22nd January 2007, 03:26 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Unitof1
Thats 72% and most of the 28% of IFA are irrelevant to people that like to imagine that they are archaeologists (even though its never written on the pay slip.....)
Unit of 1: I can see the point you are making, but I think this issue is closely linked to the (much discussed) difficulties over the name of the IFA (i.e. including 'Field'). The IFA counts as a subset of its membership a wide variety of archaeological professionals, and all of these subsets deserve a proper and proportional voice on the council. As a consultant or local government archaeologist, an individual may feel rightly aggrieved if (for example) 72% of the council were contractors. Without wishing to play with the numbers too much, the proportion of contractors as a whole is 42.8% (including University units which do operate in the commercial sector, but not academics who may run research field projects). Over half the council counts as contractors if you include consultants who may carry out fieldwork (building recordings in particular), though I freely confess this is s t r e t c h i n g the definition }
. With regard to your point about not seeing any of the council in trenches - I think 3 of the members are still non-management fieldworkers. This compares to 33.4% in the government sector (including EH). Simply because they may not be in a trench now, doesn't stop them empathising through in many cases their signficant field experience (or indeed retaining a level of impartiality which would be required in a case such as the above).
I would also direct you to the latest Profiling the Profession (2002/3) which suggests that the proportion of membership in the commercial section was 49% (p60), so the council proportion is close to being fully representative of the IFA membership in this respect.
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