Native Speakers (and their pay)

[Keith GOERINGER]

Vsem privet...

I just wanted to add my $0.02 to George's regarding the issue of pay for
non-citizens working in the US.  I must say that I have strong feelings
about how little some native-speaker university employees are paid.  But an
experience I had working on an exchange program opened my eyes to certain
realities.

On this exchange program, roughly half of the staff was from the
FSU/NIS/CIS, or whatever you want to call it.  They were paid a *fraction*
of what the US and Canadian staff received, and this struck many of us as
blatantly unfair, and smacked of exploitation.  It was pointed out,
however, that there were restrictions on how much money the NIS citizens
could receive, since they were here on a specific type of visa.  I don't
know the specifics of it, but my understanding was that they could not
receive a "salary" per se, since that would involve taxes being withheld,
and so on.  Instead, the money they received was called an honorarium, and
this was permitted.

Beyond this, it was pointed out that the money they *did* receive was
fairly substantial, compared to what they would have been making at home.
(Their room,  board and transportation were taken care of while they were
in the US.)  In fact, a couple of the NIS employees expressed a certain
amount of anxiety over returning to their country with so much cash.

None of this is a justification for exploiting others, and I realize that
the situation with academics is probably different in terms of visa type
and so on, but these things should be taken into consideration.  The bottom
line, IMHO, is the bottom line for the employees.  By and large these are
educated, intelligent adults who know what they are getting into.  I think
most people who come to the US to work under these circumstances simply
feel that it benefits them, financially if not professionally or
emotionally -- we should not lose sight of the fact that life in the NIS is
no picnic now.  (BTW, there is an article on Moscow in the current issue of
National Geographic that touches, superficially, on this.)  I remember
several staff members who said that they would rather not have had to leave
their families/towns/countries for the summer, but they simply couldn't
afford *not* to -- one woman's husband, a paramedic in Piter, hadn't been
paid in six months.  *I tak dalee, i tak dalee*

(Perhaps we can invest that $0.04 that has accrued into getting a Dutch
translation of this...  ;)      )

It would be interesting to hear from any visiting scholars who might be in
this type of situation...assuming that the *vopros* isn't too *bol'noj* (or
*nelovkij*).

Keith

Keith Goeringer
UC Berkeley
Slavic Languages & Literatures
keg at violet.berkeley.edu