18th March 2006, 03:05 PM
Curses, Doc Pete, I thought I had spotted a niche for myself - I was musing about starting an archaeological staff agency! I was in fact boring my partner only last night with my ideas....
You are correct in what you say. The practice of employing "contract" staff is widespread in the professions where it is common to have a core of permanent staff and to engage agency personnel more or less by the job. This is not a ploy by evil or malicious employers but an expedient method of overcoming the fact that most professinal practices (architects, engineers and so on) are small to medium businesses working in a boom-bust industry and depending on winning contracts. They may have only two or three on the go: then they may have dozens. It is simply not possible to maintain high permanent staff levels. Contract staff are those that prefer to work that way. Their hourly rate (paid by the agency) gives them an income considerably higher than the permanent staff (including their team leaders) to compensate for unpaid sick leave and holidays and less security. Obviously they are the first to go in the "bust" periods. In addition they enjoy, er, tax advantages. The IR are always at least one step behind. (The downside is that between 1 in 5and 1 in 10, are any good).
Of course recent legislation has confused this system. I understand that the agency has to give them paid holidays but I stand to be corrected.
It used to be the case that construction workers were all hired on a contract or casual basis, for specific jobs (sites) but less so now as there are few if any labourers on a site - everything is done by specialist subcontractors who in turn employ their staff on a wide variety of contracts - permanent, self employed and temp.
I see commercial archaeology as being in the same position that construction was in. It is perhaps too risky for a smallish contractor to maintain a large permanent workforce with a fluctuating workload, combined with geographically widespread sites and contacts of usually short duration.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
You are correct in what you say. The practice of employing "contract" staff is widespread in the professions where it is common to have a core of permanent staff and to engage agency personnel more or less by the job. This is not a ploy by evil or malicious employers but an expedient method of overcoming the fact that most professinal practices (architects, engineers and so on) are small to medium businesses working in a boom-bust industry and depending on winning contracts. They may have only two or three on the go: then they may have dozens. It is simply not possible to maintain high permanent staff levels. Contract staff are those that prefer to work that way. Their hourly rate (paid by the agency) gives them an income considerably higher than the permanent staff (including their team leaders) to compensate for unpaid sick leave and holidays and less security. Obviously they are the first to go in the "bust" periods. In addition they enjoy, er, tax advantages. The IR are always at least one step behind. (The downside is that between 1 in 5and 1 in 10, are any good).
Of course recent legislation has confused this system. I understand that the agency has to give them paid holidays but I stand to be corrected.
It used to be the case that construction workers were all hired on a contract or casual basis, for specific jobs (sites) but less so now as there are few if any labourers on a site - everything is done by specialist subcontractors who in turn employ their staff on a wide variety of contracts - permanent, self employed and temp.
I see commercial archaeology as being in the same position that construction was in. It is perhaps too risky for a smallish contractor to maintain a large permanent workforce with a fluctuating workload, combined with geographically widespread sites and contacts of usually short duration.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.