Kevin's Christmas Challenge: Pick your Wage!!

[Dinosaur]

Well I did suggest that you can base your figure on what you think 20 years experience is worth irrespective of grade or function....go on give it a go!!

Ok, how about 1k/year, so starting at 15k (they did chose a traditionally low-paid profession after all so no point being greedy)

(a) 15k (listen to the howls....)
(b) 20k
© 25k
(d) 35k
(me) rich beyond my asparations, would probably have to give half of it to charity out of embarrassment :I

[Marcus Brody]

(a) 15k (listen to the howls....)
(b) 20k
© 25k
(d) 35k

Your starting salary is pretty close to the current BAJR minimum, and your 20+ years salary is just above the BAJR grade 7, suggesting that you think that current levels of pay are basically realistic! However, the BAJR grades reflect different roles, rather than simply length of experience, with ?15,700 being the recommended rate for a 'basic site assistant', and ?33,800+ for 'senior management and directors'. Are people (not just Dinosaur) suggesting that a 'basic site assistant' with 20 years experience should be paid ?35k or ?42k or whatever, even though they may have no more responsibility on the site than someone with less than 5 years?

I know that a few old lags on a site can do the work of several dozen recent graduates (I exagerate, of course), but it seems to me that if people want to earn more money, they may have to accept more responsibility by acting as a supervisor or project officer or project manager. I'm aware that some people on here would regard that as equivalent to selling their soul to satan, but it's surely the case that if all you want to do is dig, you're probably going to have to accept digger's rates. Yes, a digger with 20 years experience should be paid more than a recent graduate, to reflect their greater skill and knowledge, but realistically the differential between the two can never be a great as having two people working side-by-side and doing essentially the same job where one is earning more than twice as much as the other. If that were the case, diggers with 20+ years would never be employed, because you could get two people for the same money.

If the question is what should be the pay-scale for a 'basic site assistant', over 20 years, I'd say a starting salary of around ?18,000 for a recent graduate, and around ?25,000 for someone with 20 years experience (obviously linked to inflation, so that someone starting out now would be earning more than ?25,000 if they were still digging in 20 years time). If the person with 20 years experience is also running the site, dealing with the developer, consultant and council, organising the plant and portaloos, checking the archive, commissioning the post-ex and writing the report, then obviously they'd be paid more, but assuming that both are doing the same job, I don't see that a huge differential would be practical.

I now sit back and wait the inevitable condemnation!

[BAJR]

Right now I see what it is about. I was doing field staff

[Wax]

I was thinking along the lines of a gradual and natural progression to at least the bottom rungs of management after 20 years . if still a digger after 20 years I would hope that competency would be recognisied and ? 30,000 would be reasonable, after all that is supposed to be the average wage. Higher management would be at much higher salaries. We are ver underpaid, talk to other people in other professions and compare the levels of skills and experience required and archaeologist are up there with many very much better paid professions.

Now what about performance related pay (especially for managers)

[monty]

A realistic minimum wage for diggers ought to be ?450 a week !

[monty]

Ok, how about 1k/year, so starting at 15k (they did chose a traditionally low-paid profession after all so no point being greedy)

...........................a traditionally low paid profession is no excuse for poor wage levels !....and exactly why is it traditionally low paid anyway ??.........................

[Dinosaur]

...........................a traditionally low paid profession is no excuse for poor wage levels !....and exactly why is it traditionally low paid anyway ??.........................

Cos there needs to be at least one graduate profession who can take the p**s out of nurses when they're moaning about their pay and conditions in the pub and cheer them up that there's someone even more undervalued and has more bad backs than them? - there you go, archaeology does have a practical value, oh ye doubters :face-approve:

[P Prentice]

graduate profession dinosaur? how the wind changes up north

[Dinosaur]

...I know that a few old lags on a site can do the work of several dozen recent graduates (I exagerate, of course), but it seems to me that if people want to earn more money, they may have to accept more responsibility by acting as a supervisor or project officer or project manager. I'm aware that some people on here would regard that as equivalent to selling their soul to satan, but it's surely the case that if all you want to do is dig, you're probably going to have to accept digger's rates. Yes, a digger with 20 years experience should be paid more than a recent graduate, to reflect their greater skill and knowledge, but realistically the differential between the two can never be a great as having two people working side-by-side and doing essentially the same job where one is earning more than twice as much as the other. If that were the case, diggers with 20+ years would never be employed, because you could get two people for the same money.

If the question is what should be the pay-scale for a 'basic site assistant', over 20 years, I'd say a starting salary of around ?18,000 for a recent graduate, and around ?25,000 for someone with 20 years experience (obviously linked to inflation, so that someone starting out now would be earning more than ?25,000 if they were still digging in 20 years time). If the person with 20 years experience is also running the site, dealing with the developer, consultant and council, organising the plant and portaloos, checking the archive, commissioning the post-ex and writing the report, then obviously they'd be paid more, but assuming that both are doing the same job, I don't see that a huge differential would be practical.

I now sit back and wait the inevitable condemnation!

Scarily I think we're both reading from the same hymn-sheet for once, experience at the 'bottom end' of this profession is never likely to be recognised

- I'm a cheat cos I have an over-inflated job title/salary to keep me/my knowledge and experience on board, in exchange for which I'm prepared to knock out a few reports etc occasionally, suspect if you distilled-down what I do to a job description it certainly wouldn't be SPO (which is what I'm paid as), more like aging digger with enough wierd injuries and infirmities to fill a specialist medical tome, who's also dead jammy at finding stuff (which in itself has probably added enough value to enough contracts to pay for all my wages ever), semi-literate and sad enough to like reading site-reports. The job I'm on at the moment is being run from the office by someone with an identical job title/salary, but I do stuff with a shovel and he does stuff with a computer - at least one firm has spotted that a good site operative is as important as an office operative :face-approve:

[Dinosaur]

graduate profession dinosaur? how the wind changes up north

All the non-grads seem to be dying of old age one by one :face-crying:

Or being out-evolved by us grads :face-approve: