Chuck,
As an historian and aviation museum worker, I must tell you that while your
example of airline pilots was once true, it is no longer the case.  Airline
pilots are forced to retire at age 60 and fewer military pilots are entering
the field.  This itself is interesting because the military attacked the
loss of expensively-trained pilots to the airline industry on two front -
requiring pilots to serve longer following training before they can leave
the service and by increasing pilots' pay.  With all the WWII trained pilots
now retired and those of the Vietnam era are quickly passing through that
age 60 barrier as well there's a looming pilot shortage. So instead of 1000
applicants for each job, there aren't enough qualified pilots to fill them.

So inadvertantly, I end up giving people advice on entering a field other
than museum work!  But without military pilot training, the path to the left
seat of that 757 is one of long hours at ridiculously low pay building
flying time following a very expensive education to get the necessary skills
- begins to sound familiar doesn't it - except for the big payoff if you
survive and succeed.

On a different tack, in my own situation, I'm lucky that our museum is part
of a larger organization.  This has allowed the museum staff to more easily
point out the pay discrepancies between ourselves and those in other parts
of the organization with similar levels of education, experience and
responsibility.  We haven't reached equity yet, but enough progress has been
made that we are no longer at the poverty level.  At the same time, we face
an increasingly difficult task when trying to increase the number of bodies
on staff.  So the administration is in effect saying - here's your raise,
but to keep labor costs in line, you  now need to do more work with less
help.  Sometimes it's hard to measure progress isn't it?

RT

Ron Twellman, Collections Manager
EAA AirVenture Museum
P.O. Box 3065
Oshkosh, WI 54903-3065
920-426-5917
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Stout [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 12:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Museum wages


I'm enjoying all the various views expressed in this thread, and here's
another 1.5 cents worth.

I had this kind of conversation with my wife several years ago. She's a
psychotherapist. Her first job out of grad school paid something like $18K a
year.

When I asked why people with great attitude, extensive training, high
responsibility (in her case, often life-and-death responsibilities) and a
higher education were paid so little, she gave the same list of excuses:
It's a desire to serve, it's a passion thing, people don't do this for the
money, the non-profit world is different, the field is traditionally low
paying, we don't have the power to change the system, etc.

We applied some cortical exercise to the problem and came up with some
questions. Why do airline pilots make as much as $200K a year doing a job
that is highly satisfying, that they're generally passionate about, and that
has huge supply and minuscule demand (usually about a thousand applicants
for each opening)? To be fair, most professional pilots spend decades
working their way up an incredibly difficult and poorly-paid career ladder
before they earn those six-figure salaries--but they prove it can be done.

Why was I able to make a reasonable, competitive wage at a non-profit
hospital, along with all the doctors, therapists, nurses, aides, and
non-clinical staff?

Then I asked her if there were ANY psychotherapists who made decent livings,
or who actually got wealthy doing psychotherapy. She rattled off a half
dozen people she knew personally who were doing quite well by any standards.

One by one, we burst each myth. If airline pilots can command astronomical
salaries when there are a thousand ready to take their jobs, why not
psychotherapists, or museum professionals? How can some non-profits afford
to pay fairly? If even a few people in a profession can succeed financially,
what's their secret? If doing good in the world or being passionate about
your work means sacrificing a decent standard of living, how come there are
so many people who manage to circumvent that rule?

Several things came out of our research and discussions. If people are
interested, I'll be glad to share them with the list, but this post is
already getting too long.

Chuck Stout
Exhibits Design and Development
Denver Museum of Natural History
303-370-8364
[log in to unmask]

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