14th March 2007, 12:17 PM
You are not comparing eggs with eggs. >> I think thatâs it..
You canât compare poverty in a village in Darfur with Poverty here in the UK.
I would suspect you might not enjoy living on a diggers wage for a yearâ¦
So⦠3 months of wages.. then a couple of weeks off.. (Remember to keep paying the rentâ¦) find another job⦠find another place to live and get there⦠(Remember to pay a months rent in advance â unless you are lucky to get free accommodation â of course you donât get to be picky about where you live â and often have to share with people you might not normally share with.) then the contact ends and it all starts over again.. you must have done this in your time.. Then you have no job and winter is here⦠the money you saved from your whopping £270 a week goes on staying alive over a month or twoâ¦.unless you get lucky and find a job where you dig in the ice⦠or even better a post ex job⦠So say you get to dig for 9 months a year⦠on 270 a week.. (lets not include the extras⦠which are non standard and means you are not working for 3 months) you have just made an amazing 10,500
Heres the figures
Wage Summary..........Per Year ......Per Month ......Per Week
Gross Pay.............10,500.00 ......875.00 ......201.92
Tax free Allowances...4,335.00 ......361.25 ......83.37
Total taxable............6,165.00 ......513.75 ......118.56
Tax paid...............1,222.95 ......101.91 ......23.52
National Insurance......706.80 ......58.90 ......13.59
Total Deductions .....1,929.75 ......160.81 ......37.11
Giving you 8571 in your hand.
So divide by 365 days and see what you have â just over 23 quid. Or £164 a week. (albeit not every week that is averaged out over the entire year.. so some weeks you have more other weeks you have nothing)
Out of that you must pay for everything else⦠clothes, transport, food, heating, rent (apart from the times you get free accommodation) etc..
From October 2006 the minimum wage was £4.45 per hour which equates to (on a 37.5 hour week) £8677 - which means⦠er if a digger works 9 months a year⦠which is not too bad ⦠they come in under the minimum wage (after deductions). The bit about
âbut how many archaeologists at 'digger' grade can't afford their fags and beer, which were not high on the on the list of subsistence items last time I looked. â
smacks of that attitude of.. yeah but these folk that live in council estates can still afford to go to the pub and have sky TV⦠Which I sincerely hope it was not meant to be.
We can bandy about figures as much as me like⦠but the bottom line is⦠and here I agree wholeheartedly⦠the âmiddle ground is hardest hit.
Recently I did a BAJR benchmark (for a meeting with PROSPECT and the DIGGERS FORUM) the results showed that Supervisory grades needed around 35-42% rises and Project Officers needed 28-32% the sad reality is that between digger and director the gap is so slight that any progression is a nonsense.. Why increase pressure stress and responsibility for a few extra thousand a year..?
I do understand that you were trying to say that poverty in the UK canât be equated to the appalling poverty of some developing countries â but to suggest that diggers do not live a hand to mouth existence is to forget your past⦠I could get another job⦠could escape the trap (as Tom says) as that is an option that is lost on many in India, the Middle East, Brazil and a score of other countries.. but hey⦠perhaps the thing to do is make the job one that allows me to live a decent life from the start.. not greedy ⦠but liveable. It is too easy to look at wages and conditions (I take it these are your hypothetical conditions) and extrapolate for a year of permanent employment⦠from a position of a job that you know will last as long as you wantâ¦. Rather than one that lasts as long as the contract.
âwithout the benefit of regular subs as a cash injection and free accommâ
OR
Without the benefits of permanent employment, Pension rights, sickness rights, and a stable income that allows you to actually have a mortgage in the first place.
You talk about Diggers as if they were navviesâ¦.
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
You canât compare poverty in a village in Darfur with Poverty here in the UK.
I would suspect you might not enjoy living on a diggers wage for a yearâ¦
So⦠3 months of wages.. then a couple of weeks off.. (Remember to keep paying the rentâ¦) find another job⦠find another place to live and get there⦠(Remember to pay a months rent in advance â unless you are lucky to get free accommodation â of course you donât get to be picky about where you live â and often have to share with people you might not normally share with.) then the contact ends and it all starts over again.. you must have done this in your time.. Then you have no job and winter is here⦠the money you saved from your whopping £270 a week goes on staying alive over a month or twoâ¦.unless you get lucky and find a job where you dig in the ice⦠or even better a post ex job⦠So say you get to dig for 9 months a year⦠on 270 a week.. (lets not include the extras⦠which are non standard and means you are not working for 3 months) you have just made an amazing 10,500
Heres the figures
Wage Summary..........Per Year ......Per Month ......Per Week
Gross Pay.............10,500.00 ......875.00 ......201.92
Tax free Allowances...4,335.00 ......361.25 ......83.37
Total taxable............6,165.00 ......513.75 ......118.56
Tax paid...............1,222.95 ......101.91 ......23.52
National Insurance......706.80 ......58.90 ......13.59
Total Deductions .....1,929.75 ......160.81 ......37.11
Giving you 8571 in your hand.
So divide by 365 days and see what you have â just over 23 quid. Or £164 a week. (albeit not every week that is averaged out over the entire year.. so some weeks you have more other weeks you have nothing)
Out of that you must pay for everything else⦠clothes, transport, food, heating, rent (apart from the times you get free accommodation) etc..
From October 2006 the minimum wage was £4.45 per hour which equates to (on a 37.5 hour week) £8677 - which means⦠er if a digger works 9 months a year⦠which is not too bad ⦠they come in under the minimum wage (after deductions). The bit about
âbut how many archaeologists at 'digger' grade can't afford their fags and beer, which were not high on the on the list of subsistence items last time I looked. â
smacks of that attitude of.. yeah but these folk that live in council estates can still afford to go to the pub and have sky TV⦠Which I sincerely hope it was not meant to be.
We can bandy about figures as much as me like⦠but the bottom line is⦠and here I agree wholeheartedly⦠the âmiddle ground is hardest hit.
Recently I did a BAJR benchmark (for a meeting with PROSPECT and the DIGGERS FORUM) the results showed that Supervisory grades needed around 35-42% rises and Project Officers needed 28-32% the sad reality is that between digger and director the gap is so slight that any progression is a nonsense.. Why increase pressure stress and responsibility for a few extra thousand a year..?
I do understand that you were trying to say that poverty in the UK canât be equated to the appalling poverty of some developing countries â but to suggest that diggers do not live a hand to mouth existence is to forget your past⦠I could get another job⦠could escape the trap (as Tom says) as that is an option that is lost on many in India, the Middle East, Brazil and a score of other countries.. but hey⦠perhaps the thing to do is make the job one that allows me to live a decent life from the start.. not greedy ⦠but liveable. It is too easy to look at wages and conditions (I take it these are your hypothetical conditions) and extrapolate for a year of permanent employment⦠from a position of a job that you know will last as long as you wantâ¦. Rather than one that lasts as long as the contract.
âwithout the benefit of regular subs as a cash injection and free accommâ
OR
Without the benefits of permanent employment, Pension rights, sickness rights, and a stable income that allows you to actually have a mortgage in the first place.
You talk about Diggers as if they were navviesâ¦.
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu