25th September 2012, 08:32 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:When local government was reorganised in 1974 and the first county archaeologists were employed, many of these positions were set at local government grade 4 for lack of any comparative equivalent positions. Needless to say when the singular county archaeologist expanded into county units, everyone had to be paid less than the county archaeologist so diggers were normally on LG grade 1 or 2. At the Museum of London a local government regrading exercise in the early 1980s recommended that diggers should be on LG grade 4, supervisors on LG grade 5 and managers on LG grade 6 and above. If that exercise had been paralleled across UK archaeology the average pay of a digger with 5 years experience would now be closer to ?30,000 pa rather than ?20,000 pa. So its part historical and part reluctance. The IfA were shadowing local government pay grades for many years with their recommended minima, but they chose to set the digger pay at LG2 rather than LG4.....
This explains something. I've been looking for work in the UK. My interest/experience is more towards desk-top historic environment positions, and I'm keen to get experience in the public sector/larger institutions. But I noticed that jobs which had archaeology in the title were usually much more poorly paid then ones that had say heritage or historic environment even though the job descriptions, qualifications etc. were very similar...