game fees or pay

[sir_eldren]

To Ump76:

I can see your point about how discussing different fees can be a hard point to contend with. I wasn't sure that it was anything important until this last summer when my hockey officials association started negotiating for raises with the local ice rink. We come to find that men in Georgia are paying less to play more games than us while their referees get paid $10 more per game, plus extra fees if the game goes into overtime or starts late. We also found that the men's leagues in Seattle, WA play a few more games a year than our leagues and charge the same amount to their players, yet their ref's get paid from $40 to $60 depending upon the rink and level.

In my town we get paid $25 a game, nothing extra for OT, nothing extra for late finishes, and worst of all: Nothing extra for doing a game alone. While our economy is a bit tough and the rink is under new ownership (that seems to know how money works and is already doing something the previous owner of the rink couldn't do: make money), we were able to use information from several other leagues and officials associations to negotiate for a small pay raise this year and one for next year. It's a start, and with 22 adult teams playing with enough new players to make 2 new teams a year coming in, we've got a good argument that they can't refute. Moreover, we're the only officials association in 90 miles. Nobody else wants to come to our town to officiate and the players won't settle for untrained officials. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, but we had to show them the hard place and they discovered the rock when the talked to the team captains.

While we certainly can't demand $40 a game, we have the leverage to get our first raise in 6 years. And we wouldn't have had that leverage if we didn't know what other professionals in our line of work were earning.