Hi Rob The only way to have this come out right is to have this kind of thing clearly spelled out in your contract. Whatever arrangement you and your administration can agree upon is up to you... but it has to be clearly spelled out. In the meantime... I suggest you give them a deadline for re-negotiating your contract to deal with the situation and that after that point you will cease to tune for outside arrangements not strictly covered by your present contract. Put your foot solidly down... in the most respectful, fair and professional way possible. But put it clearly down. For what its worth.... I am on an hourly basis at UiB / HiB. 31 hours a week is what they get...plus whatever little bit of extra I always make sure and contribute. Beyond that... they pay market price per tuning as if I was an outside source. If they want to fudge... it is possible but then the school pianos loose time. If I see any tendencies towards that kind of thing getting out of hand I remind them that my primary mission is not to tune concerts for the local concert hall down the road but to take care of university instruments. Thats usually enough to keep things on track. Cheers RicB For those full-time university staff techs: I have been getting regularly ripped off by the Performing Arts Center hall. As typical I am responsible for tuning and maintaining pianos for UNIVERSITY business, (i.e. music department staff/faculty, orchestras, etc). However, when non-university outside groups come in such as visiting orchestras, high school competitions, pop bands, etc, I should be getting paid for my services. These groups are charged for renting the hall, use of the piano, AND a charge specifically for the tuning. Sometimes I even have to come in on weekends or late evenings for these events. During the last few years there has been virtually a complete turn-over of the music department personnel. Only a small handful of people are still here that were present when I arrived 8.5 years ago, including administration. For all practical purposes it is a completely different school. Over time my getting paid for outside groups has been slipping through the cracks. I have been protesting this for some time and the current administration hasn't a clue how to fix this. The chair says "talk to the department accountant". The department accountant says "talk to the performing arts hall administrator". The PFA says "I don't know how to fix this, go talk to the chair". No one wants to take responsibility for the paperwork to pay me. I made the suggestion that I check with some other university techs to see what procedures are used to pay the tech for these kinds of events. They agreed that would be helpful. Then they would have something to copy and can agree that it was done correctly. Whatever. So... for those university techs in similar arrangements, please tell me the typical procedure for how you get paid for outside events. At the moment the hall has been forwarding an annual. (or simi-annual), lump sum for my services to the music department which goes into the piano maintenance account. Then it sits there while I protest and not get paid. Last year I discovered someone stole about $3,000 of it to repair a bassoon!! Thanks for your help, Rob
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