23rd May 2006, 05:35 PM
The problem with a lot of these areas is historical (if you will pardon the pun) where in the past the only way to get posts established was to ask for low salary levels - the jobs would always be filled as there is a supply and demand situation with more archaeologists than decent jobs - and a lot of the management who were trying to create the jobs came from the old circuit system where effectively people got subsistence rather than pay. And I have, in the past, worked for a low salary as the organisation I worked for didn't have the money to pay much - to the point where at the ned of the financial year I went in on the Friday with no job on Monday unless a big project turned something up - last minute reprieve as a small roundhouse appeared on a pipeline that very afternoon!
The other fly in the ointment at the moment is that local authority elected councillors probably don't, in the whole, have a clue what the archaeology or museums service in their counties actually do - most probably think a museum is just for storing old stuff and one of my my bosses (a County Archaeologist in the SW) was told by a councillor that he was a waste of money and should get a proper job. They will happily pay lip service but aren't prepared to pay the pittance per year that it takes to keep the services going (same county, once got a letter from some old duffer complaining that he was paying for archaeologists out of his pension and it was a disgrace - I worked out it had cost him 8p more to send the letter than it cost him that year to fund the service). If we all contact our local councillors and tell them that the services need to be properly maintained (and threaten to vote for someone else next elections if they don't - most councillors are on low electoraal margins) then they may take some heed.
I suspect that when Bede's World was set up the level of funding required to run it was either underestimated or deliberately set low so that the business plan would be acceptable for funding to be granted - the curator is saying that they have an inherited situation. This is not in any way to support or condone low pay, just to explore some of the reasons for it happening historically - as long as they try and change it for the future. I suspect its been a shock to the system suddenly getting castigated for offering such poor salaries.
Maybe we should all wrtie to the trustees of Paul's museum next time they advertise for staff and tell them to pay their staff decent wages.
The other fly in the ointment at the moment is that local authority elected councillors probably don't, in the whole, have a clue what the archaeology or museums service in their counties actually do - most probably think a museum is just for storing old stuff and one of my my bosses (a County Archaeologist in the SW) was told by a councillor that he was a waste of money and should get a proper job. They will happily pay lip service but aren't prepared to pay the pittance per year that it takes to keep the services going (same county, once got a letter from some old duffer complaining that he was paying for archaeologists out of his pension and it was a disgrace - I worked out it had cost him 8p more to send the letter than it cost him that year to fund the service). If we all contact our local councillors and tell them that the services need to be properly maintained (and threaten to vote for someone else next elections if they don't - most councillors are on low electoraal margins) then they may take some heed.
I suspect that when Bede's World was set up the level of funding required to run it was either underestimated or deliberately set low so that the business plan would be acceptable for funding to be granted - the curator is saying that they have an inherited situation. This is not in any way to support or condone low pay, just to explore some of the reasons for it happening historically - as long as they try and change it for the future. I suspect its been a shock to the system suddenly getting castigated for offering such poor salaries.
Maybe we should all wrtie to the trustees of Paul's museum next time they advertise for staff and tell them to pay their staff decent wages.