The UMCG is starting cassation proceedings in the case concerning forty-four MD/PhDs who demand to be treated as employees instead of students. In May, the Supreme Court had sided with the MD/PhDs. The hospital hopes that a new decision by the Supreme Court ‘will clear up the matter for everyone involved’.
The MD/PhDs were hired as part of the PhD Scholarship Experiment, which allowed universities to pay PhD students with a scholarship rather than providing them with a labour contract. This not only meant that the PhDs earned less money in a month than their employed colleagues, but they also missed out on secondary benefits, such as holiday pay and an end-of-year- bonus.
The students, who were both working on their PhD researching as well as finishing their medical studies, felt this wasn’t fair. After all, they were doing the exact same work as the people who started their PhD either before 2016 or after 2018, the period during which the UMCG didn’t have any spots as part of the experiment. They started their case against the hospital five years ago.
However, the UMCG felt that they weren’t so much working as receiving education, and that they were awarded all the freedom they required. In fact, the hospital claimed that even the PhDs from before 2016 were actually ‘students’.
Half a million
The subdistrict court agreed with the hospital in 2022, but last year, the court in Leeuwarden decided that the PhDs did have a working relationship with the UMCG and should be considered employees. Because of this, the MD/PhDs were entitled to thousands in overdue holiday pay, unpaid days off, end-of-year bonuses, and potential pension levies. This would cost the UMCG approximately half a million euros.
‘We asked the court whether their training contracts could retroactively be considered employment contracts’, the UMCG says. The hospital says it’s ‘a difficult situation’ for both parties.
Delay
Dino Jongsma, who’s been supporting the PhDs in their fight the past few years, is disappointed. ‘Their actions are delaying the entire matter again, possibly by a whole year. Because of this, the MD/PhDs will have to wait even longer to get paid the money the court says they are owed.’
The PhD Network Netherlands, which has been fighting for the equal treatment of PhDs, is also unhappy with the UMCG’s actions. ‘By starting cassation proceedings on the very last possible day, the UMCG is actually making things less clear. This case has already taken four years and now it’s being delayed even further’, says chairperson Anneke Kastelein.
The outcome of the proceeding could also be very important to the RUG. A total of 1,500 scholarship PhDs participated in the project at the UG and the UMCG. While the MD/PhDs don’t have a master’s degree, other scholarship PhDs do. These scholarship PhDs have been protesting their unfair treatment for years as well.