PROPOSAL TYPE
Working Group
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
RELATED TOPICS
- Advocacy
- Labor and Economy
- Reflections on the Field
ABSTRACT
From Amazon unions to Covid layoffs American employees are talk about pay, and public history professionals are no different. The growing effort among art museum employees to speak honestly and openly about pay and other workplace issues, challenges public history professionals to act likewise.
This group will use and expand upon the 2016-2017 Public History Careers Report and Survey, discuss ways to make the data more easily accessible, and the create a platform for the sharing of anonymous, but well described, pay information. The group will also reach out to related associations to connect with any similar projects or working groups in development, and morph as needed.
DESCRIPTION
This working group will be product focused. We want to create easily accessible tools for public history professionals and students to better understand their value, and more confidently advocate for themselves and their colleagues, while at the same time help grant funding agencies, BORs, and other historical site leaders better understand how their employee compensation compares to others in the field.
I am looking for people willing to participate in the working group. Those with ideas on how to implement, expand, or refine the project should email me ([email protected]) to join the working group.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Alena Pirok, Georgia Southern University, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2022. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Alena – interesting idea for a working group. A fair number of folks working in the public history field work for government agencies that have fairly rigid (and often public) pay tables. How do (or do?) government historians fit within you concept?
I’ll have to think on that one. My first impulse is to think that if the information is public now, it would be all the more easy to collect and present the information together with the other data. Thank you for the thought!
AAM recently published a blog post from a staffer at the Bakken Museum that aligns well with this topic. You might reach out to them!
https://www.aam-us.org/2022/06/02/building-salary-equity-at-the-bakken-museum/?utm_source=American+Alliance+of+Museums&utm_campaign=c6fdbf0151-FieldNotes_2022_June6&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f06e575db6-c6fdbf0151-67783910
Hi Alena, I love this idea for a working group and product. This may already be on your radar, but I would consider incorporating the rates of freelance consultants, too. Consultants would definitely benefit from having this kind of information when negotiating rates with clients. The NCPH consultants committee might have some ideas about how to best aggregate/capture this data.
Great idea! Thank you. I’ll reach out.
Thanks for proposing this great topic! I’d love to see the WG address ways that NCPH members, and the organization itself, can advocate for more just financial compensation within museums and historic sites. (I know we’ve made some moves in that direction!) It strikes me that *knowing* your worth and advocating for yourself at a particular workplace doesn’t necessarily yield positive results if the pay scale and structure of labor relations within the larger sector is exploitative.