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I work as a technology coordinator for a bunch of rural and very rural school districts and towns and stuff. All the school districts underpay and cheat me but I give a lot of leeway because it's meaningful work. Like one school pays me 1000 dollars a year, but like, it's a 28 student one room two teacher schoolhouse so I'm happy to take the job like I'm a kid mowing a lawn. The aggregate of all of the schools pay me an okay amount, not great, but okay. I very obviously should break away from this being a web of individual separate jobs and just become a contractor and take jobs like this generally but it feels hard to care. I am making less than other people in IT but I don't really want for anything and I don't really feel like I want to put the squeeze on a bunch of poverty schools?
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Aug 27, 2018 18:47
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:12 |
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glowing-fish posted:How many hours do you have to work for that 1000 dollars? And is it mostly onsite or remote? My employment is hilariously convoluted. I work basically 28 hours a week for one school district and 7 hours a week at another which is two paychecks but are give me some benefits jointly (like, they coordinate for vacation time and sick days and stuff) then work on call for the vague local government of one of the districts where I am loosely on call for the town library/town office/fire department/sheriff's office/plow shed/whatever where that is either separate hours or allowed to overlap with hours at the larger school depending how important something sounds and how much the school department needs favor with the town at the moment. (if the dispatch computer is down at the fire station no one at the school minds if I disappear to go fix that, but I would fix the land assessor's computer after the school day). I am also employed separately by the special ed department of one school just because they like.... have computers and like, separate budgets meant they paid for stuff for them out of a separate fund than the school. Then I have the weird little one room schoolhouse ~4 hours a month (one morning), for 1000 dollars a year, where that makes zero economic sense but I already do so many other schools and it's so little and sad that I basically do it as charity because it's a <30 student school for 5 entire towns and the next nearest school is 45 minutes away. And it makes no economical sense as a job but it's like my 13th job and 4th paycheck so I just basically count it as quasi pro-bono work that doesn't need to make financial sense. It's 500 dollars at christmas and 500 dollars in july which is the month all the school jobs are off unpaid. (which is really way less than 500 dollars because taxes, but it's a fun 500 dollar check at times that I want 500 dollars and the tax bill is months later)
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Aug 28, 2018 05:47
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glowing-fish posted:
I would say not. Since it's basically a bunch of fixed jobs paid on a regular schedule and I have like, an office, in some of the buildings. It's a weird middle ground between having a dozen separate jobs and just having one with a bunch of sites. I don't think it's a very common setup and I don't think I have a good name for it.
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Aug 28, 2018 12:53
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PT6A posted:Yeah, it's certainly not all non-profits, but a lot of them rely on guilt and the idea that you're contributing to making the world a better place, to exploit the gently caress out of employees. Like I said, I work for far too low pay for a bunch of the schools. I could phrase it like they are guilting me out of it, but it seems legitimately like me squeezing an extra 5000 or whatever out of them would help me very marginally and hurt them very greatly. Like in some pure economic terms clearly the one room school s robbing me of my labor and I should guillotine them for paying less than market rates and taking the sweat of my brow. But like, who cares? I don't care. Some stuff DOES make the world a better place but isn't economical to fund and taking very low pay is a way to split the difference between doing something as pure volunteer work and demanding market rates for the labor. Me squeezing a few more dollars out of that school isn't really going to change my economic situation but everyone getting paid correctly WOULD change their economic situation. So everyone getting paid, but not really is the compromise that leaves everyone pretty okay.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:59
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PT6A posted:Yeah, it's obviously a balance. There's a difference between doing what you're doing, or helping out a friend for below-market-rate or something, and a non-profit offering a full-time job at clearly exploitative wages and guilting employees into staying. What you're doing is essentially charity -- think of it as giving the difference between what you are making and what you could be making -- and charity is one of humanity's most noble callings, but it shouldn't be a full-time gig. I think if it's guilt or charity kinda just depends how you feel about doing it. If they got mean or demanding my opinion would shift I'm sure. I kinda feel like even in a better world where schools were funded correctly it'd still be a place to work that made you less than going and working at a corporate office or something. If everyone was a perfect paperclip machine optimized to make money i think a lot of places that did good stuff would be stuck with no employees or only employees sorted down to the bottom of their profession. Part of the pay is like, supporting the thing. Where that breaks between charity and exploitation is kinda just, whatever you feel at the time.
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Sep 5, 2018 16:53
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roomforthetuna posted:If the person who runs the charity makes a lot more money from the charity-work than you, a charity employee, then you're getting to do both charity and being exploited by wealthy people. That sounds like a thing for a non-profit that actually runs a business and makes profits and is more non-profit in name only. For an organization like a school that just doesn't make money it's hard to figure out a structure by which like, the principal is pocketing the money I make off the kids or something. It's just not built like that.
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Sep 5, 2018 18:37
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:12 |
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roomforthetuna posted:Agreed. I wasn't speaking to your situation specifically, just pointing out that you can't really generalize that working for a charity is donating the rest of your potential salary to that charity - in many cases it's donating the rest of your potential salary to the CEO's family, just like at a regular business. (Except that there's a cap on it for nonprofits, but that cap is somewhere over $1M per person so eh.) There are charities that are just flat scams. Those exist. I think a lot of those millionares are still working under market rates though. Like a guy making 1 million a year that is doing work that would get him 5 million a year anywhere else. The market rate of CEOs is absurd and wrong in general, but I think a lot of charities still expect you to take a large paycut even if the objective number of dollars you get is high. Like everyone is making like half what they could if they worked for raw money, even if the CEO type means that "half" still means "way too much".
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Sep 5, 2018 19:28
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