5th December 2005, 03:30 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by 1man1desk For those of us old enough to have been working in the field both before and after the advent of PPG16 and competitive tendering, it is clear that pay, conditions of employment (if any) and the quality of (rescue) archaeological work done were all worse beforehand. There were significant improvements immediately after, and some additional progress when the IFA first brought in their recommended pay minima.
Does 1man1desk have any evidence to back up his claim regarding real improvements in pay since PPG16 came in?
I have looked at the majority of archaeological employers who are currently advertising for archaeological staff and have found that over half are still offering wages for digging and supervisory staff linked to local government grades 1-3. This is irrespective of whether the unit is local government based or not. My memory of the late 80's (ie pre PPG16) is that virtually all archaeological employers were local or central government based and offering exactly the same grades of employment. Sure pay has gone up in that time but only at the rate of local government pay increases and colleagues in local authority trade unions tell me that this has hardly kept pace with inflation let alone increased in real terms.
I will accept that there have been some improvements in the pay and conditions of archaeologists, particularly in the consultancy sector and through the creation of a tier of project managers that hardly existed prior to 1990, but I don't believe these improvements have been uniform across the profession and certainly not at the root and branch data recovery and data processing sections.
Happy to hear otherwise though.....