5-year pay scale . . . An "independent contractor" rant (with bonus COLLUSION!)

[The Man in Blue]

10 hours ago, JSam21 said:

Here in STL, everyone goes through one person for HS baseball on the Missouri side. So, unless the schools want to find their own officials for games, that's who you have to deal with. Varsity $96/game with no DH discount, sub-varsity $75 with 2:15 time limit regardless of conference. While we do have more schools down here... there is only one person to get games from.

Do you guys have an assigner up there or do the schools find their own people? I know when I worked in IL, there were a handful of conferences around the STL Metro that would go through an assigner while once you got outside of the metro area, it went to individual schools contracting officials (sometimes YEARS in advance).

 

 

When I started, it was mainly schools assigning for themselves.  Since I came back from Mississippi, we are looking at 90-95% of the area schools using two (and a half) assignors for baseball and two (and a half) assignors for softball.  Not good.

Baseball assignor #1 (main one) -- gives you only JV until you crack into his inner-circle.  Holds 80% of the schools.

Baseball assignor #2 -- younger guy who kind of fell into it.  No issues with him.

Baseball assignor 1/2 -- a softball assignor who was asked to take on baseball for three schools.

Softball assignor #1 -- has screwed things up royally over the last few years and is losing a number of his schools this year.  Major issues as his MO had traditionally been to take the best games for him and his buddies, then farm out the scraps.  This year he was frequently screwing up assignments (not assigning, assigning for games that were canceled, sending out claiming he needed an "emergency replacement" when he never sent the game out in the first place . . . ).

Softball assignor #2 -- No issues and I do most of my work through him (he is the guy who has a few baseball schools also).  He does not like using technology (Arbiter) but is being forced to because he is "partnered up" with . . . 

Softball assignor 1/2 -- Partner of SB#2 above.  Supposedly he was getting out of it because some agreement was made through the association (although the association doesn't assign!) that he would take on volleyball and give up softball . . . yet he holds a couple of cards still.  Just as bad as SB#1 . . . long history of frequently screwing up assignments (even no-showing himself a number of times).

All of them except BB#2 have their noses up the state association's backside and have "been to state" numerous times.  None of them are people who I will willingly work games with.  They are all the "we know you are here" types.

[SeeingEyeDog]

@The Man in Blue, the only positive thing I can say is...I do like that they have built small increases in year over year. I used to do work booked on a contracted basis for 15 years. I had clients who pre-dated me with the company by 5-10 years. All of those "legacy" clients had contracts for 2 years minimum some for up to 5 years at the same rates for the same goods and services. These were my most contentious and challenging clients because no matter how much homework you do preparing a contract, the economy even in the best of times, is simply too fluid for a contracted rate to continue to make financial sense for both parties to continue to be happy with the relationship. Either those clients ended up crying uncle before the end of the contract wanting to re-negotiate or my bosses were screaming at me that I negotiated a poor deal and now we are stuck. Solution?

All NEW clients I brought on board were signed to 1 year contracts. And by the time I left the job, this became my company's culture and best practice for all clients new and returning. And it became a nice annual tradition to sit down to generous meals of celebration with all of our clients' teams individually and review our relationship. What did we do together that year? How much goods and services were consumed and how much money changed hands? And finally, what were they anticipating for the needs of their company going into the next year? More of the same? A growth year? Things going to slow down a bit? And that gave us a jumping off point for next year's pricing...

I don't know how all of this translates to umpiring but, I will agree with @Velho...the schools we work for are united. Umpires and officials need to be united too. It may sound like rhetoric but, it's true...there is strength in numbers. We are all more easily taken advantage of professionally as individuals. Ok, great...the conferences have presented their pricing. It's time to start calling every umpire who works these games and get their reactions to these terms and start scheduling meetings of these umpires to talk about what terms you will present as a counter-negotiation for the terms you all will agree to work under. They collude? You collude. If you harnessed all the collective bargaining power of all the working umpires in the market...what else is the client going to do? Where else are they going to go to get their umpires and officials? Who's going to blink first?

~Dawg

[grayhawk]

14 hours ago, SeeingEyeDog said:

They collude? You collude.

 

[johnnyg08]

On 6/12/2024 at 2:55 PM, Mudisfun said:

I bet they included the math to keep schools from trying to slip in the 'you are already here

We got caught in that one time. 

"fool me once" 

[SeeingEyeDog]

2 hours ago, grayhawk said:

 

OHHHHHHHH YES! And don't forget the punchline! Appropriate since this is an Illinois related conversation...

~Dawg

[johnnyg08]

A $2 or $3 increase is silly. It might as well be zero and $75 for the next academic year is crazy. 

And probably the most annoying part of all of this is that schools will not be able to keep track of the changes. So some games you'll get $80, some games you'll get $75 and you spend $50 worth of time chasing $3

[The Man in Blue]

On 6/12/2024 at 2:55 PM, Mudisfun said:

I bet they included the math to keep schools from trying to slip in the 'you are already here, so your 2nd game fee is less' line. Keeps everyone on the same page... the page that you are seriously underpaid.

For H2O Polo here in So Cal, we get hammered that way... $70 for a varsity game and $60 for a subvarsity game... but if we have a V and JV game scheduled, we only get $105, not the $130 you would expect... if we get scheduled a V/JV/FS then it is $140, not the $190 the math says we should be receiving.

Baseball, game fees are per game, regardless if you work a DH or not.

19 hours ago, johnnyg08 said:

We got caught in that one time. 

"fool me once" 

 

Yeah . . . No.  That doesn't hold any water.  If you were really paying me for travel time, I would be getting more for driving an hour than my partner who drove 5 minutes.  Did you pay me more?  No?  So why are you paying me less?  I didn't put out any coupons saying "save 10% on your second game."  I do consider a bulk discount, but we are only playing two, not five.

[The Man in Blue]

2 hours ago, johnnyg08 said:

A $2 or $3 increase is silly. It might as well be zero and $75 for the next academic year is crazy. 

And probably the most annoying part of all of this is that schools will not be able to keep track of the changes. So some games you'll get $80, some games you'll get $75 and you spend $50 worth of time chasing $3

 

I thought the same at first, but if you look at the math . . . 

$60 . . . $3 = 5%

$70 . . . $3 = 4.3%

$75 . . . $3 = 4%

If you are talking an annual increases in a wage sense, that is on par.  Of course, when you use a flat dollar, that percentage goes down as the wage goes higher.

[johnnyg08]

16 minutes ago, The Man in Blue said:

 

I thought the same at first, but if you look at the math . . . 

$60 . . . $3 = 5%

$70 . . . $3 = 4.3%

$75 . . . $3 = 4%

If you are talking an annual increases in a wage sense, that is on par.  Of course, when you use a flat dollar, that percentage goes down as the wage goes higher.

Fair...but IMO that's not the right approach when the dollar amounts are already small. So 10% in yr one is $6. In a two person game it impacts their budget a whopping $12 per game. A small school in my area has an athletic/activities budget of $800k....a 20% increase would have zero impact on their budgets

 

 

[Thatsnotyou]

This all comes down to two things:

 

1) What’s the least amount of money they can pay to get officials to cover games? 
 

2) Schools know we are all independent contractors, so we’ll either work or not work (see #1), we can’t “negotiate”. They set what they set and unless it turns into a disaster, they are done thinking about it. 
 

So for anyone that says “just don’t work those games”, I get it, but you aren’t really accomplishing much besides keeping yourself off the field. 

[The Man in Blue]

2 hours ago, johnnyg08 said:

Fair...but IMO that's not the right approach when the dollar amounts are already small. So 10% in yr one is $6. In a two person game it impacts their budget a whopping $12 per game. A small school in my area has an athletic/activities budget of $800k....a 20% increase would have zero impact on their budgets

I don’t disagree, I was just pointing out that it makes sense IF you are using that reference point.

I agree about the budget issue.  As I pointed out above, playing 28 games instead of 35 games allows you to bump the pay from $60 to $75 with ZERO budgetary impact.  Not mention, you are going to lose at least 7 games to weather/no time to make them up anyway!

[johnnyg08]

6 hours ago, The Man in Blue said:

I don’t disagree, I was just pointing out that it makes sense IF you are using that reference point.

I agree about the budget issue.  As I pointed out above, playing 28 games instead of 35 games allows you to bump the pay from $60 to $75 with ZERO budgetary impact.  Not mention, you are going to lose at least 7 games to weather/no time to make them up anyway!

Yes. I agree.