Working Hours? Do you ?

[Unitof1]

Redearth are you talking about people coming in and working in what you might consider your patch? In a way this problem of travel/accomodation is what must be one of the biggest hidden cost in bajrs pay scales. Its presumably the area that most of the competative tenders compete on.......
Those tendering for a job furthest away must be screwing down travel cost and time to compeat if they are to pay thier workers all the same for the same job brief.

This subject is always presented as worker exploitation rather than deliberate underfunding of field work which is the only way that a tender from a unit with a distant permanant place of work can under cut if all other things are equal.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/relief-travel.htm

[RedEarth]

Probably the most sensible thing you've ever posted Unit, you feeling alright?

You're absolutely correct though. Everyone effectively has a 'patch' even if some like to think their patch is the whole UK. It is surely self-evident that, if everyone is being paid about the same amount and the staff are equally skilled and experienced, then travel/accommodation costs are often going to be the deciding factor. Of course, you could invest in training staff so that they get more skills and experience, but how often does that happen? In my experience the larger companies are the worst for taking the piss with regard to travel time as far as their own staff are concerned. Another cunning plan is the multiple 'office' route where you can win work in another location, and then not provide accommodation because it the place of employment is some PO box in an industrial estate close to the site. Nice!

[Jack]

There speaks a man who I know for a fact takes piles of books home with him of an evening.....

Yeah, but thats a secret................don't tell the management............those books were for my own secret projects

[Unitof1]

I find uninsensibility is always just around the corner. Currently I have a unit that has been lauded as one of the first to win in the competitive tendering world on a recent thread whose mouths are crammed with superannuation’s paid for by the council tax payers of both Oxbridge city’s and they are on my patch. Never saw them coming, never heard about the tender, let alone the opportunity to put in a cowboy bid which I would have lost because I would have to pay 20% VAT. No by your leave, do you want a slice of the action or we need your local experience. But it must be miserable for their workers right now what with the weather and in the main they are on marine clays and tills. Nice. Now ask me if I care that their archaeologistsare probably being screwed.

Just out of interest did anybody here work on the reading business park job all those years ago. It looks like about a hours drive each way from oxford. I wonder what the traveling arrangements were then. You might want to remember that was a council unit.

Maybe there should be a "my patch register" that diggers put their names to which advertises their direct travel to work price on.

[Marcus Brody]

In a way this problem of travel/accomodation is what must be one of the biggest hidden cost in bajrs pay scales. Its presumably the area that most of the competative tenders compete on....... Those tendering for a job furthest away must be screwing down travel cost and time to compeat if they are to pay thier workers all the same for the same job brief. This subject is always presented as worker exploitation rather than deliberate underfunding of field work which is the only way that a tender from a unit with a distant permanant place of work can under cut if all other things are equal.

I (almost) completely agree with Unit on this, I've heard some appalling rumors recently about people being dispatched to the other end of the country with no accommodation, subsistence money or money for petrol being provided. Once they'd paid out for these things, the staff must have been working for almost nothing. And again, this seems to relate to some of the larger companies.

The only slight quibble I have with Unit's statement is that he seems to suggest that this should be presented as underfunding of fieldwork, rather than exploitation of workers. I'd suggest that it's both - in order to win the tender, the company has to submit a bid that is so low that it doesn't allocate enough money to adequately deal with the fieldwork, but at the same time, the desire of the workers to keep their jobs is being exploited to force them to accept poor conditions of employment.

[kevin wooldridge]

But from what I've heard it's not the case elsewhere in Europe.

I can't speak for the whole of Europe, but it is certainly a very common phenomena here in Norway..... I suspect one of the reasons is that many archaeologists are at heart 'hobbyists' (not meant in a derogatory sense) and whereas some people can switch off their daily grind (eg bankers, coal miners, brain surgeons), hobbyists have very blurred boundaries between where work stops and playtime begins. I personally think there is nothing wrong with that and suspect that many people 'exploited' in this manner would still be putting in the same number of hours even if they stopped mid-pursuit and deliberately changed from wearing a hat marked 'WORK' to a hat marked 'PLAYTIME'....

[Unitof1]

.hosty started the quibbling with all this "have you been asked to work 37 hours rather than 37.5" whats that all about? I thought it was going to be the old have two hours lunch and tea break but they are not paid tricks or the paid while traveling to work but not back clock watching. Has any body here tried traveling in and out of the oxbridge citys at rush hour. Its often quciker to site if you live in central london work in flag fen.

All things being told the 20% VAT scam is the biggest competative conflict. Travel time pinching I recon amounts to about 5-10% swing when competing. So if they are the standard I have to beat them and pay myself bajr rates and travel I have to make up 20% vat and about 5-10% travel. I presumably have to do that by cutting corners with the archaeology.

[P Prentice]

blimey - i agree with unit and marcus though it pains me to agree with marcus

[the invisible man]

Marcus said "I (almost) completely agree with Unit on this, I've heard some appalling rumors recently about people being dispatched to the other end of the country with no accommodation, subsistence money or money for petrol being provided."

Presumably these weren't "permanent" employees? I can't believe that even archaeologists would be that daft! I assume that these were people local to the head office, as it were, but employed on a fixed term contract for a specific project at the other end of the country? I'm not really sure whether to mark that down as exploitation see it is "well don't do it then..." Which is unfortunately the bottom line really. Employers do it because they can.

On the other point, yes there is certainly a culture of additional "free" working in other professions, predominantly in private practice (I once had a LA architect, in a meeting with me, literally stop mid-sentence and declare that it was 4pm on a Friday and he was off as he didn't get overtime. We had to re-convene on the Monday). For a lengthy period I used to work well into every evening and all weekend. I now regret it. It brought certain rewards (including of course more "status" = even more work.....) but what does that say to anyone who wants to go home at 5.30? Do the over-workers get rewarded for their efforts - unfair on those who work contracted hours - or do you reward those who work less?

[gwyl]

Fancy Booklernin is fer your own time!

when working for Riksantikvarieambetet in Sweden we received something in the region of an hour a week of work-time to ensure that we were sufficiently up-to-speed in respect of the literature relevant to what we were digging in order to be able to start the PX process within IntraSis in an intelligent fashion. not the worst of situations in which to find oneself. moreover, it is to the employers' benefit. and as, Wax intimates above, this is the sort of thing which enables ROs to comply with their CPD requirements; adequate CPD support is, however, something i hear not all junior members of staff are receiving.

far be it from me to reminisce on the glory days of my youth, but i do recall being told by a member of post-ex staff at a rather large provider of archaeological services that they didn't provide training, when i enquired all those years ago. that attitude continued when i started what was then the Post-Graduate Diploma in Field Archaeology, and i'd find myself months out on site with no structure or anything (cos i hadn't been chosen to do the diploma course, despite there being a through-flow of such students at the establishment).

that sort of culture appears to still permeate the profession; and yet only a little while ago, with a colleague, i gave a CPD presentation to architects on the implications of NPPF for architects. architects clearly consider it worth their while to have some form of structure to their CPD.