posted
This is difficult for me to put into words exactly what I am trying to say, but that is what I love about Hatrack. It gives me a chance to bounce some crazy theories around until they start to make sense.
There is a class of occupation that I would define as Callings. These are jobs that a person feels compelled to do.
Certainly the Clergy fall into this category, but so do Nurses, Teachers, Firemen, Policemen, Soldiers and others.
This is compared to occupations such as Accountants, Garbage Men, and Factory Workers, who's jobs are not as compelling.
I don't know anyone who says they felt a need to do tax work. I do know many who have said they have a need to help others or teach or protect.
This calling is good in that all of these positions are things that benefit society as a whole.
Yet these callings are bad, in that people with these callings will agree to work for minimal wages.
The fact that someone feels compelled to preach or teach means that they will take what is offered. The result is that teachers and police men and soldier and such are paid at the low end of the pay scale, and their managers often feel that this is doable because there are always others who have recieved the callings.
Add to that those who do those jobs without the callings, but because they seem to think it is the thing to do. There are women who go into nursing to find a doctor to marry. There are teachers who teach because they felt comfortable in school as students and never wanted to leave that comfort. There are Policemen who like abusing the law. There are ministers who like the power of the flock.
These non-called are most likely the ones to strive for management positions. The teacher called to teach wants to teach, not be a superintendent. So management is often those who do not understand the calling, and assume the lack of financial demands of those called is due to the pliant cowardice of their underlings.
The result is a lack of pay increases to those who do the society great service. (And often, an increase in pay to those who sit in managerial positions and play power games)
I don't know what to do about this, but would appreciate others points of view.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Do you remember that space ship, I think it was in Life the Universe and Everything, where they had all the people they really didn't want in the society in the other spaceship? And then all the "worthwhile" folks died from a telephone receiver-borne illness?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Same applies to many other professions. For example, public interest lawyers make much less than attorneys at big firms. This applies to private public interest groups (ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, legal aid etc.) but also government lawyers (prosecutors, public defenders, etc.).
I'm going to school for 3 years, paying a lot of tuition while not earning anything, and working as an unpaid intern in the summers in order to get a job that pays less than half of my old salary. And I couldn't be happier. But of course, my law degree will always leave me the option of taking a non-calling, higher paid job if I want to. Doctors are likely in a similar situation.
Why is this the case? I have no idea. I'm sure supply and demand determines part of it. The other part is that if the salaries were raised, more non-called people would be interested, and the job would lose its designation as a Calling.
posted
Let's not forget the day care workers and "domestic engineers"
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Boon
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posted
You aren't implying that I'm paid well, are you? Or that, because I sit in an office, I couldn't have been "called" to my profession?
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