29th August 2012, 09:25 PM
monty Wrote: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.