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Summary
On the 5th of April, “Colldoc”, the collective for the Paris-Saclay employees with insecure status held its first general meeting, with around fifty people, mainly doctoral students, from all around the university. This gathering occurred a few days after the “Assises de la Précarité”, which was a meeting organized by the inter-union committee in cooperation with the various higher education and research precarious employees’ collectives. This move is meant to be part of the ongoing struggle against the Research Planning Act and the Public Sector Transformation Act.
We acknowledged three main points:
1/ Wages are insufficient: they must increase and be indexed to the cost of living. Furthermore, the fact that doctoral students are compelled to pay tuition fees to work seems nonsensical to us. They should be fully recognized as staff members, and granted a right to free courses, just like what Paris 1 and Paris Nanterre university provided their doctoral students with.
2/ Our rights must be respected: we demand the end of free work. Some professors abuse their position of power in order to have precarious status employees correct additional papers or oversee exams related to courses in which said employees didn’t take part. And this is against the law.
3/ Work conditions: cases of bad thesis supervision are commonplace, which often leads to us having to suffer from harassment. But the silence surrounding these cases is downright deafening, as the fear of a negative impact on one’s career is strong enough to deter one from talking. We want for the regulatory frameworks to really be able to prevent those illegal and damaging behaviours. The victims must be heard and supported.
The various precarious workers among the technical and administrative staff, or the teachers/researchers, are an essential part of the labs, departments and faculties. The teachers/researchers’ working conditions depend on what their administrative and technical peers can do for them, with their own working conditions. We must put an end to this constant short staffing situation, for the university cannot work properly as long as 4 out of 10 administrative employees are hired under an insecure status.
The university cannot function without us. Precarity isn’t the university’s future, but rather its current reality. The university relies on an exploitation system to keep working.
The Research Planning Act and the Public Sector Transformation Act will only exacerbate this situation, but we won’t give up. We are aware that, ultimately, through the struggle for our own working, studying and living conditions, we are standing up for the higher education and research public service as a whole. We fight, and will keep fighting, until we are satisfied.
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On the 5th of April, “Colldoc”, the collective for the Paris-Saclay employees with insecure status held its first general meeting, with around fifty people, mainly doctoral students, from all around the university. This move is meant to be part of the ongoing struggle against the Research Planning Act and the Public Sector Transformation Act. This gathering occurred a few days after the “Assises de la Précarité”, which was organized by the inter-union committee in cooperation with the various higher education and research precarious employees’ collectives.
We acknowledged three main points:
1/ The first one is about insufficient wages
We demand a pay rise, and the indexation of our wages to the cost of living, including charges, rents, and moving expenses, which are often induced by precarious situations.
a) wages must increase, as well as the amount of funded PhDs
On that matter, we want the pay rise provided for in the Research Programming Act to be extended to all doctoral students, and not only newcomers.
As a reminder, standard doctoral contracts provide students with a monthly gross wage of 1768 euros.
It must also be mentioned that, in September 2020, the ex-INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research) now INRAE (National Institute for Agricultural, food and Environmental Research) students got a pay rise, up to a gross wage of 1874 euros, which is exactly what the Research Programming Act provides for. But this law wasn’t enacted back then. And after that, the whole INRAE student body obtained another pay rise, up to a gross wage of 1975 euros, namely the salary level prescribed by the RPA for new PhDs at the start of the 2022-2023 school year.
It is possible to draw from these achievements.
There are still too much unfunded PhD students in social and human sciences, this is a structural cause of social precarity and inequality. New contracts must be created for this to end, as set out by the programming research act by the way.
b) every staff member must receive a residence allowance
A residence allowance must be given to every precarious status worker. As of now, only the public officials, contract agents and civil servants whose stipend is determined based on salary scale, may benefit from it. Doctoral students in particular, while they face the same cost of living increase as everyone else, still don’t get access to it. Even though our “ATER” (temporary lecturer and research assistant) peers, do. Their salaries are based on a benchmark index, and this triggers entitlement to allowance residence for them. A simple change in the PhD regulatory framework could remove this inequality, however. There is no reason not to do, for the doctoral students, what has already been done for the teachers’ assistants in primary and secondary schools for instance. This change, in the Paris region, would amount to earning 2000 euros over the course of three years, which is significant.
c) give the “vacataires” an actual work contract. The “vacataire” status is primarily defined by the fact that the wage is based solely on the amount of teaching hours carried out. Seniority or diplomas are, for example, out of the equation. Moreover, monthly wage isn’t systematic, it can also be a quarterly, biannual or even annual pay.
Some doctoral students or doctors without position live off teaching “vacations” alone. Those contracts are paid under minimum wage and don’t grant access to the same social rights than normal contracts. The university must give these precarious workers actual contracts, and due recognition for their research work. In addition, the use of this kind of contracts must be strictly regulated, with a monthly wage at least (as stipulated by the Research Programming Act). The advisory report from the Council of State that should, theoretically, compel the higher education institutions to cover their travel expenses must be actually enforced, as it is for any other kind of university member.
The ANCSMP (National Association for the Job Applicants in the Political Science Field) has a few suggestions on the matter:
-put an end to the “ATV” (temporary “vacataires” agents) status and ensure the mandatory use of actual teaching contracts, guaranteeing access to a form of social protection ;
-shed light on the various unpaid professional activities (correcting papers, watching over exam sessions, attending meetings, carrying out administrative work etc.) for them to be reflected in the salary.
d) staff members shouldn’t have to pay tuition fees
Doctoral students are asked to pay to be able to work: this is insane. We ask the university to consider the doctoral students as staff members, for them to be exempted from tuition fees, just like how Paris 1 and Nanterre do for any fellow worker willing to start or resume a university cursus.
2/ The second one is about the observance of our rights
Nowadays, the university doesn’t do enough to let us know about our rights, or to give us information about the various abnormal situations and psychosocial risks we may face, such as power abuses or harassment. And yet a large amount of insecure status workers are victims in these predicaments.
Thus, we recommend dedicating some time to the unions as well as the organizations defending precarious workers for them to provide newcomers (undergraduates, master or PhD students) with a mandatory presentation during their welcoming day, either one presentation for Paris-Saclay students as a whole or alternatively, one for each of its components. We suggest that people with responsibilities (such as representatives in the research unit council or the doctoral school) as well as anyone who’s interested, be able to have access to a more detailed course. For administrative and technical staff members, this course can be included in their work time as discharge. For PhD students, this could be counted as off training catalogue courses.
a) end of free work
We demand the end of free work. Indeed, we know that some professors tend to abuse their position of power in order to have precarious status employees correct additional papers or oversee exams related to courses in which said employees didn’t take part, which is illegal.
Moreover, the law stipulates that 1 lecture course hour amounts to 1.5 “HETD” (tutorial-class-hour equivalent) and 1 practical work hour amounts to 1 HETD. But this still isn’t the case in practice, as in some parts of the university, 1 lecture course hour amounts to less than an hour and a half of tutorial class. We want the law to be followed in every component and part of the university. The weight of the structural funding shortage shouldn’t be placed on the most insecure workers’ shoulders. Playing with the “HETD” coefficient is one of the most common methods used by the university to save money, albeit a very small amount, and this is unacceptable. The coefficients must follow what the law prescribes.
b) a right to disconnect from work and take vacations
Some of the insecure status workers do not explicitly benefit from paid leave. We demand that their right to disconnect from work be actually observed: we must preserve periods of time during which professional interactions aren’t allowed (evening, weekends, paid leave). In this regard, generalizing the vacation management systems for precarious staff members (like the Agate system used in the CNRS labs for instance) could represent an appropriate framework.
c) promote the PhD students’ activities – for an actual doctoral training
It should be mentioned that the doctoral training’s newest version is made for preparing doctoral students to a professional career outside the higher education and research field. We demand that it meets the students’ needs, regardless of their future choices, as they should first and foremost get proper training in their own field, and then highlight the activities that they’re already undertaking. Many of us are already carrying out teaching, scientific animation, or student managing activities, from which you can learn a lot. We suggest that the doctoral schools take a page from the social and human sciences doctoral school’s book, as the various tasks covered by the students are more properly taken into account there.
d) « personnels hébergé·es » (roughly translated: “hosted staff members”), aka. employees working in a different organization than the one employing them.
When asking for information, the employer, the host, the host’s host (yes, that is a thing, as silly as it sounds), the client etc. shouldn’t be forced to ask again and again. The employer is in charge of coordinating with the “host” and must gather the information as needed.
There should only be one single contact point with the employer for every kind of inquiry/procedure (for “hosted” workers, teleworking people, people working in the private sector, or fulfilling a mission, people in need to go see a colleague in another building and other kinds of specific circumstances). Mail exchanges and progress of ongoing procedures inside the various entities involved must be electronically traced. The numerous amounts of contact persons, and the lack of any kind of coordination between them entails an additional workload for “hosted” staff members in need of working material, for example. This additional workload is illegitimate and inefficient in regard of the amount of time that could be saved by centralizing procedures.
”Hosted” staff members must be granted a badge that works everywhere they need to go (buildings in every location, canteen, library etc.). This badge should be given to them on their first working day, granting them the appropriate permissions. Failure to do so must be faced with penalties. This single badge could benefit everyone, “hosted” workers or not, and the administrative staff members’ repetitive work could be eased this way. Our “hosted” peers shouldn’t be compelled to spend time explaining their status again and again to be granted access to the various workspaces such as labs, libraries, or to the collective catering facilities, as this goes directly against equality between peers.
3/ The third one has to do with our working conditions
Beyond financial issues, there is the matter of bad management. It is a common situation and a recurring problem for doctoral students and unemployed young doctors. And because of that, we run the risk of facing harassment.
Even if harassment is of course illegal, there still is, in our labs and research units, a constant silence around this matter. Precarious workers are afraid to talk about what they’re going through, because of the consequences that such a statement might have on their career. But they must be allowed to speak, for those misconducts to end. We also urge every professor who find themselves appalled by those behaviours to speak up and support the victims.
a) Prevent the abuses
We must seriously start thinking about making some radical changes to the “HDR” (thesis supervision accreditation). This diploma isn’t about evaluating the candidate’s capacity to direct research, unlike the “ADR” for example, but obtaining this diploma qualifies for thesis supervision nonetheless. The quality of your own research doesn’t say anything about your ability to supervise a PhD. We demand that teachers/researchers acquire the relevant abilities and soft skills through proper training. We also want to generate discussions on the following suggestions: assign each PhD student a mentor, who wouldn’t be part of the supervision team, so they have a person to freely talk to, about how the PhD is going ; inclusion of a PhD student in the thesis monitoring committee (“comité de suivi de these”).
b) Suitable medico-welfare facilities
The occupational medicine’s workforce must be increased to keep up with the university’s workforce needs, in order to properly handle the harassment cases among other things. The fact that there’s only one nurse for several thousand university users and staff members is unacceptable, just like the fact that the 1500 ENS students and the few thousand staff members only have two persons, working part-time, to look after them. And these are only two well-known examples.
The various precarious workers among the technical and administrative staff, or the teachers/researchers, are an essential part of the labs, departments, and faculties. The teachers/researchers’ working conditions depend on what their administrative and technical peers can do for them, with their own working conditions. We must put an end to this constant short staffing situation, for as long as 4 out of 10 administrative employees are under an insecure status, the university cannot work properly.
The university cannot function without us. Precarity isn’t the university’s future, but rather its current reality. The university relies on an exploitation system to keep working.
The Research Planning Act and the Public Sector Transformation Act will only exacerbate this situation, but we won’t give up. We are aware that, ultimately, through the struggle for our own working, studying and living conditions, we are standing up for the higher education and research public service as a whole. We fight, and will keep fighting, until we are satisfied.
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Please, demonstrate your support to the various suggestions written here by signing this statement. And don’t hesitate to share it around you.