26th March 2010, 05:39 PM
ecmgardner Wrote:In my (admittedly limited) experience of budgeting and tendering while I was working in a comercial unit the fieldwork phase of the project was the money maker and had to cover the costs of staffing for post-excavation analysis and report production.
Same as my tendering experience - field staff are the only ones with 100% chargeable time to the client, which needs to support non-chargeable work such as the office manager, general management, etc, let alone the overheads on rent and so on. I think the most (pure) profit I ever saw made on an eval was a couple of hundred quid. The most money tends to come on day-rate watching briefs.
The fix? Difficult with the free commercial market in archaeology. Don't personally believe in unions, as I feel my contract with my boss is a personal affair, and that if he could raise the wages, he would. If he did, he'd simply be undercut and I'd be out of a job. Some form of minimum wage for archaeologists, through being chartered like accountants, etc. (Although this was the subject of a long thread a few years ago I believe)