The dead horse thread

[Israel Stein]

At 08:01 PM 9/2/2006, pianotech-request at ptg.org wrote:
>"An Associate is a member who has not passed the RPT examinations. 
>Associates may be studying piano technology and working toward RPT 
>status, or may be piano retailers, rebuilders, refinishers or other 
>specialists. They may also be outstanding tuners and technicians 
>with many years of experience who have not, or not yet,, for a 
>variety of reasons (some petty, some legitimate), taken the RPT exams."

Ah, yes. Of course you would then have to add something to the effect 
that some may have failed the examination, and some lack the skills 
to pass the examinations. Absolute truth in advertising, buddy, is a 
two-edged sword...

It seems that some people fail to see the difference between the PTG 
and the Yellow Pages. In the Yellow Pages, you pays your money, and 
you can present yourself as anything you want - whether or not you 
have any skill. When you use the name or logo of a skilled trade 
organization in presenting yourself to the public, that constitutes 
an endorsement of your skills. And such an organization has all the 
right in the world to require that you demonstrate those skills 
before it allows you to use its name or logo in advertising your skills.

This organizational right is clearly established in US trade 
legislation and under anti-trust law - including the right to have 
different classes of membership, with different rights and 
obligations. The only proviso is that the classification be conducted 
in a legally acceptable manner - and the PTG testing process and 
membership structure complies with all such legal requirements, and 
we work very hard to see that it continues to do so.

So before anyone starts bandying around words like "Discrimination" 
they ought to familiarize themselves with the law governing trade 
organizations.

And if anyone else has anything further to say about this, I suggest 
they subscribe to the PTG-L list and raise  all the political waves 
they wish - because that is the purpose of that list. The PTG 
welcomes such discussion - as long as it is done in the right 
place.  The Pianotech list exists for the purpose of technical 
discussion, many of the subscribers here are not interested in 
political discussions, many are not even PTG members - this list is a 
forum for the entire worldwide piano technician community, and is not 
the place to discuss internal PTG concerns. This is why separate 
lists have been established for different areas of discussion. But 
the party who started this thread has been told of this once already, 
so which part of this policy can't they understand? I'll spell it 
out: Politics on PTG-L, technical topics here.

Israel Stein