I spoke at the Westside Quilter’s Guild last week, in Hillsboro, OR – a fantastic group of ladies and gents. I received many lovely hugs from the members, as well as a treat of chocolates! Thank you to all who came out to play!
We spoke of making quilts, lessons learned, and of course, we spoke of We Are $ew Worth It.
At the end of the evening, one of the members came up to talk. She is a piano teacher. She told me the story of the local piano teachers all getting together, and deciding to charge similar prices so that they would all be decently paid. And she said that, in the instances she felt like backing down on her rates, she remembered that she owed it to all the teachers to stay strong and claim her hourly fee. After all, learning to play piano at the level that one can then teach it is no small feat.
And it gave me hope. Hope that if I can convince enough people that working for free hurts us all, we WILL all benefit from it.
We make beautiful things. We do it with skills that are learned, honed, and practiced. We invest in expensive equipment to do the work we do.
We are worth a living wage. We really are. We just have to claim it.
Mmhmmmm! Sing it sistah! *waivin hands in the air*
While I applaud people (quilts, piano instructors, or any other maker) working towards getting paid a living and fair wage, when a group of providers (in this case piano teachers) come together and agree on a set price to charge, this gets dangerously close to price fixing which in many cases is illegal. (see Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing)
I would encourage anyone selling goods and services to determine a fair and price for their wares or services (and I jump up and down in excitement when I see a fairly priced quilt on etsy), but I would not recommend getting together with others from the industry to set a defined price for the goods or services.
I agree. I was taught this in a class for sewing teachers. It can be considered collusion. You can use public posted rate sheets to determine your rates. I chose my teaching fees based on the class or demonstration I was doing. Thank you for reminding others of this rule. It does concern me when others are unaware of this federal law that can land them in big trouble.
I would hope that when the piano teachers got together, there was discussion of variation in rates according to education, experience, and ability. Likewise in quilting.
Getting together to decide rates is illegal. It was setting rates like this that lead to the Teapot Dome scandal leading to the banning of these types of getting together to set prices. As the gas stations do, they see the price of the station across the street & check the cost of the gas for him that morning to set his price. Please don’t condone this act. It’s a federal offense. They can be fined, go to jail, banned from teaching, & can have their piano taken.
Don’t you think you are taking this too far? Good grief. What a critical and fault finding society this is. It stifles the very things it purports to champion. Disgusting.
I know that when I see a quilter offering to quilt for the public, I always check the prices they charge. When they charge a reasonable price, I cheer and make sure that I follow them. When I see someone offering to quilt a king sized quilt for $75.00 I just cringe…they are either doing a lousy job or paying themselves pennies an hour, or both! I refuse to even consider competing with those prices. People usually get what they pay for and if they are satisfied with poor quality (be it fabric, thread, batting, quilting), then I really can’t help them. Some quilters think that it is my job to keep their hobby affordable! I see my job as a longarm quilter as taking their beautifully pieced quilt top and enhancing that beauty with thread that holds their quilt sandwich together. I choose to only use quality batting and threads, I’ve taken numerous classes at shows (all out of state for me) as well as classes online, purchased expensive books that improve the quality of my quilting, and last, but not least, I have a high-quality machine with the best SR available so all the stitches are the same (only dropped 4K on that)…I don’t quilt for free (unless it is my choice) or with a “friends and family discount”…I have a business license and quilting is my business. I’ll charge what I consider fair and my customers can pay that to have me quilt for them or they can go to another quilter…or do it themselves. We are skilled artisans and should get paid as such. But plumbers will always make more then we do!
This topic is always such an emotionally fraught one. I’ve read about the subject in many venues – fine artists, quilters, crafters, seamstresses – and it seems there are always people in every camp. The one commonality amongst the ones who don’t charge fair prices, allowing wages for themselves, seems to be this: “Oh, I don’t need to make any money – I just do it because I love it.” This makes me think these people believe that if we love doing it, that should be enough and no money is required. It goes back to the Calvinistic belief that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself – work is supposed to be hard, boring, miserable! I reject all these notions myself – and I can feel people rearing back, offended, but I think if we dig a bit deeper, we will see this unwillingness to value ourselves is at the root of so many justifications. If someone wants to charge less than a standard rate, I believe they still need to state the “retail” price, then show a discount on the bill. In this way, the buying public moves that much closer to understanding the TRUE COST AND VALUE of these skills.