10th March 2009, 06:10 PM
I've worked and been laid off in the past. There's always going to be a pecking order in terms of jobs- you just have to hope that decisions like redundancies are made for good (ie archaeology and business-related rather than personal) reasons. It's likely that there will always be redundancies, as fieldwork is largely seasonal and so dependent on the planning and construction sectors. Having said that, I've worked with a couple of very experienced staff who I didn't shed a tear for when they were sacked- archaeology has its fair share of people who are willing to get paid for not doing a decent professional day's work. It's also a small circle, so if you get a bad reputation from one job it can follow you for the rest of your career- which is far from ideal.