Britarch discussion

[mercenary]

I'd like to congratulate our host on his stance in a current discussion on Britarch regarding a ridiculously low paid job ad on that discussion board. It's worth a look at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadm...L=britarch

I completely agree with his stance. Archaeological wages are changing, in no small part because of the lever that BAJR has applied to them over advertising.
I think change in the industry can only come about by using these hard nosed techniques. (Not quite direct action)

I think the museum industry can be changed in the same way even though the funding is from a different place. Incidentally, the answer to David's criticism sounds exactly like every boss's explanation why they can't pay more. In short it is b******s, and defenders of low pay are colluding in exploitation of the staff.

Well done David

[BAJR Host]

Thanks...

I was not so much having a go at Bedes World in particular, more the fact that people are forced to put up with it... the old... come on chaps... if we don't do it for free....etc.

I wanted to stimulate dicusssion about exactly what the Museum industry was doing... rather than the shrug .

I do hope Museums survive.. they have to... but with respect for staff as well.

Hey... if nobody else will ... it's ma job!

Another day another WSI?

[Paul Belford]

Here are some facts which come from someone with a foot in both archaeology and museum camps. I am not hiding behind anonymity here, so would appreciate it if you can all please read very carefully before making a judgement or emailing my employer (!)

I am in charge of a commercial archaeology unit which is a self-funding department of an independent museum. Even though we are responsible for bringing in all the income for our department, I still have to constantly justify to other parts of the museum (including our Board of Trustees) the wages I want to pay to my staff.

I want to pay much higher wages than I actually am able to do so. I recognise that all of our wages (including mine) are much lower than those of our colleagues in other commercial, university, or local authority units. The fact that we are here at all is due to a lot of hard work and loyalty from all of us in the archaeology team.

I pay my site assistants a rate which is below the current BAJR minimum (although was just above it until April!). I want to raise this, but to do so have to wait for the Museum's annual pay review (every June, nearly there) and submit my requests with supporting arguments, to the Board of Trustees. Quite often this is a haggling process and what I ask for gets knocked down to what they think can be afforded.

However our archaeology wages are actually quite a good wage by the standards of other parts of the Museum (a museum which, incidentally, recieves no government income or support and is entirely dependent on visitor numbers for its revenue). Many staff at the museum recieve much less than they would doing comparable jobs in other walks of life. I am not prepared to give examples on this forum for obvious reasons. But suffice to say that our archaeology field officers get more than high-level secretarial staff who in any other walk of life would be on at least £20,000.

I am NOT justifying low wages. I agree with all the comments that high wages attract high calibre staff which increases the quality of the work undertaken and ultimately value for the customer (whether the customer is a developer client or a museum visitor). I am simply saying that lower wages are part and parcel of the museum world. If there was a BMJR acting with the same enthusiasm and dedication as BAJR then maybe things would be different.

[mercenary]

Paul, I had not realized that the museum industry is in much worse shape than archaeology. I thought they were roughly comparable to each other with regards to wages.

I'm interested to know if the pressure David has brought to bear on commercial units through his minimum rates can somehow be applied to the people who fund you? Surely if the market rate for your staff goes up, then you have to in some way try to keep up. More ammo in your funding requests in effect. If it really came down to paying museum staff a decent wage or shutting museums down (as was suggested on Britarch) would there not be much more pressure on local authorities to properly fund them? I just don't see that the market rate for museum staff (which is always going to be lower than in other industries) actually affects their viability. It is independent. Museums are underfunded because they are not valued enough by funding bodies(and possibly by wider society). Funding bodies are taking advantage of staff acceptance of pitiful wages in exactly the same way archaeological units and developers do. David is rigtht to try and exert some upward pressure on that.

[BAJR Host]

Thanks for that very honest post Paul (yup I know how it is with your unit )

I think there does need to be pressure from people involved.. perahps there shoudl be a BMJR ... but then thats what I thought the MA was...

At least I seemed to have stimulated some discussion about it ... next is to do something.. blimey ... my wife would kill me if she knew I was crusading (as the knight said to the bishop)

As tony said..... lets SHOUT

Another day another WSI?

[Paul Belford]

David is right to exert pressure on everyone (except perhaps his mum).

To clarify our situation... 90% of my department's funding comes from external sources in the form of developer-funded archaeology projects. We tender for work just as everyone else does. 10% comes from other sources, included externally-funded Museum capital projects and research grants. This is a complete turnaround from when I took over six years ago; about 90% of my predecessor's funding came from archaeological work on Museum capital projects.

I am not sure of the position vis a vis other Museums which have archaeology units.

However despite the fact that my department is financially independent of the wider museum, and therefore in theory should be able to charge and pay what we like, I still have to submit pay rise 'requests' to our Trustees.

The real problem, and the one that I want to highlight, is that there is a culture in the Museum sector which accepts low pay. So when I make a request to pay a site assistant (say) £14,500, this is in the context of a culture which regards that as a good wage for an assistant curator (ie. an archaeology site supervisor). If I want to pay a field officer the current BAJR recommended maximum for that grade, then that is equivalent to an excellent wage for a curator (someone whose responsibilities are closer to an archaeological project manager). And so on up the scale. So I don't even look at the bit on the BAJR scale that suggests I should be on £35,000.

Your point about heritage value is an important one. A lot of people regard visiting shopping centres as 'leisure' on a Sunday and far fewer visit Museums than they did 10 or 20 years ago. Again I speak from the perspective of a fully independent museum, and not the (relatively) buffered existence of the major Nationals or local authority museums.

quote:If it really came down to paying museum staff a decent wage or shutting museums down (as was suggested on Britarch) would there not be much more pressure on local authorities to properly fund them?

Pressure from whom?

I have not followed the Britarch debate closely. However I work in an independent museum which recieves no local authority funding. We think that is a good thing, as it gives us relative freedom to do what we want. It also sharpens our wits considerably as we have no financial buffer to fall back on. Public funding, and local authority influence, is a two-edged sword.

Public support for public funding is another matter entirely. I think if you went down your High Street and asked whether Museum staff should be paid more then people would say 'yes'.

If, on the other hand, you asked them 'Should your council tax go up by another 1% to increase the wages of staff in a non-essential service used by a generally unrepresentative minority of local residents' then the answer would probably be 'no'.

[m300572]

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.

[BAJR Host]

Quite willing to write phone and generally be annoying...
One point of order is that I may have to remove your Unit from the contractor list... as it is in breach of the terms... that can work.

Another day another WSI?

[Paul Belford]

I would be extremely grateful if people could please NOT write to our Trustees at this stage of the negotiation process. At best that will make my life difficult, at worst it could rebound very badly on some very poorly paid people.

Hence my comment at the very beginning of my first post!

I simply felt that I was in a good position to provide well-informed data for the discussion.

[mercenary]

My point about pressure on LA's to fund obviously doesn't apply to your independent museum Paul. It seems however that your money making branch might be funding other bits, no? If so, they should be a bit more relaxed about how you do it.
I was thinking though, more about the type of letter/publicity campaign ( for LA funded museums- not yours) that we are doing to stop curatorial cuts. Councillors are publicly accountable after all.

You are dead right about the cultural problem of traditionally accepting low pay. It is identical to the one that archaeology is trying to overcome, and seems to be achieving.

I very strongly feel that if we are contributing to that low pay tradition/culture we are part of the problem. We can't just hold up our hands and blame the tradition/culture. Any way of breaking it is fair game I reckon.