RJ:   I can see your point.  People should be able to get what they are
worth, but that is not always reality.  The museum field has no salary
standards that I am aware of, and they may or may not work as well as we
might think or hope, but that does not mean that we should not at least try
to establish some standards that would be adjusted annually.   What other
professions have done this with some success?  Or no success?  We can
theorize all we want. However, I would like to see some concrete progress.
 Thanks for your insight.

----------
From:   RJ-[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Tuesday, July 22, 1997 2:51 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: salaries

On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Arlyn Danielson wrote:

:| No one can force a museum to pay more- especially since there are plenty
of
:| museums on shoe-string budgets, but I think that if a museum can afford
to
:| pay more in salaries, it should do so.  National salary standards based
on
:| experience, educational background, and skills would directly benefit
:| applicants- who could use the standards as leverage in negotiating a
salary
:| based on what they are worth.

The worth of an employee is not an abstract value independent of the
organization they are a part of.  I can get a lot more out of an
organization that has total assets of $100,000,000 than I can out of
one that has only $100,000.

Additionally, the worth of an employee is also determined by the
value he or she adds to the institution.  The more they offer, the
greater a salary they can command.

Conversely, an organization gets what they pay for.  If a firm
offers substandard compensation, they will get substandard employees
and performance.

I say all this, because whenever I have seen "salary standards"
bandied about in a discussion, the focus rapidly deteriorates from
"how can the organization and the individual both benefit" to "'The
firm is cheap.' vs. 'The employee is greedy.'"

If an employee cannot have a discussion about job performance and
compensation without having a ream of "industry standards" to back
them up, chances are pretty good he or she won't be getting better
pay no matter what the standards say.

Rich Johnson
Director of Marketing
Cotton Expressions, Ltd.