4th September 2008, 11:13 AM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by BAJR Host
All I am sayiong (well for now) is that without profit, then how do we advance... we must make profit... or how else will wages rise (as Dr Pete says) if we are to create a stable future, then we must have a stable profession, that does not continually rest on a single watching brief brining in threuppence that can just pay the rent...
Once again Mr Host you are bang on. No profession (however loosely organised the term might be in archaeology) can survive and progress without making enough spare cash to invest in its own future. At least, while we live in a capitalist system that is the case - come the people's revolution everything will of course be generously state funded - only joking (I've been reading that book about OGS Crawford, which I can heartily recommend)!
This does bring us back to the previous thread about the way in which companies are organised - what happens to the profits made by charities for example? What about council units? The random and varying nature of each organisation makes it a bit difficult to compare. It's so hard for companies to make a profit in archaeology that you can't imagine the directors of any limited companies looking forward to massive dividends, but if there were some to have they might be reluctant to give them up when they arrived. I don't think it would make a good pitch for Dragon's Den.
I recall working at one organisation and being told that it had made so many tens of thousands of pounds profit that year and thinking 'well why can't we all have a £250 Christmas bonus then?' It's almost like the culture of rewarding staff when there is a reward to give is so alien to archaeology it never occurs to anyone. This was some time ago though, and I know that some organisations do value the concept of rewarding staff when they can.