[CAUT] Position Announcement, U. of Northern Colorado

[Jeff Tanner]

Hi Fred,
Comments interspersed.

Fred Sturm wrote:
> I guess I'll agree the pay isn't exciting

No.  It's degrading and embarrassing.  I would wager that one could find a 
job in Colorado pushing a broom for more than that.  Not that sweeping 
floors is degrading and embarrasing, but the work expected of a CAUT does 
require a bit more training and experience.

>, but I will argue that the  workload is quite reasonable. 85 pianos per 
>FTE is quite low in the  real world.

I have a real issue with this "real world" concept.  What is common practice 
in the "real world" and what is actually required to get the job done 
correctly are two completely different realities.  I never did understand 
why we compromised our standards with the recalculation of the Guidelines 
formula for the simple purpose of reflecting the gross deficiencies of real 
world common practice.  But here's some "real world" where they're not 
trying to use deficiency as the standard:  The University of Georgia employs 
two full time positions and a half time contract tuner for 115 pianos and 
those techs will tell you that isn't enough to get the job done right. 
Julliard has something like one tech per 40 pianos if the ratio is still in 
line with what was described in the newspaper article about 10 years ago 
(and I've heard the condition of the pianos is not good).  I don't know the 
ratio at Eastman, but don't they have 5 full time techs?  I've heard the 
pianos there are undermaintained as well.

Steinway recommends no more than 40 grand pianos for the first piano 
technician and another full time tech for the next 85 and that is not taking 
climate problems into account.  After my institutional experience, I'd say 
the guy with the 40 grands would have more than he could handle by himself 
(we had 52, I think).  Think about it.  If hammers last an average of 10 
years in an institution, he's replacing 4 sets of hammers a year, and about 
half as many full actions as just hammers.  He should probably be 
restringing at least one a year.  He should probably be filing, fitting, 
voicing and regulating 20 a year.  He's spending nearly all his time 
rebuilding and refurbishing.  When will he have time for tuning, voicing, 
replacing broken strings and concert prep of the other 39 not currently in 
his shop?  Or, vice versa, he's spending all his time tuning, voicing, 
replacing broken strings and concert prep and no rebuilding or refurbishing 
is getting done.

When there is only one technician at an institution, regardless of how many 
pianos there are, he can only accomplish about 1/2 to 2/3 of the amount of 
work that he himself could get to if there were a second full time 
technician.  We don't realize how much that second person frees us up to get 
done what we started on.  And just having someone there to work with makes 
work more productive, too.

 Average is probably 100 - 160 (some higher, some lower,
> but probably most caut situations are in that range). I handle 80  pianos 
> at half time, and I think I do an adequate job of maintaining  standards. 
> Could be better, but could be (and has been) far, far worse.

I suppose one would have to come to some definition of what is an acceptable 
standard.  But if your inventory behaves anywhere close to the way mine did, 
I would argue that it would be absolutely impossible to maintain 80 
institutional pianos in 20 hours a week.  Maybe we have different standards, 
but my faculty was asking more than was reasonably possible from one person, 
so that's kind of what I base my standards on.  One of the local techs here 
has been contracting work at Carolina since I resigned and he says they 
really need 3 techs for the 125 pianos:  two tuning and one in the shop all 
the time.  He told me that since I left, the head of the piano faculty told 
him, "we've recently discovered that there may be too much work here for one 
technician."

Aw.  You don't say.  I had to quit for you to figure that out?

My line of thinking has evolved to the point where just putting a number of 
techs to pianos isn't the most accurate way to reflect the needs of an 
inventory.  Size of student body and faculty, number of official performing 
ensembles, number of performances and performance venues, and event hostings 
all need to be in there to reflect the overall activity level of the 
institution, which is a component we really can't put a numerical value on. 
Overall institutional activity level has a huge impact on availability of 
access for maintenance.  It also probably means the technician is spending a 
lot of time on rehearsal and performance pianos which takes away time from 
other instruments.  And if he's expected to be "on-call" more often because 
of activity level.....

> About the "on-call" thing, that is the nature of the beast. A caut  job is 
> not 9 to 5 and never will be, any more than the job of a  symphony or jazz 
> musician.

I vehemently disagree.  We can have a say in that.  Much of the on-call 
thing is pure wannabe silliness, imposed much of the time by the types who 
wield Barbie tuners, and our being willing to be Odie to a faculty of 50 
Garfields just further feeds the "beast".  We should rather be seeing 
ourselves as the Garfield with 50 Odie faculty members.  And we can.  We're 
the one in demand.  They're a dime a dozen!  We should hold leverage by the 
sheer rarity of the possession of our skill!  But we're the ones flushing 
that leverage down the toilet!

This is college for heaven's sake, not Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center.  As 
a general rule, audiences don't buy $100+ tickets to attend performances 
they expect to be perfect, where piano technicians can charge upwards of 
$100 an hour to sit around back stage catching up on reading pianotech 
emails on his laptop if he wants to.  No, its a university setting and the 
time expectations the of the piano technician should be "commensurate with 
salary".  Period.  CAUTs are already grossly undercompensated for their 
skill level alone.  Further disrespecting our lives and the lives of our 
families by expecting us to be on call for after hours performances 7 days a 
week is an extra kick in the face.  But it is completely up to US to have a 
say in that.  As long as we agree to be doormats, that is what we will be. 
I resigned because I was unwilling to be a doormat.

But let's say it is the nature of the beast. I will still argue to my death 
that a piano technician who's time is worth $60+ an hour as a 9 to 5 
self-employed technician should not consider a position where the value of 
what should be his leisure time is so disrespected for less than $20 an 
hour.  That is simply disrespect for our own private lives and more 
importantly, it is disrespectful to others in our profession.  We are not 
symphony or jazz musicians.  We are service technicians and if we are 
expected to be on call for every whim of each faculty or guest artist, IT 
OUGHT TO BE REFLECTED IN THE SALARY, AND IT OUGHT TO BE COMPARABLE TO THE 
EARNINGS OF OUR ESTEEMED PEERS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR WHO PERFORM AN 
EQUIVALENT SERVICE FOR PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCES.  Besides, being on call 
for performances is time out of the technician's schedule that should be 
being spent on other work that needs to be done.  It is inefficient use of 
the technician's time.  I never attended more than 4 or 5 performances here 
in 9 1/2 years.  Those were by my own choice (two were by my student 
assistant) and I was never once needed to have been there.  The technician 
who tunes for the larger professional performance venues here doesn't stick 
around either unless he is well compensated for his time (i.e., he charges 
more to stay for a concert than a FT CAUT grosses in a full day, so there's 
perspective), and it is extremely rare for him to be asked to be there.

We make much more out of this being on call than it is worth.  If a string 
breaks, roll another piano out.  That is much less distracting than a 
technician coming in to replace a string.  Of course, they all know how to 
pull the string up and out of the way.  They do it on all the other pianos 
despite our pleas not to.  If the piano goes out of tune during the 
performance, that is the fault of either the condition of the piano or the 
changing climate of the venue.  But don't disrespect the technician's 
personal life at a take home rate of less than $15 an hour by making him 
hang around until after 9pm any night you get the itch to.  He or she may 
have to incur extra costs for child care, or miss out on a daughter's dance 
recital or a son's band concert or important ball game.  That's just being 
completely inconsiderate of someone who could otherwise be making $350-500 a 
day and be done by 5 pm most all of the time, and may choose to work 
weekends or not to.

Look, the point is, we're selling our own selves short by agreeing to that 
kind of commitment for such low pay.  It's our own fault.  If it really is 
the "nature of the beast", then it is by our own creation.  But it does not 
have to be.  "Spirit of cooperation" is one thing, but servanthood is 
something completely different.  As long as we have a servant mentality, we 
will always be treated as servants.

 I'm guessing Northern Colorado doesn't have
> an enormous guest artist load.
> My biggest quarrel would be with the job classification:
> "Job Title: PIANO TUNER-TECHNICIAN - STRUCTURAL TRADES II"
> Structural trades? really? And that is where the salary range is 
> determined.
>

I've seen it as Structural Trades at other institutions, too.  Which goes 
along with my point in other discussions that no amount of credentialing or 
continuing education will ever make a difference until the folks in Human 
Resources figure out what to do with us.  When I came here, it was Skilled 
Trades V.  Yes, plumbers, carpenters and HVAC techs, all of whom go home at 
4:30 and don't show their face from Friday at 4:30 until Monday at 8 am. 
That is the highest skilled trades class and those other trades in the class 
answer directly to someone in an Engineering classification, and with 
continuing ed, can advance to an engineering class position (there is no 
engineering classification appropriate for piano tuning).  A 
reclassification effort 4 years ago got it moved to Program Coordinator I 
(which was the same salary band as Skilled Trades V, so there was no salary 
reclassification), and after my resignation they got it reclassified to 
Program Coordinator II, which is one salary band higher.  But that's it. 
There's no Program Coordinator III and there's no place else to go in the 
classified employee structure.

It's bad when you have to quit to get the next guy a raise, isn't it?

Cordially,
Jeff Tanner