>>>My personal philosophy is you give people what you can afford to pay
them. >>>

Good thing you're not running a sweatshop!

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.

We have 2 weeks vacation per year (3 weeks after 5 years), but generally
employees just accrue it until they leave, or lose it, because they have
so much flextime to make up. It's very tough in a small museum to
accommodate time off for staff for any reason, and our staff works a lot
of unpaid overtime. We try to offer time off in compensation - sometimes
I have to force people to take time off - but often the unpaid overtime
remains uncompensated in any way. And by overtime, I'm not talking about
the routine coming in early for a meeting or staying late to finish a
grant, I mean entire days and weekends of covering major programs.

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.

Carol Ely
Historic Locust Grove
Louisville, KY

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