MIN/1996/09
Minute: the wage ratio
- Kind:
- Minutes
- Date:
- September 1996
- Origin:
- Stewardship, meeting at River House.
- Access:
- Open.
The decision that offices may be paid, and the ratio that limits it. Two stewards dissented and their reasons are minuted.
MINUTE OF THE STEWARDSHIP MIN/1996/09
SUBJECT: PAYMENT OF OFFICES
1. RESOLVED that an office requiring more than twenty hours a week may be salaried, and that the Institute ceases to pretend that such work is voluntary. Four posts are salaried from January: archivist, treasurer, correspondent, and the custodian at North.
2. The reason is stated plainly. Unpaid full-time office can be held only by people with other means, and the Institute has for seventeen years been governed disproportionately by such people. This is a defect and payment is the remedy.
3. RESOLVED that the highest salary shall not exceed two and one half times the lowest, that both figures shall be published annually by post and not by grade, and that no salary shall be set by the person receiving it.
4. RESOLVED that a salaried post carries no additional standing, no vote, and no precedence. A paid archivist is an archivist.
5. DISSENT of two members, minuted at their request: that payment will produce a class of people whose livelihood depends on the Institute continuing in its present form, and that such people will not be able to recommend its reduction. The stewardship does not consider this answered and has recorded it here rather than in a reply.
6. The dissent at 5 is to be reprinted in every subsequent minute concerning salaries, and has been.
Reconciled with the Common Record
Catalogued at the North House · reproduction permitted for study · redactions are not itemised