> Lesson learned: promote events well in advance!
Corollary One: Know your intended audience so you avoid schedule conflicts.
>So then, in order to have dedicated "pro" cone chasers, it follows that they
>have to be compensated somehow.
>[...]
>So then, let's assume that we have 5 corner stations, and that each station
has
>5 people on it. If each person is paid $5/hour, then it's costing the club
>$125/hour in labour to keep the course manned.
On the rest of it, I don't want to sound too discouraging, but you need to
address some more facts before attempting to present this to a region's Solo
board.
State minimum wage in Oregon is something like $6.50/hr. Add in something
like 1% Oregon OSHA liability insurance, 6% SSI, and a few other items, so
it's going to be more like $8/hr actual labor cost per person. Must provide
30 minute lunch break and two 10 minute "coffee" breaks for an 8 hour shift.
If you go over 8 hours, then you must provide another 1 hour dinner break and
pay overtime at 150% of normal salary... shouldn't be a problem if your staff
starts at 9a (first car out) and quits at 5:30p, but you won't get help with
course setup/teardown.
Anyway, with your staff of 5 people at 5 stations, hourly cost is $200. To
get back to $125/hr, you can reduce the staff to 3 people at 5 stations (3 on
course stations, timing, and grid). That still leaves setup, teardown, &
tech inspection as volunteer worker assignments.
>The only problem I see is a little increased overhead on the part of the
region
>to recruit, train, and organize the labour pool.
Try a lot of increased overhead! You now have W-2 slips and SSI statements
to annually prepare in addition to keeping track of addresses. You must
write and approve the paychecks at the end of the event. You must recruit
(15-30 minutes per person hired and ??? for each individual not hired) and
train the personnel. With a group of 15-25 people, you'll have 1-2 people
sick/unavailable on any given workday. Turnover is likely going to be 25+%
per event, so instead of hiring 15-25 people per season, you'll need to hire,
at a minimum, something like 45 people over the course of a 10-event season.
It's likely that the person in charge of workers would be asking for
compensation since that individual is spending 3-4 hours per week managing
your labor pool. And then you fall down a slippery slope of who
should/shouldn't be paid for their region's work.
Most organizations draw less than 100 competitors per event with a typical
entry fee of $15-20. If you totally man their events (setup/teardown/tech in
addition to grid & coursework), you'll end up doubling their entry fees. The
larger organizations (Oregon Region qualifies with average attendance over
130) are going to end up with 50-75% higher fees depending on other factors
such as site cost and equipment maintenance.
What effect, other than monetary, would the lack of entrant work assignments
have? The target audience would spend only 2 hours instead of 4 hours at the
event and there'd be less forced mingling of entrants. Travel time to the
event does not change. Preparation (tire swaps, car cleanout, etc.) doesn't
change. Does the target audience perceive that benefit as being worth a
50-100% price increase for the same seat time?
George Emery
gemery@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/gemery
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