As promised, here's a plot of HSC instructor pay over time. Compare this graph with the previous post. It should be pretty obvious why membership dues have outpaced inflation over the past 15+ years. Note: (1) "Total instructor pay" includes the head instructor's salary as well as the Youth program and instructor training (i.e. all wages), but does not include things like manuals, lifejackets, etc. (2) It also doesn't take into account the free club membership that all sailing instructors get (a $200+ value in 2011), which is a total cost to the club of around $200 X 75 instructors = $15,000. May or may not be significant depending on your point of view.
Note that instructor hourly pay has doubled since 1994, far outpacing inflation. WHY? And total dollars going to instructors is "off the chart." This seems to imply more paid instructors working ever more hours. Not coincidentally, over the same period of time, the price of a general club membership has climbed much faster than the rate of inflation. Aichee wawa.
If you want to do your own analysis or check ours, ask Margaux or Michelle or another BOC member for the relevant data. I couldn't find info for all years (some disposed of perhaps by Mr. Rogers?), but I didn't spend that much time in the files either. However, all years aren't necessary to plot the overall trend.
Time will continue to reveal the hoodwink Rogers and his coterie pulled on this institution, taking advantage of UW's general disorganization. Sad really, but not irreversible in the long term.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with your analysis is that you do not take into account that the union and the university imposed a minimum wage on all employees. This was far greater than what the instructors were getting paid at the time.
ReplyDeleteBy not taking into account actual events, you are able to paint a picture that fits into your world view (i.e. Hoofers has a bunch of crooks running the show.)
The overall minimum wage also went up significantly in the past few years, definitely within the past ten years, so that also contributed to rising instructor pay. As for your "total pay", the youth program is a moneymaker for the club so it should be figured separately. Not such a simple picture after all, eh.
ReplyDeleteThe youth program shows a profit through crooked accounting.
ReplyDelete"Bernie", do you have documentation to back that up?
ReplyDeleteAs for the other good comments above, "Anonymous" is apparently talking about UW's "Living wage" requirement for LTE employees. That policy was instituted by former Führer John D. Wiley because so many people with families were working as LTE's. The policy does not apply to student positions for which the minimum wage is still $7.25/hr, and these are the majority of sailing instructor positions.
Thus, your point actually seems to support our inference that many of the paid sailing instructors are middle aged slobs hanging around and milking Hoofers for lack of a life. (apologies to anyone who actually is supporting their family on their summer sailing instructor job.) (and by "family" I don't mean your girlfriend/boyfriend and his or her drug habit.)
You can see the evidence of crooked accounting yourself in the club budget. That's if they let you see a full copy, natch. The youth program pays a small use fee to the outing club for canoes but it doesn't pay anything for Techs and Sloops. That means none of the extensive wear and tear that the kids put on boats and sails gets assigned to the youth program in the budget. Same for pier use, motorboat use and storage space.
ReplyDeleteThere are opportunity costs on top of it, the "club" has three fleets of junior boats that are too small for many club members and they want to downsize the Lasers too, with Radial rigs.
The youth program is like a parasite that's taken over the club's resources for its own use and they report the income but not the costs so the youth program "shows a profit" even when it doesn't make money.
All this has been debated in the Club for years, through Rogers' Reign of Error. As it should have been. The problem is not just crooked accounting, but the reason this Club has crooked accounting. Rational analysis is fantastic, ye University brats; but walk up to North Hall on Bascom Hill, to the Political Science Department, and learn ye selves something about the human species in its relations. Rational debate has NO EFFECT when the folks making the decisions are financially interested in the outcome. Period. Packing a Board of Directors with employees to vote is not conducive to rational, disinterested thought. This is the problem to solve.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone have numbers on lessons taught on techs and other boats the youth program uses? It should be possible to estimate how much of the wear and tear is do to the youth program and how much of it is from general club use. Same for motorboat and other supposed costs. My 2 cents.
ReplyDeleteFletcher:
ReplyDeleteLooking at the online schedule for the Hoofer Youth Program, it appears that they use the boats for ~44 days per summer. The kiddies are there for 7 hours each day, though this counts lunch.
I don't know how many boats are in use during this time, but typically the -minimum- number of instructors present is 4, so figure at least 40 kids and probably more like 60-80 (this ratio is based on other summer programs I am familiar with). So on an all-techs day, we can estimate something like 180 boat-hours of usage per day. Actual usage is probably lower, on average, but I think it would be fair to assume at least 2000 total boat-hours of use per season.
As for non-youth usage, there are probably good statistics available but I don't have access to them. My guess is that 500 people get tech ratings each year, so that's at least 3000 hours right there. Non-lesson usage probably exceeds that, but to what degree I don't know.
For techs, youth usage is likely <15% of total usage. I would not be surprised if their damage rate, however, is a greater proportion of total damage than the usage rate. The shop staff, when they aren't hovering their noses over an open can of paint, might be able to provide more information in this regard.
Has anybody seen uploaded yet to Youtube footage from the security cameras installed in the Hoofer Shop, or are Union Administrators still sitting on that?
ReplyDeleteWhat footage? Something in particular, or are you just trying to stir up more trouble? As far as I know the video is disposed of every day, unless it shows certain people who aren't supposed to be there.
ReplyDeleteOkay, we have access to pretty much all HSC data on this, though as anyone who's been to a budget meeting knows, deciphering the budget is like trying to untangle a big knot of rubber bands--while you're drunk. But let's try.
ReplyDeleteYouth instructors typically work at least 3000 hours/season total, meaning perhaps 2000 hrs of boat usage (as "Anonymous" noted above), or 20% of total wear and tear on the boats. Assuming the club spends $50,000 on a new Tech (or other) fleet every 5 years, that's $10,000/year, or around $2000/year due to the Youth Prog. Even if we double that, it's just $4000, meaning the Youth Prog is still in the black. You could also include costs like time spent by the HOI cooking up new Youth courses, wear on motorboats, lifejackets, and other stuff, etc. But even with a big pile of documents in front of us, it's hard to say how much the Youth program really costs.
In any event, ripping off UW profs so their kids can go sailing isn't part of the club's mandate.
Fleet commander says:
ReplyDelete"Youth instructors typically work at least 3000 hours/season total, meaning perhaps 2000 hrs of boat usage (as "Anonymous" noted above), or 20% of total wear and tear on the boats."
If there are 3000 youth instructor hours in a year, I would expect -more- than 3000 annual hours of boat usage due to the youth program. This is because there are typically more boats being sailed than just the ones with youth instructors in them.
The number of students could be estimated by looking at program costs (found in the brochure) and revenues (found in the budget). This may reveal that my 60-80 student estimate is way off in one direction or the other.
Also, it's not clear where your 20% figure came from.