3rd December 2009, 12:53 AM
the invisible man Wrote:I can't help feeling that competitive tendering is not the issue with pay and conditions. All other aspects of construction (including the professinal/consulting fields) are tendered and that can't be the problem if we are holding them up as examples of well paid occupations.
Deep down I suspect that the reason archeological employers pay so badly is simply because they can. Thus, they'd be mad not to.
Can they really? What year are we in again? Does nobody understand employment law here?
Competitive tendering is all of the reasoning behind bad practise in a science. Competitive tendering is all of the reasoning behind bad employment.
Do not hold up all aspects of construction in the tendering field and then relate them to archaeology. It's an impossible equation, an oxymoron if you like. These are not people who have studied for a degree for three years.
They work machinery or tools like clockwork and that's that.