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Interesting item about speech recognition - Jean

Posted: Jan 23, 2011

This is an interesting item about MT compensation for editing from someone at M*Modal.

The link:

http://mmodal2.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/mt-compensation/

I'd be definitely interested to read the feedback - JustAMT

[ In Reply To ..]
I wish there were more "suits" reading articles like this...would love to hear the feedback she got!

There're some at the bottom of the article. - Thanks for posting the article here, OP

[ In Reply To ..]
It was no accident that I chose an MTSO that positions itself toward the top of the quality ladder. Not that it gives total security, but I figured I'd be a lot less likely to be canned or have rates plummet even more than usual at such a place.

JustMT, regarding your hope that this little article will have enlightened management, most executives understand extremely well the advantages of a skilled workforce (first-year business school stuff, developed again and again in undergrad and postgrad studies). Then there are the years of experience managing employees of all types. Choosing to lose newbies just as they get good and keep employees who are too dumb or lazy to be hired elsewhere is far from ideal, and decent lower management and supervisory people would also be hard (nearly impossible) to draw and keep.

That said, these are difficult times for the companies, too, not just us, and even very wise executives are having to make various sacrifices to lower prices just to keep their accounts. It can even be a smart thing to position your company at the bottom of the quality ladder with lowest prices, at least temporarily, if a business profit can be made and it keeps the clients afloat.

ITM, in hard times that are destroying many, I'm still afloat and grateful that the company I chose is apparently doing okay.

Great aarticle. I along with many other transcriptionists have, sm - MTftd

[ In Reply To ..]
been trying to say exactly what is being said here. If the pay is cut, the people making the huge line counts are going to suffer. It has never been about not knowing how to do VR (if you are a transcriptonist now, you can do VR now) as some have posted on this board. It is a matter of the money being paid per line and the amount of money being lost for those transcriptonists with the high line counts. If there wasn't so much editing that had to be done on some of those VR jobs, it might be different, but there is no consistency in VR and what you're going to get. If you were straight typing 20,000 to 25,000 lines a pay period, it is highly unlikely you will be able to VR 40,000 to 50,000 lines in the same pay period, not to mention most jobs have you doing both, which is just a slow down.

ASR editors need to be paid far more than they're - currently getting, have the power to get it.

[ In Reply To ..]
Indians can't edit their own work, let alone the mess that is ASR. And we know that ASR can't edit itself, either. Who edits? We former MTs do.

If we staged a sickout or a work slowdown, who, exactly would edit all that work, with all that ridiculously low TAT promised on it? The Indians? The MTSO owners? CEOs? Upper or middle management? Ummm, I don't think so.

We haven't been in such a good bargaining position as this in almost 2 decades. Are we going to miss the boat once again by not organizing and demanding a good wage for our expertise? I certainly hope not.

A sick-out literally while many providers are deciding - between new front-end or back-end systems?

[ In Reply To ..]
Whether to continue to use MT/MEs at all or require clinicians to clean up their own reports?

We're not quite in as good a position as you think at this point, by a long shot. Let the providers invest in the very expensive new systems they're all going to over time, then those still with jobs can reevaluate the situation.

In the meantime, I am SO glad to have a decent job. Do you realize the REAL, unadjusted unemployment rate is about 19%? 1 out of 5 Americans is unemployed or seriously underemployed.

How do you figure we are in such a good position? - Jean

[ In Reply To ..]
Unfortunately, I don't think we are in that great of a position now. No worker is in a very good position right now. I believe that the true unemployment/underemployment rate is somewhere around 25%. I believe that is what it was during the depression (although they probably weren't honest about reporting what the REAL unemployment rate was then, either). One of the things the woman from M*Modal said either in that article I posted or another one she had written was that some individual, a CEO or someone with an equal amount of power in an MTSO was just going to starve out or otherwise get rid of the MT's who had been high producers while typing in order to get more money for himself (she also pointed out that this was fallacious thinking). I think what we should do is when we get stuck with editing, to just document how much more of a percentage of actual lines we really do when editing. The "suits" from the MTSOs read the posts here too. Why not post it here? Maybe one or two of them will eventually get the idea that it would be more profitable to stop constant turnover and reduce other things that cost money (training, benefits as skimpy as they are, etc.)by paying, say, incentive pay so that former high producers while typing can still make at least their same money! Because even if you are doing 25% to 30% more, you are still doing more lines than a lower producer who might edit 300 lines per hour or maybe less. I think we all ought to just sound off about how many lines we edit on a day-to-day basis and point out what percentage more that is, and what kind of a pay cut that will make. I'm presently just typing only, but when I had editing thrown at me the best I could do on a consistent basis was about 350 to 400 lines per hour (closer to 350). Certainly nowhere near 500 lph and I took a $400 per month pay cut in take-home pay (I do about 250 lines per hour typing). If these MTSOs don't shape up and start paying a fair wage for what we do, then I'm afraid the it's not the work that is going to go elsewhere, it's all the good MTs who can't afford to continue to work for starvation wages, or the same pay that we worked 10, 15 and 20 years ago. I also like the idea of trying to figure out how to unionize. I wonder if SEIU would be interested in knowing what is going on here with editing and how to address the problem of continual pay cuts. Unfortunately, how could they organize workers for an MTSO who don't even know who their coworkers are? That's the problem. We work at home and don't know anybody else, or at least not very many. So as a result, the MTSOs have it made. They can and do basically financially abuse us. But I just wonder if there is something we can eventually do about it, but probably not in this economy right now.

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