The sky-high inflation of the past year leads universities to cut back on research staff. This cost-cutting measure concerns 40% of the staff of the five Flemish universities since employees who are financed by other funding than the Ministry of Education cannot benefit from the future wage indexations. If the funding for this large group of employees does not increase in line with the wage index, many jobs risk being lost.
A bit of context
The Flemish government decided to index the wages of teaching staff on the basis of the real indexation of wages through the Ministry of Education. This will take effect from 2023. In years of high inflation, jobs will be safeguarded in this way because the universities will receive the necessary budgets to implement the indexation of wages.
However, staff members who are financed with research funds from Minister Brouns’ cabinet (Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Work, Social Economy and Agriculture) cannot benefit from this bill. Negotiations are currently being held to convince the minister to safeguard the BOF-funding by applying an appropriate indexation system. Funding from the FWO is also being discussed but no information has been disclosed yet. Research funding has to be sufficiently indexed in order to guarantee employment on the multitude of research projects. The ball is therefore in the court of Minister Brouns.
We demand:
- additional resources in 2022 and 2023 to guarantee the employment of researchers
- the guarantee that researchers will be able to complete their research within the agreed period
- a retroactive indexation of research funds
- the safeguarding of resources needed for research (libraries, labs, …)
If you would like to learn more about our “Indexing research funds”-campaign, take part in our webinar on Tuesday 13 December from 12.30 pm – until 2 pm.
Our speakers: Maïka De Keyzer (KU Leuven), Lorenzo Eeckloo (UGent) and Jo Coulier (VUB)
Click here to participate