Dear folks:
Just caught up with these comments. I agree with Janice Klein who made me think about the connection between 'living wage' & the prevention of burnout.
We need to consider for example that
half of the relatively highly paid doctors in Canada & two thirds of doctors in the U.S.A report overwork & burnout--& this was
2 full years before current pandemic circumstances (Goldman, 2018; Larkin, 2018). Like museum workers, medical professionals are 'occupational devotees' too.
In this light, high pay in the context of overwork cannot really address the problem of the resulting stress & burnout. Indeed, it potentially may exacerbate burnout by adding pressure to be 'worth' your higher pay. Regardless of how much I am paid, I still am apparently irredeemably stressed, burnt out, & likely looking to leave the field as a result.
We need to fix burnout
CAUSES!
For my complete analysis, see the "Decent Working Conditions are Essential for Decent Compensation" pp. 222-244 chapter in Dawn E. Salerno, Mark S. Gold, & Kristina L. Durocher eds.
For Love or Money: Confronting the State of Museum Salaries. Edinburgh, UK & Cambridge, MA: MuseumsEtc, pp. 222-224 at
https://solvetasksaturation.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/thistle_decentworkingconditions.pdf . {Note that link lists all the chapters & MuseumsEtc gave each author in this book the right to freely distribute their chapter PDFs, so make use of your networks to get free access to read other chapters of interest.}
In the end analysis, fixing one of these problems by itself can do little or nothing to improve the other. Having failed to address both crises for much, much too long now, we--that is
"all" stakeholders--have put ourselves in a position where we have to work at fixing them at the same time--admittedly not presently the best of timing for museum worker task saturation or well-being.
Here, I cut & paste something I have blogged before:
Surely, we don’t have to go all “wobbly” on the AAM to set up an International Museum Workers of the World union to get what we need. Joseph Ansel (1995: 92-3, 98-9), in his article on the unionisation of the Exploratorium, recommends the advantages of staff associations as a better alternative to a union.
Ansel, Joseph G. Jr. 1999. “The unionization of the Exporatorium” in Institutional Trauma: Major Change in Museums and Its Effect on Staff, ed. Elaine Heuman Gurian. Washington: American Association of Museums.
In the past, after reading Ansel, I had determined that museum workers' best course of action would in fact be to use our professional museum associations as the much more effective & efficient means of achieving progressive ends collectively as an entire profession rather than to rely on isolated individual institutional staff associations to improve museum working conditions. Sadly, I have found
no appetite among the professional museum associations I have associated with in the past 40+ years
to address working conditions or pay--including gender pay equity--matters in our industry. Recently, I have started to 'wobble' on my original determination.
One way or the other, it seems to me that,
as those negatively affected by burnout, we now have no choice but to 'bell the cat' & begin to take ACTION.
"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight / Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight" (Bruce Cockburn 1983 "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" lyric).
Respectfully yours
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Paul C.Thistle
Director/Curator (retired)
Stratford, Ontario
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-26-2021 02:38 PM
From: Janice Klein
Subject: Museum Worker Burnout Causes & Solutions
As I said in response to Beth Merritt's blog:
All of these suggestions are nice, but the number one way to prevent museum professional burnout is to treat us like integral and important parts of the museum and pay us all a living wage.
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Janice Klein
Tempe AZ
Original Message:
Sent: 05-25-2021 01:00 PM
From: Susan Baley
Subject: Museum Worker Burnout Causes & Solutions
Thank you for sharing this blog post! I am glad to see someone addressing the root causes of burnout! Burnout was the primary reason I left the museum field for 5 years after my first job. It saddens me to know that one-fifth of museum staff are facing the same problem more than 20 years later.
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Susan Baley
Executive Director
108 Contemporary
Tulsa OK
Original Message:
Sent: 05-24-2021 05:20 PM
From: Paul Thistle
Subject: Museum Worker Burnout Causes & Solutions
Dear colleagues: [indulgence coveted for cross-posting]
Today's Solving Task Saturation for Museum Workers blog post "Solving Museum Worker Burnout & the 'Immorality of Inaction': FIX CAUSES (vs. Solely Symptom 'Self-Care')" reports on a wide variety of resources that recommend solutions to the problem of burnout among workers in the museum field & the wider world of work.
An argument is presented that the primary focus in all too many resources on this subject is actually evidence of a serious failure to address the root causes rather than simply the symptoms of burnout on museum workers.
Necessary practical solutions for addressing poor working conditions leading to burnout in the museum field are identified.
Respectfully yours
Paul C. Thistle
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Paul C.Thistle
Director/Curator (retired)
Stratford, Ontario
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