Bob,
          This sounds like a classical excuse to me but she may be repeating a
higher administrators view.
You may want to point out  that in some ways the processing of  animal tissues
for either research or veterinary medicine, while not always subjected to the
time element as  routine pathology labs, may require a greater range of
techniques and knowledge due to species differences. Financial pressures have
naturally resulted in greater number of  techniques and reproducibility for
human tissues while a relatively low  demand for results in veterinary medicine
have caused animal techniques in general to lag somewhat behind. The techniques
for some species such as dogs and rodents are generally an exception.  If you
have to process tissues for species other than these then you generally have to
either do a trial and error, search the literature or ask services such as
histonet. The processing and examination of animal tissues while not necessarily
more skillfull than human pathology often involves a different type of skill.
It is news to me that pathology laboratory histotechs are paid according to the
time pressures. If this is the  case then they should be receiving so much per
block, section or stain  that they produce or a bonus for numbers in excess of
quotas.
I would suggest that you explore the possibility of a price per block dependent
on the species processed and the work necessary to obtain the results she needs.

Good luck to you.
Barry


Bob Bacon wrote:

> Hi Everyone:
> Yesterday I approached my lab director about increasing my salary.  I showed
> her the March report in Laboratory Medicine.  I have 14 years experience in
> hospital laboratories.  Six months ago, I took a job in Veterinary Medicine.
> She told me that Vet medicine paid less then doing human histology because
> we didn't have the pressures that working in human histology had.  For the
> past six weeks I've been short handed and putting out 130 to 140 blocks a
> day to keep the place going.  They've finally hired someone, but that person
> won't start until May.  My days of killing myself for this lab are over.  I
> start classes  tomorrow in Computer Information Systems.  Totally Fed Up in
> Central Missouri.  Take Care All.  Bob