For a long time, the Society of Organists has put out a
schedule of recommended fees. In a moment of weakness I was persuaded to accept the role of Secretary in the Society a few years ago, and through many of the questions that came my way about the schedule I quickly discovered that most people around the country use it as if it were an industry award rate. It is generally regarded as a national pay scale, and has been adopted or recommended by other organists associations in other states. This gives the Victoria-based Society of Organists enormous influence over the shape of the employment of musicians in churches right around the country.
The background of the original schedule of fees was a patchwork of elements drawn from disparate sources, and it was only ever recommended as a basis for negotiating payment. The most important of these was a committee for music in the Uniting Church, which issued a form of contract along with a pay scale in the late-1990s. In adapting this to the Society's needs, I recall some discussion about how pay scales were consulted from the Victorian Music Teachers Association, and the Musicians Union rates for orchestral principals. At that time the methodology was reasonable enough, but no similar exercise has taken place since the original payment schedule was issued.
My problems with this document are manifold. However, if I had to nominate one thing that gets my goat it would be that the structure of workplace law has changed radically over the decade or so since I first saw it, yet this document has carried on with no real effort to bring it into line with current practices for lay people employed for specific purposes in churches. Some revisions have been carried out -- mostly to take account of CPI, thus limiting the question to dollar signs -- but there has been no effort at considering the whole document in the context of the issues it seeks to address.
Now, I will be the first to testify to the dysfunctional employment practices of churches -- having been heartily commended on my efficiency twice, both times as the prelude to the "but we think it would be best to let you go" conversation. Frankly, I think the Society of Organists is actively complicit in this dysfunctional culture because they make no efforts to address employment as part of their service to members beyond the schedule of fees. I can identify four major problems with this default approach:
- Not taking account of the practice at the parish level of employing musicians on a casual or sessional basis rather than as permanent members of staff;
- Failing to respond to changes in workplace law;
- Assuming a structure to work in a position that is not reflected in reality, and ignoring the efforts taken at the denominational level to improve the employment structure of lay workers and lay ministers;
- Using language such as 'qualified,' 'ability,' and 'experienced' without defining the meaning and purpose of such terms.
If I had the opportunity to offer suggestions to address these problems, there are three things I would put forward.
First, the Society of Organists needs to review employment law thoroughly in order to bring its collective knowledge up-to-date. The landscape of industrial relations has altered dramatically twice in the last seven years, most notably through the establishment of Fair Work Australia, and the churches have altered their employment practices accordingly. The Society does a grave disservice to its members by the present lack of engagement with these changes. When I was a member of the council I was frequently told to stop talking 'politics' when I questioned this intertia. The Society would do well to start educating its members -- especially those hardy few of active working age -- about working for churches. The
status quo nurtures ignorance and succours poor workplace practices. The ostrich tactic must be abandoned if the Society is to be seen as a credible voice in recommending payment rates.
Secondly, they need to stop prattling on with ill-defined terms, patronizing waffle such as "The sordid subject of coin (to coin a phrase)...,"
calculation tools that don't relate to the schedule of fees, and dodgy excuses for not facing the issues through special pleading about not being a 'trades union.' All suggestions that revision is necessary have been met with ponderous dismissive statements justifying the document as it stands. These are collective habits of mind that come from admirable motives coupled with a basic lack of seriousness in confronting the issues the document exists to address.
Setting up a pay scale based on a meaningful hourly rate would be more productive. This should consist of a base rate with loadings for regular and occasional services, and related group rehearsals. There should be some allowance made for preparation time, and administrative tasks such as planning hymns and other music, not forgetting the obligatory meetings with clergy. The pay scale needs to be structured to apply explicitly to people according to their attainment of degrees in performance studies or not. It is a
bit embarrassing that the current regime effectively compels someone with an advanced performance degree to
accept the same rate as a colleague whose enthusiasm for the instrument has never extended to troubling themselves with lessons.
It would be more helpful for churches if the pay scale was based on lay ministry stipends, especially if churches were further encouraged to structure music roles as part-time salaried lay ministry positions. There has been a lot of work at the denominational level to address the employment of lay people in pastoral roles in parishes over the last ten years. Documentation resulting from this work is available from denominational websites. I would contend that the existence of the Society's schedule of fees is an active barrier to seeing this work being applied to organists. Yet no-one would disagree that organists carry out an aspect of the minister's role by providing the music at public worship. If an organist is leading specialist group music-making, such as choirs, handbell
groups, or an instrumental combination that busks along with the hymns,
then you have a lay leader exercising a wider pastoral role. The
organist's employment arrangements need to reflect this.
Moreover, organists are already expected to conform to the professional standards component of a lay ministry position, particularly with respect to police checks and ongoing compliance with the Victorian Department of Justice
Working with Children regime. I narrowly missed out on being sent to a diocesan
Power and Trust seminar when these started up several years ago. Many parishes expect the organist to pay for compliance to these professional standards and education programs out of their own pocket, even though this is inevitably made a condition of continuing employment.
Simply offering the time-hallowed excuse that 'most parishes are poor' ignores the
fact that this generally applies only to paying the organist. For
example, I've seen situations where an op-shop manager or the CEO of a parish-based mission agency has earned
more than the parish minister, and all questions of extending this best-practice approach to employing these lay people being emphatically ruled out when the organist's salary came into the discussion. The expectation that parish employees should offer their services as an act of charity, or as a penurious hobby, has long been abandoned in favour of recognition of what you get when you pay nuts if recruiting for a business manager or executive director of an important mission agency. There are other ways to cut
this particular block of ice when it comes to organists.
Encouraging a lay ministry model would provide parishes with a context for assessing the prior experience and (academic) qualifications musicians bring to their work, and allow a process to be taken so that the objectives of having an organist be properly articulated and understood. It would take advantage of existing pathways that have been established in the denominational structure and discourage the residual tendency at the parish level to treat musicians as casual employees or tradesmen (usually without the affording them the dignity of being able to charge accordingly). Further issues not addressed in the Society's schedule of fees, which result in disadvantage to many organists through ignorance -- such as the need for properly formulated employment agreements, leave accrual, superannuation, dispute resolution, and properly spelt-out methods for breaking an employment agreement -- would be resolved by serious engagement with, and adoption of, the common treatment of these things in the existing employment models available in the various denominations.
Finally, casual rates for locum/occasional organists need to be structured in ways that take account of the fact that most of this work comes at short notice, with the consequent requirement of substantial preparation to make a decent sound on instruments that may well have unconventional compasses, non-standard pedal boards, and a host of idiosyncrasies to master in a short space. Working with an unusual style of liturgy where particular skills, such as improvisation, may be required more than elsewhere is an aspect of the organist's craft that is not reflected in the existing pay scale. Untrained musicians cannot generally be expected to take on this sort of work and deliver the high quality of outcome it is reasonable for churches to expect. Moreover, even where there is a longer lead-time in the booking, this work often involves playing for significant events (eg: weddings, funerals, or covering for someone who's decided to take a six-week break from mid-December), or during times in the year where one might reasonably prefer to be on holiday rather than sweltering in the heat of a late-January Sunday morning. The fact is that making a good fist of a casual gig demands higher skills and the devotion of a larger chunk of time to preparation than carrying on in a long-term position under optimal conditions. It would be no bad thing if a stand-in organist with a serious background in performance studies were able to charge something akin to the emergency rates of a plumber, electrician or defense lawyer.
Until that happy day when the Society has a council made up of people who actually understand what they're meant to be about when making recommendations about payment for their peers, I can see that what I'm suggesting here will be dismissed as so much irrelevance to people who simply want to revel in the flood of a rolling Diapason. The fact is that playing the organ in churches is a fairly menial hobby in Australia. Until the organists associations pull their act together that is is how it will continue to be.
