Your work load should be in a reasonable range of what you would be doing for yourself as an independent tuner/technician. Tuning four pianos a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year would be a reasonable work load. If you can finish that in half or 3/4th of a day then you can spend some slower time doing maintenance, regulation, repairs, rebushings, new hammer installation, etc., etc. The list is endless. Figure out how much you would make based upon the listing above and subtract the value of your unfits, health and live insurance, retirement investments, vacation and personal time off, shop space and tools, etc., and you should have a target area for your salary. This is ideal, not unreasonable but also not attainable in most cases. Still it is outrageously expensive to live in central New Jersey. Some schools require a certain number of hours per week and a few require a certain amount of work. We all work extra hours during recital season Compensation of some sort must be forthcoming. Maintain a list of ALL the pianos, ALL the work you do and POST this list so everyone knows where you are and when any one piano will be serviced next. This is super critical to your job well being. You should be in the $40 to 60,000 range plus benefits for a full time 12 month appointment. You should have the care of no more than 80 pianos. More pianos more tuners. If your stock is older, requires a high level of performance capability, subjected to wide humidity swings, is new, or is of lower initial quality then more tuners. Westminister is a performance oriented school so you must spend more time on each piano. Time must be paid for. Don't give it away. Newton Hunt Rutgers University, retired
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