Jobs jobs jobs !!

[monty]

This kind of comment shows how little some people understand about how projects are costed. The day rate will include a lot more than just your salary! Try thinking as part of a larger group (or team as it's sometimes known) and you might understand. Do you think that when a solicitor charges ?100 per hour they are actually taking that home with them? No, it will also be covering elements of other salaries, overheads, expenses and so on. Presumably you consider everyone else (admin staff, managers, maybe post-ex people, accountants) as not as worthwhile as the 'at the coal-face' diggers who do all the work.

I totally understand how it all works......I have costed many many projects at the rates quoted above both for my self employment and several units.........what I am saying is PUT THE BLOODY DIGGER'S WAGES UP !!!!............if the current scarcity of field staff continues we might be in with a chance

[monty]

ps ...and won the tenders :face-approve::face-approve::face-approve:

[tmsarch]

Average day rate paid to digger ?70...............................average cost to client per digger per day ?300..........and before I get accused of making this up again ..........I saw two recent tenders with this rate plus VAT.and both were won .............says it all

So what is an acceptable ratio between charge out rate and daily pay in your eyes? The figures you quote are somewhere in the region of a 25/75 split, but that 75% has to cover a LOT of other costs - holidays, sick-pay, redundancy, pension contribution, transport/fuel costs, materials, administration staff, finance staff, specialists, finds processing, office rent, mobile phone contracts, etc, etc (not all will apply in all situations, but you get the gist). Would you be happy to have more pay, but have to fill in your own tax return, have no holiday, have to buy your own permatrace or finds bags?

Is there really that much profit for a company in the 25/75 split that you quote? If so where is all this surplus money? If there's no surplus then if you increase the percentage that goes to the diggers what gets cut out?

I find it funny that profit seems to be such a dirty word in archaeological circles - profit doesn't = bad. Profit is a good thing. Companies that are making healthy profits have more flexibility to offer improved conditions, pay and training. Archaeology is a construction cost - there is likely a profit arising from the development as a whole, but that profit rarely, if ever, ends up at the bottom of the chain with the archaeologists.

Quoting a ?1 million profit (?operating surplus) for a charity from six years ago is pretty meaningless. What was the surplus for the following year or the year before? The ?1 million you quote might just reflect that the income was accounted for within one financial year, but the operating costs associated with that income fell in the year before or year after. And why is a ?1 million operating surplus bad for a charity - it means the charity has more money with which to finance its charitable activities in subsequent years. I don't want to get into the debate about whether archaeological contractors should hold charitable status (its been done on the forum before), but the charity is there to raise as much funds as possible in order to further its charitable aims. Its a charity for archaeology, not for archaeologists.

Pay in all sectors of archaeology needs addressing - but this won't be achieved by eating into costs and discouraging profit.

[monty]

holidays (rolled up maybe) ??? sick pay (you gotta be joking) ?? improved conditions pay and training ?ha ha ...cloud cuckoo land !

The million pounds profit was announced to the field staff minutes before they were all uncerrmoniously sacked !!..................... charitable activities my arse.............Chief exec's pension fund more like !! (and yes retired recently on MASSIVE pension)

The best way to achieve proper pay is charge the developers what any other discipline would charge........it gets tiring being laughed at by all the other contractors on jobs when they learn the pay rates..........the whole ethos of PPG 16 was the polluter pays............................................

[monty]

So what is an acceptable ratio between charge out rate and daily pay in your eyes? .

50/50 !:face-approve:

[tmsarch]

50/50 !:face-approve:

Sorry Monty - I think this is barking up the wrong tree - the ration between charge out rate and pay is not the issue. If you want to increase pay then the charge out rate has to increase. Paying more, but charging out at the same level just means something else is going to be cut, be it standards, conditions, or someone else's job back in the office. Archaeology operates as part of a wider construction budget. At the moment you're fighting over the crumbs - you can carve up the slice of the archaeology pie however you want - 50/50, 25/75, 75/25 - but its the same size piece of pie. If you give with one hand, you have to take with the other. What you need to fight for is a bigger slice of the overall pie.

[Unitof1]

I once managed a job ( which ended up at around 480k in cost. )

would like to know what the vat implications were (not the charity units would care unless they are welsh).

now if all the diggers were self employed and invoiced the client direct what would the vat implications have been

by the way for all those curators out there who dont know what vat is : its 20% paid yesterday or we kick your family to death

[tmsarch]

by the way for all those curators out there who dont know what vat is : its 20% paid yesterday or we kick your family to death

Thanks Uo1 - and here was me thinking it was something that only self-employed archaeologists paid in order to boost my massive pension pot and subsidise my over inflated salary }

[Unitof1]

I dont pay it because I would have to reach a turnover of around ?70, 000 but an excavting team could reach this threashold and then basicaly theres quite a complicated equation but what it equats to is that you have to do the job with 20% less archaeologists, yes and it is to pay your your massive pension pot and yes your salary is totaly inflated and I could do what you do for nothing. Its that word nothing again.

[monty]

. If you want to increase pay then the charge out rate has to increase. .

Exactly ! All commercial units should put the charge out rates up A LOT !! They have not gone up in many years...if they all did it the developers would have to pay.......and they can afford it easily .................