21st February 2014, 12:25 AM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:Not quite the right question Mike....cos I think more of my membership of the IfA as what I can give back to the profession rather than how it benefits me. My trade union membership is where I would look to improve my terms and conditions. The IfA is not and never has been a trade union. But I am happy to talk about achievements of the IfA.
When I joined in 1986 the first consultation I was involved in was regarding the IfA support for the World Archaeology Conference which was including white South African participants. The support was dropped after members voted not to. Following that I was a supporter of the ACT group whose aim was to move the IfA in the direction of supporting those at the bottom end of the profession a role now taken up by the Diggers Forum (which I have also supported since its inception). I always vote to support Diggers Forum candidates for election to IfA council. I was a member of the IfA working party responsible for creating Principle 5 of the IfA Code of Conduct and drafted the text that is pretty much as you read it today (thats the principle concerned with pay and conditions etc). I was also one of the instigators (along with James Drummond Murray) of the Outwage survey which was the first time that IfA looked at comparable salaries across the profession and helped lead eventually to the Profiling the Profession documents. I was one of the objectors to plans to introduce Competitive Tendering to UK archaeology and remove local archaeological expertise and chaired the fringe debate at conference in 1992 over these matters. I only occasionally work in UK archaeology these days so don't have such an active role in IfA matters anymore, but I am a member of the IfA international group.
In my time as a member I have seen the use of voluntary 'paid' labour regulated by the IfA and the introduction of wage minima that have greatly increased the wage levels of all archaeologists. Also the introduction of bursaries to help graduate archaeologists onto the first step into careers in archaeology and now the establishment through Chartered status of archaeologist as a recognised profession. So a few things......
Fair enough if you see it that way. I'm looking at what the IfA can do for me, not the other way round. After all they've had my money. The concrete benefit of it still eludes me ....
As for the wages, well they had to go up, IfA or no IfA. If companies today paid what they were paying 10 years back they'd have no staff.