The unions have entered the collective labour agreement negotiations with a firm wage demand of 7 percent. This will only lead to even higher work stress, argues associate professor Martijn Wieling.
A unique event: employees of universities in the Netherlands are striking against the dismantling of high-quality education and research (such as it is…) by our government. Hopefully, the strikes will be effective, and the cuts will be taken off the table. But even in the most ideal scenario, there will be no additional investment in science.
Despite the fact that the unions were co-organisers of the strikes, I am surprised to read that these same unions are demanding a 7-percent wage increase. With inflation at about 3.3 percent (which will hopefully be compensated by the government), the unions apparently believe that everyone working at the university deserves relatively more money for the same work.
The fact that this will significantly increase work stress (since it can only be paid for by ultimately having fewer staff on the payroll) is apparently of secondary importance.
This can only be paid for by having fewer staff on the payroll
Why the union advocates for a percentage-based salary increase also isn’t entirely clear to me. After all, such an increase will mainly benefit those with higher salaries (see the insightful piece by colleague Laura Batstra on this matter). Why not advocate for an absolute increase, which is not only fairer but also more affordable for the employer? Or for an increase that only applies to salaries up to, for example, scale 10 or 11?
As far as I am concerned, it’s also time to take a critical look at our system of university job classification (ufo). As an associate professor, I always find it rather peculiar that support and management staff positions, which involve significantly more responsibility than what is expected from an associate professor, are classified in a lower pay scale.
I already advocated for this a few years ago: why don’t we move towards a system of Everyone Professor! (‘Iedereen professor!’), where every member of the permanent academic staff enjoys the same rights and status, but salary differentiation is related to the level of responsibility within the organisation?
Perhaps this would also be a good time to consider whether we really think it’s a good idea for a professor to now earn a maximum of 170,000 euros per year (and possibly, after the proposed salary increase, well over 180,000 euros).
Martijn Wieling is an associate professor of information science at the Faculty of Arts.