14th March 2007, 07:00 PM
Posted by Illuminated:
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
Quote:quote:It's unbelievable that there is still such a generational gap between those graduates of earlier decades who walked into supervisory / directorial roles and those of today. As many current unit directors never had to work and provide for themselves as diggers, they have no perspective of the reality of life as a digger.I'm not sure what generation Illuminated is talking about here. I started digging in 1979, full-time from 1984. People of my generation certainly had to work their way up the system, starting by accumulating lots of field experience as a digger. The difference was that we were not paid wages at all - instead we were nominal 'volunteers', getting paid 'subsistence allowances'. By 1986/7, this was the princely sum of £46 a week for English Heritage; in 1989 it was a more generous £70 a week for Historic Scotland. Of course, as volunteers were not employees, they had no employment rights at all - not even a legal right to the subsistence payments.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished