23rd May 2006, 04:54 PM
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.
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.