All,

My lab referred to this Oct. 2000 survey to address salary issues.  It ended
up hurting us and turned out to be a tool for management to say our salaries
were right in the range they should be.  So, if you want to improve
histotech pay, do NOT use this survey & wait for the next one.  If you are a
manager and are interested in keeping salaries right where they are, this
survey could be an invaluable tool for you.

Glen Dawson  BS, HT & IHC (ASCP)
Lead IHC Technologist
Milwaukee, WI 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lee & Peggy Wenk [mailto:lpwenk@mail.netquest.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 5:46 AM
To: rueggp; Kitchell, Marianne
Cc: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: Re: salary survey


ASCP Board of Registry (BOR) does the wage and vacancy survey every other
year.

The last time was around Aug - Oct. 2000. Results published in the March
2001 ASCP journal "Laboratory Medicine."

So the results are almost 2 years old. And I know the salaries in our area
have gone UP in the last 2 years!

Which means . . . ASCP BOR will be doing another survey this summer (2002)!
If they do it as they have done in the past, they will send out, randomly,
to approximately 2500 pathology lab managers/supervisors who are ASCP
members. So, please, let your lab manager know that this survey is coming
sometime this July-September, and how important it is to fill it out!

For those of you concerned that "my lab manager isn't ASCP", well, neither
is mine. So they won't be included in the ASCP survey. Sorry. But where else
can ASCP find a listing of lab managers, except through their own list of
members and their jobs?

If you want to see the report from the 2000 survey, click on
http://www.ascp.org/bor/medlab/
and then click on 2000 survey.

With that said - if you want to do your own survey in your own area - there
are two ways that I know of:

1. Human Resources.

Have your HR department call other HR departments in other hospitals/labs,
and do a salary survey. Most HR departments do this every couple of year, to
check what other hospitals/labs are paying, so they can stay competitive.
Find out when HR last did this, and ask them when they are going to do it
again.

2. Other histology supervisors:

You will have to call up other histology supervisors, personally. As one
histotech supervisor to another histotech supervisor. (Sorry, bench techs
usually can't get this information from a histology supervisor.)

Sometimes the histotech supervisors are reluctant to give out this
information. However, they all want and/or need this information. So promise
each one that you call, that, after you get the results from several
hospitals/labs, you will call them back with the results, or will fax them
the results.

Other things you can ask of a supervisor, that HR can't ask of other HR -
- number of techs
- work load (# blocks, # cases)
- types of techniques (muscle biopsies, kidney biopsies, IHC, etc.)

That sometimes gives you a better "feel" for wages. I remember, years ago,
histotechs where I was working were being paid less than most of the
histotechs in the area. Yet HR would not raise our pay, as "everyone wants
to work in our hospital, so we don't have to pay as much to get people to
work here." And yet, many of these same labs (that were paying their
histotech more) sent their muscle and kidney biopsies to us, as well as
their IHC, as they didn't have anyone capable of doing these procedures. So
we were being paid less to do the more complicated procedures. When we
finally presented HR with this information, we finally got our raise (not
that we were paid more than most of the other hospitals/labs, but at least
we weren't being paid less than everyone else).

One other note - whether you are doing the survey yourself or having HR do
it - make sure they ask about different levels of histotechs.

Some places only have one level of histotechs. Some have
histotechnicians/histotechnologists. Other places call it histotech I
/histotech II. Some places have a "training" category, where, if you are
being trained OJT, you may earn, say, 80% of minimum, compared to them
bringing in someone already trained.

Good luck.

Peggy A. Wenk, HTL(ASCP)SLS
William Beaumont Hospital
Royal Oak, MI 48073

----- Original Message -----
From: "rueggp" 
To: "Kitchell, Marianne" 
Cc: 
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2002 3:51 PM
Subject: Re: salary survey


> ASCP already does a salary survey, how often Peggy???
> Patsy
>
> "Kitchell, Marianne" wrote:
>
> >         I need to perform a salary survey for Histotechnologists. Any
> > suggestions?
> >
> > M. Kitchell
> > Novus International
> > St. Charles, Mo. 63304
> >
> > mlkitc@novusint.com
>
>