31st March 2006, 06:41 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by drpeterwardle
My original posting was about the ethics of "casual" labour as a means of employment and if we should accept the reality of employment in archaeology at present and if BAJR could improve the situation.
Well to be absolutely honest there are no ethics in the casualisation of any workforce.
Construction industry unions have shown that there is a direct link between casualisation and worsening in Health and Safety conditions. The dock and transport unions have shown that casualisation has resulted in a decline in employment conditions. The teaching unions have shown that casualisation results in lower average wages in UK education. Many of the redundancies recently announced by various National Health PCTs are a result of, or directly affect, casually employed staff. Both Prospect and Unison (the two unions that represent the majority of unionised archaeologists) have ongoing campaigns against the casualisation of any sectors of their represented workforces. Casualisation through its 'cash in hand' nature, encourages evasion of tax, insurance and contributory benefit payments. Casualisation is often the result of short-term political fixing where jobs are publicly 'axed' as an exercise in financial machismo only to be replaced by casual labour when the claimed 'redundancy' of the post is revealed to be illusory.
To summarise, casualisation can be shown to be dangerous, detrimental to wages, terms and conditions,divisive and unnecessary.
However, now we turn to archaeology....
How could someone suggest that casualisation in archaeology might not be such a bad thing?. In terms of Health and Safety, the main employers organisation (SCAUM), despite several requests, refuses to make their Health and Safety manual freely available to archaeologists. Wages in archaeology are a joke with the vast majority of employers still paying their staff less than the EU recognised 'dignity' wage. The vast majority of field archaeologists are employed on ST or fixed term contracts. Many do not recieve sick pay or holiday pay. The majority of staff in archaeology are unable to establish continuity of employment, begin each new contract as if they are brand new to the job and receive no official recognition of academic achievement and/or years of in-work experience. The two unions that represent the majority of unionised archaeologists have had little or no success in organising significant improvements in the terms conditions and wages of archaeologists.
Conclusion: Archaeology is ideally suited to casualisation (further casualisation). The lack of an effective policing system within the profession portends that the dangers of casualisation, identified in other industries, are likely to go unchecked. Casualisation will have a minimal effect on the 'transient' part of the UK archaeological population (they are as suggested, already 'casualties') but can only serve to undermine the jobs of that part of the workforce in 'established' or 'semi-established' posts.
My thought: Whether this will happen depends very much on the enthusiasm of individuals to resist its allurements. There are many local and national campaigns fighting casualisation both as a principle and a threat to their communities and community aspirations (I will, if requested, post a list of campaigns on my blog site).