Would you see a Unionised Workforce as a good thing in Archaeology?

[putt1ck]

I will, as ever, start by pointing out I ain't an archaeologist, nor, by the standards of the sector, am I badly paid. Even more out of kilter with this forum, I post with my common Internet ID. However, I do know something about economies, enterprise & organisations, and, maybe more relevant, the history of unions and the history of professions.

Note this. Archaeologists take the jobs in archaeology because they want to work in archaeology. The archaeological companies bid for work in a competitive, supply-side risk, market place, which they operate in because of a collective interest in archaeology. The marketplace exists because of a planning regulation.

Now a little history: unions came into being when low-skilled workers worked long hours, in dangerous and deeply unpleasant conditions, for insufficient money to live. In most cases the companies they worked for operated in industries with high, often government, demand and therefore profitable and had a price-elastic product. The end result was workers living with sizeable families in single rooms, in hunger, disease and despair. The managers were the owners (or relations thereof) and lived lives of comparative luxury with families often living lives of indolence. A stark contrast indeed.

That was the environment in which unions were born; when there was a real need to organise and be strong, to stand up for the weak and right these great injustices. Unions existed and operated so that these (low-skilled factory) workers could earn enough to keep them and their families fed, clothed and living in decent accommodation; a desire to see the wealth generated by these factories spread a little more fairly. The same environment inspired Karl Marx to write The Communist Manifesto, Elizabeth Gaskell to write Mary Barton, and much of the work of Dickens.

Nowadays our society protects the interests of poorest, working or not, as much as it protects the interests of the richest. Unions are primarily staffed by professional union workers, who, if they have ever worked in the job of the people they claim to represent, it was such long time ago they cannot no longer be seen as truly representing the members. Bob Crow of the RMT, for example, became a union officer in 1985... Many unions, have in effect evolved into something more relevant; they have become professional bodies, a collective grouping that seeks to raise the standards of the work being undertaken by its members and represent their general interests in areas such as informing relevant statutes and controlling the entry to the profession.

The time for unions has long since past. The working poor in our society are far richer than their Victorian equivalents (and archaeologists are not the working poor). The levels of injustice are orders of magnitude less; managers and "workers" are not (have not been for a very long time) on opposing sides, playing a zero sum game with the company coffers: all are employees of the organisation, they just have different job responsibilities which are rewarded at different levels, representative of their skills, experience and the rarity of those in our society.

What would a union do in archaeology? Down tools at each archaeological company following a vote to do so until such time as pay rates across the company were increased by 20%? With what leverage? A short strike of that nature would kill most archaeology companies; the likely reaction further up the chain would be cry foul and gain the affected construction project freedom to continue without regard to the archaeology. A likely end result of an extended country-wide strike would be the suspension of the planning regulations requiring the mitigation of archaeology. A union with no employed members has what power? Some of those previously employed as archaeologists may well find better paid employment in the generic graduate professions. Many would find only similarly paid work, but for employers with far less interesting and worthwhile activities. Some would join the ranks of the unemployed.

Archaeology does not need a union, it needs a strong professional body.

Examine the archaeological sector: archaeologists are skilled professionals, equivalent to a greater or lesser extent to doctors and lawyers, accountants and teachers, and, of course, academics. I pick on those examples because of the commonalities and differences between those on the list and archaeologists (used shorthand here for practitioners of commercial archaeology). Archaeology most closely aligns itself with academia, for obvious reasons, but maybe should instead study the success of the accountancy profession.

In academia, one stands or falls on one's own academic merit, mixed with a little skill in university politics and a bit of an eye for the available sources of finance. But in academia the employer is primarily publicly funded and provides a distinct and clear short term benefit to society, specifically the education of the next generation of lawyers, accountants and doctors. Academia is older than the written word and has long enjoyed a favoured place in society. Archaeology is not directly publicly funded; it does not provide a clear short term benefit to society (and its long term benefit, as currently practiced, is questionable, but a discussion on that topic belongs in another thread...). Its members primarily operate in a commercial market place, and one in which their employer *acts* very much as the junior player. It is a very young profession.

Accountancy on the other hand is a place governed by standards; legal requirements and professional body rules. It is a young profession (younger than the union movement, for example) yet has managed to become one of the best-paid. Accountancy arguably does not provide a clear short term benefit to society and it is not publicly funded.

So look closely at the rise of accountancy and see what lessons there are to learn. Or if accountancy is too high a target, look at the archives profession.

The only way archaeologists can get paid more is if the companies either get paid more or find a way to do the work at a lower cost. The companies bid the prices they do because it is what they have to bid to get the work. The only way to raise the price being paid is to raise the perceived value of the work and/or raise the required standards and therefore the skills needed to complete the work successfully. The latter needs someone to effectively police the quality of the archaeology being undertaken; all of it needs a strong professional body.