worked, the consultants were paid quite a good
deal more than the in-house staff, precisely because they argued that
they were picking up the cost of their own benefits.  Indeed, one of
the benefits of consulting is, supposedly, that you can write your
own ticket (including salary).

> just as is "hiring" at laughable rates (or
> sometimes even _charging_ via tuition fees) students to do work that
> expects an incredible sense of responsibility (i.e., the hands-on care
> of valuable collections, or in the case of museum guards, the protection
> of those collections).

Again, the same is true in academia.  As budgets have shrunk or
stagnated, more use is made of student employees than of permanent
ones, because they are less expensive to the hiring unit.

> i guess the bottom line is that i don't like it either.  but i think as
> a whole, we tend choose this line of work becuase we like the work, not
> for the bucks.

True enough.  But genteel poverty does become tiresome after awhile.

Jenni Rodda, Curator
Visual Resources Collections
Institute of Fine Arts
1 East 78th Street
New York, NY  10021-0178
(212) 772-5872, fax (212) 772-5807, [log in to unmask]