Stuart
I did not start this debate! However, having joined in I will continue
to do so.
I do not believe higher pay in certain professions is entirely owing
to life/death responsibilities and the private sector. I think of the
years during which junior doctors (with more years study than ALAs)
work totally unseemly hours. I can think of a QC friend who seems to
work most evenings and weekends. I know that my own husband for three
months most years is required - as a member of another profession
working in industry - to work 70 hours weekly to achieve the deadlines
that are set to complete his job.I would rather not do either of
these. I do not consider I am any less "professional" about my work
but I want time for the rest of my life, too.
How many of us would opt for the longer study required for entry to
most of the more highly paid professions? How many of us would be
prepared to work the sorts of hours that often prevail? Pressure is a
matter of individual perception. I know that I would rather the
pressure of an artifically imposed deadline, of organising a committee
meeting or dealing with a queue at an enquiry desk to pressure
involving lives or many millions of pounds or some of those of the
courtroom.
It's easy to pose as the underdog and cherry pick from the alternative
scenarios. We were responsible for our own decisions to become
librarians. As people attracted to the information world I expect most
of us did look into salary expectations too.
Hazel Dakers
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Librarian's salaries
Author: Stuart Halliday <[log in to unmask]> at Internet
Date: 26/05/2000 08:09
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?
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