[CAUT] Preaching to the choir; was University of Idaho Piano Tech Vacancy

[Jeff Tanner]

David Ilvedson wrote:
>I think a CAUT certificate of training for institutional work would be a 
>great asset for technicians.

I do as well. But I'm of the opinion the CAUT endorsement is overkill if the 
intent is that a university should not hire a technician without it. I would 
compare it to the idea of being required to be a heart surgeon, brain 
surgeon, pediatrist, dermatologist, oncologist, urologist, OBGYN, 
chiropractor, neurologist, gastrointerologist, orthopedist, etc., in order 
to practice as a general practitioner. Folks, there's not a college in the 
country that needs every technician to be able to do everything that will 
ever need to be done to a piano and a harpsichord. It just isn't physically 
possible, for one thing. Nearly every college in the country is pushing 80 
or more pianos on one tech, and I don't know of any situation better than 
55:1. Guys, that turns your one tech into a fireman, and if the fireman is 
trying to do everything, far too much is going to be omitted.

And the logistics of the endorsement itself are simply overwhelming. First, 
it's too big for the few of us it matters to to be able to administer in a 
lifetime, and when you're on a CAUT salary, you just can't afford to go 
trapsing all over the country to every national and regional convention you 
can schedule to complete the thing, much less administer it. With RPT, we've 
got a couple thousand guys who can help out with that. Have we given any 
thought at all that there will probably be fewer than 15 of you who would 
administer the CAUT endorsement? Second, the technician who passes off 
everything on the list should be worth $150K-$200K a year. That isn't going 
to happen, because faculties and administrators are completely ignorant of 
the training processes of piano technicians and in such, already think any 
of us who has hung our shingle is supposed to be capable of all that, and 
you see what the salaries continue to be. So all that skill assessment is 
going to be devalued to nothing - worthless in terms of financial return on 
investment.

My biggest problem with the endorsement idea is the be-all, know-all aspect 
about it. Not all colleges have the same needs. It makes much more sense to 
me for a CAUT endorsement to be much smaller in scope - starting with RPT, 
and a few educational classes on how the CAUT environment is different from 
the private sector, and then have the incumbent acquire the skills as needed 
for that particular situation.  There is no better endorsement than that of 
the faculty you serve. And if you are serving their needs because you have 
customized your training for that situation, you will get their endorsement. 
Where we need more more more from PTG is training the employee then how to 
turn that endorsement into a pay increase.

Richard West is correct. We simply need to continue to badger the market 
with the message of "hire only RPTs", and RPTs need to stand their ground 
and not cave to the overhype of benefits. In my opinion, cautcom would 
better serve the membership by publishing information on how to compare 
employee salary packages vs self-employed earnings, comparing the value of 
different types of benefits, teaching technicians the reality that college 
human resources departments are designed only to respond to crisis, etc. And 
I do disagree in principle with whoever said just preaching "hire only RPTs 
and pay them more" isn't a very effective message. "You get what you pay 
for" has always been a very effective message. And we need to badger music 
departments with staffing education. We need to sound more like the late 
Newton Hunt - "40 pianos per technician and no more" rather than, "oh, if 
you don't think of yourself as a conservatory, you can probably get away 
with 80 or more per technician". That's where we let our own membership 
down, because that just isn't possible. Next, we need some sort of resource 
technicians and administrators can access that compares what the university 
pays to what can realistically be earned as a self-employed technician, with 
reminders that the school isn't competing against another employer.

But when we preach to technicians that they've got to be RPT, and they've 
got to pass this or that PTG endorsement to be a university tech, and then 
throw them out to the wolves with no support for increasing salaries to 
reflect the higher skills, then what do those designations and endorsements 
really mean for the tech?

Jeff