you can pay me now....

Jeff Tanner jtanner@mozart.music.sc.edu
Wed Jul 3 10:13 MDT 2002


Mike Jorgensen wrote:
>Hi David,
>     Sorry for butting in on your tease of Wim,  I just couldn't help but
>chime in when I read about Stanford's Program.
>     IMHO most universities would do well to have a nine month tech using
>the savings to hire specialists instead of the typical twelve month with
>no money for contracting out.   Is there anyone who is first class in
>every aspect of this profession and doesn't need help with at least
>something?
>-Mike
>I'll be gone for eleven days now.


Ok, here's my question.  Given the average CAUT salary (according to the
figures we have), how many of you would take a 9 month guarantee of 75% of
$39K, or $29250 before deductions?  That would take away a minimum of 40
hours a week during the most profitable seasons for private work.  You'd
get summers off with no pay and be left trying to drum up sporatic summer
work.  Then, the school's only saving just under $10K for specialists,
UNLESS the 9 month contract didn't provide any benefits (which, if I've
understood the majority of sentiment on this list, along with paid leave is
why we accept entry level deli manager salaries to do this work).  Last
time I checked, $10K won't get a quality piano rebuilt by a specialist
around here.

Is this what you're talking about or do I misunderstand?

No argument that probably none of us is first class in every aspect of the
profession.  But to lower CAUT salaries even further, you're certainly not
going to recruit the cream of the crop techs to university positions.
Shouldn't universities instead need to acknowledge that maintaining $2
million worth of pianos is not cheap and actually try to start funding that
maintenance?

I've got tomorrow off :)

Jeff


Jeff Tanner
Piano Technician
School of Music
813 Assembly ST
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803)-777-4392 (phone)




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