13th February 2006, 12:48 PM
Another area likely to be affected by the high turnover of field staff is union membership. I know from experience that the first direct debit to be cancelled when leaving a unit which has union involvement or leaving the profession full stop is the one for membership fees to Prospect etc. If people are going into jobs as field staff with the mentality that they are not going to be around for too long, I doubt they will even wish to join in the first place. Whether or not this is a serious problem does of course depend on your view of union involvement in field archaeology, but I'm sure this can't be a good thing for them. Whether or not the unions should be attempting to address this problem is probably a subject for another topic!
