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25th April 2012, 02:53 PM
I will drop this in as well. from the IfA Diggers Forum... Diggers' Forum away work, travel and subsistance report 2012 http://www.archaeologists.net/news/12020...eport-2012 Greater clarity in adverts may help. and in part I am responsible to ensure that BAJR does that. there is a statement saying : Quote:PLEASE INDICATE IF ACCOMODATION CAN BE PROVIDED - SUBSISTANCE OR TRAVEL IS PAID As HIGHLIGHTED in the IfA DIGGERS FORUM document: Away Work, Travel and Subsistence
but perhaps I need to make it even more explicit to ensure the advertiser has to actually agree to certain terms... ie WE DO / Do NOT pay for travel. It is not so much about bashing companies, but more ensuring that prospective employees know what to expect. The other BIG thing is the CONTRACT. Get one... read it... you could of course ask specific questions as well when you apply.
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25th April 2012, 06:56 PM
To pick up on Gwyl's point about CPD - it isn't just the employer's responsibility: IfA members are committed to their professional development *whether the employer is paying or not* CPD does not necessarily mean expensive residential courses - could be reading, attending local society lectures, mentoring, site talks, shadowing. See my blog post on Training without a training budget.
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25th April 2012, 07:38 PM
P Prentice Wrote:blimey - i agree with unit and marcus though it pains me to agree with marcus
...and I love you, too, PP!:face-kiss:
the invisible man Wrote: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.
I'm afraid I don't have the details, as I only heard about it third-hand, but my understanding was that it was semi-permanent employees (been with the company for 6 months to a year, kept on over a number of projects), and that they were asked to work under those conditions to maintain their positions in the company, on the understanding that they would then still be in place when better-paid projects arose in the future. If I was absolutely certain of the facts, I'd have reported it, as the unit in question is an RO. I would say that I was told it by two separate people, who'd heard it from two different employees of the company in question. I did suggest that the employees concerned should contact the IfA informally, but I don't know whether it went anywhere.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum
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I usually have to arrive at the office at 7am then drive 1 hour to site and leave the office at 5pm. I get paid 37hrs.
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That's shocking..............but I remember being in the same situation a long time ago working for a company down south (not too far away from reading). It's especially bad when your doing the driving in a company vehicle so you get no benefit for being expected to be fit to drive and responsible for their vehicle.
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LBK Wrote:I usually have to arrive at the office at 7am then drive 1 hour to site and leave the office at 5pm. I get paid 37hrs.
Hang on, does that mean you are on site from 8 till 4? With an hours travel on top either end that is fairly standard isn't it, depending on how far 'home' is from the office? Obviously if you live another 2 hours from this office then that is a different matter. The situations I am concerned about are people having to travel two hours to site (from home or office) do eight hours on site and then drive two hours back again, so having done 12 hours for 8 hours pay, or really 10 hours given than an hours travel is generally given. Of course, even travelling one hour so site directly from home would get a bit much over several weeks.
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Quote: 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.
Why would anyone put up with this unless they were self employed and then in any case would add these costs on to their fee?
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RedEarth Wrote:Of course, even travelling one hour so site directly from home would get a bit much over several weeks.
Takes me (optimistically on a good day with no traffic) an hour and a quarter each way just to the office by car, or 6 hrs horror a day using public transport, and I've survived it for 20-odd years (get through a lot of cars though) ....so actually prefer being on site cos the accomodation's usually a lot closer than my house is to the office....am pretty certain this was going somewhere, any suggestions?
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kevin wooldridge Wrote: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'....
Yeah thats fine, but ifyou were to build an economy on people having fun, most people would throw in the towel as soon as they realised they were being taken for a ride on an economy scale.
You might as well recall a class system, by labours own demise.
As for hours on site
Some people work (manually) harder than others as well as driving, whilst others deal with considerable stress levels and drive.
Fun neither of those positions are, so where do you think the idea of garnering support from encouraged ignorance is benificial to the minutia of the issue?
Then on top of that there is the issue of living and living, whilst there are additional elements with regards to appropriate social time in extended fun time.
No simple answers, as easy as an argument can be compiled into logical nonesense, where is the considered detail?
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Bodger51 Wrote:Yeah thats fine, but ifyou were to build an economy on people having fun, most people would throw in the towel as soon as they realised they were being taken for a ride on an economy scale.
You might as well recall a class system, by labours own demise.
As for hours on site
Some people work (manually) harder than others as well as driving, whilst others deal with considerable stress levels and drive.
Fun neither of those positions are, so where do you think the idea of garnering support from encouraged ignorance is benificial to the minutia of the issue?
Then on top of that there is the issue of living and living, whilst there are additional elements with regards to appropriate social time in extended fun time.
No simple answers, as easy as an argument can be compiled into logical nonesense, where is the considered detail?
What's the name of that test where computers see if they can convince people that they humans? We may have a winner!
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