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5th October 2010, 10:16 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:...what is noticeable is that there is an age-gap opening up. Certainly in Northern England there seems to be a hardcore of diggers in their 40s and 50s, who've been digging for ever and have managed to make the whole digger-lifestyle thing work, and then at the other end there are the 20-somethings fresh out of Uni with rather rose-tinted expectations, most of whom seem to rapidly fall by the wayside....The gap's a bit worrying since the older diggers are, lets face it, getting older.....:0
Completely agree. I find it utterly bizarre that senior unit management types don't seem panicked about this, because in 10 - 20 years there may well be an entire layer of middle management and specialists (field and artefact) missing. I really fear that we could be heading towards a generational skills gap, bad for archaeology and, I would have thought, bad for business.
More on topic; I think someone recommended easyroommate earlier? I used a few years ago and found it brilliant for finding a room for a few months. Not sure how much use it is outside of cities though.
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7th October 2010, 01:56 PM
Am guessing from the fact that you are even asking the question about accomodation that you are an inexperienced archaeologist as on the whole there are very very few circumstances when it ever works out to be worth taking a short term away job if there is no accomodation
Sit down and carefully do the maths - lets be sensible this is not time of year for camping to be a feasible option. You come home from work tired cold and wet - do you want to then spend a wet night in a tent -how are you going to dry your clothes and so on .....
So lets say you get a cheap B&B - even if its as low as 15 quid a day thats 5 nights for ?75 quid out of wages plus you weekend travel costs, or ?90 for seven days. Food on top of this - very expensive if no fridge for storage. Are you already paying rent elsewhere?
So basically you have lost half your wages before you start, now add in the cost of travel each day.....
And the idea of investing in a van or camper is just daft at this stage- how do you know when the next job is comin and its a massive outlay.
I dont want to be discouraging and im sorry that this post is very negative - but I just want you to think about this. Its a massive boost to be offered a job particularly if youve been waiting ages for it to come up and companies will often offer these conditions to inexperienced staff as they are the few people likely to accept
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8th October 2010, 12:38 PM
Spot on. In my opinion for a company to offer a temporary contract on an 'away job' without providing accomadation or adequate money for such AND transport to and from site is criminal.
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8th October 2010, 02:58 PM
Does BAJR have/know of any stats on what proportion of companies offer accom/transport/allowances etc? Is it monitored as part of his standards of remuneration? They're as important as the the 'salary' component, often the difference between diggers making money on a job or going broke, can be worth ?200/week, which is a bit deal if the salary's only ?300ish....sometimes it's worth taking a lower-paid job if the peripherals are good
