Although I am not doubting that we as librarians are badly paid, I do not
think that comparisons drawn with the medical profession are entirely fair.
Doctors study for at five years at university, a course which is runs five
days a week all day, every day. They are not subject to the same lengthy
holidays as other students. Upon qualifying they are then required to work
gruelling shifts first as a House Officer and then as Senior House Officer.
They average something like 72 hours a week and my wife was paid less per
hour than the hospital porters during her House Officer year...
The responsibility of doctors is one thing but their training and skills are
not something that can be picked up in an year long post-graduate
qualification. I agree that our skills are undervalued but we are just
opening ourselves up for ridicule if we really believe that librarianship is
an equivalent profession to that of Doctors.
Paul Thorpe
Americas, Asia & Pacific Team
Library & Information Services
Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stuart Halliday [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 8:09 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Librarian's salaries
>
> Hi folks
>
> Hazel's email seems to have raised a number of issues, one of which is
> our lowly level of professional remuneration.
>
> What we are paid certainly does not accurately reflect the vital
> function which we fulfill. In terms of the professions employed by
> public service, why do librarians, social workers and teachers get paid
> less than doctors, solicitors and engineers. On one level at least all
> are equal. All are graduate occupations, all require intelligent,
> articulate, erudite professionals in their ranks The question, however,
> is twofold. Why has the situation of differential levels of pay
> developed, and how is it to be remedied?
>
> Re the first question, one answer might be that doctors and (to a lesser
> extent) engineers are paid more because the implications of error in
> their profession could detrimentally affect human life. This answer does
> not really go far enough, however. The real reason is, I feel, more
> straightforward. Taking the case of engineers and solicitors, the bulk
> of their professional members work in the private sector, in which more
> competitive salaries can be paid. Thus the private sector sets the
> yardstick which the public sector must follow in order to recruit
> competent staff. In the case of teachers, social workers and librarians,
> the reverse is the case. The preponderance of the profession work in the
> public sector which is free to set a much lower wage structure (and
> which, unfortunately) which the private sector can subsequently adopt as
> its yardstick.
>
> That is primarily why we lose out. It is therefore folly to blame our
> professional body for our low wages. It is not the Library Association's
> fault. It is simply the fault of market forces and, if you like, of the
> financial system by which we are governed.
>
> How are we to change things? There seems no way forward short of
> ditching the whole capitalist/monetarist system, the very system which
> is responsible for the truly obscene variations in remuneration - a
> system all three of our major political parties slavishly support. Think
> of the pittance paid to members of the nursing profession against the
> millions earned by (or rather, paid to) to footballs and their talents
> wives, for instance. Or consider the obscene wealth enjoyed by the
> Gatesian empire, which at its height could have bought off the entire
> Third World debt and still had enough left over to treat every adult
> inhabitant of South America to a fish supper and a crate of Newcastle
> Brown Ale. Surely the answer to the our simple question (and to the much
> greater one) lies in finding a viable, acceptable and democratic
> alternative to capitalism?
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|