Next week, negotiators from universities and unions will once again meet to discuss a new collective labor agreement. In recent years, such discussions have not only focused on pay raises, but also on the large number of temporary contracts. 

For full professors and associate professors, these talks are of little consequence, as almost all of them hold permanent positions. It’s the other employees on the academic career ladder who are affected.

Lecturers

Thanks to efforts by the unions and the previous cabinet, significant progress has been made for “assistant professors” (UDs). Fewer UDs are now on temporary contracts: over the past three years, the percentage dropped from 30 to 11 percent. 

A similar drop can be seen among “lecturers” (who don’t have research duties). In that group, the share of temporary contracts rose to 61 percent in 2021, and according to the latest figures, it has since fallen to 41 percent.

However, “other academic staff” have not been as fortunate. This group mostly consists of postdocs who carry out research at the university after obtaining their doctorate. Of them, 89 percent are on temporary contracts. That is 12 percentage points more than twenty years ago.

Of all the universities in the Netherlands, the percentage of people in this group with a permanent contract is lowest at TU/e. Fewer than 5 percent are on permanent contracts here, versus over 95 percent on temporary contracts. 

Project-based

According to Donald Pechler, sector manager at the AOb union, the difference in the percentage of permanent contracts between teaching staff and postdocs can be attributed to the project-based nature of postdoc positions. “...in 2023, the collective labor agreement included a provision to reduce the number of temporary contracts for teaching staff sector-wide to 13.5 percent. We believe that structural work should be carried out under permanent contracts,” reads his comment on the AOb website. “Postdocs are hired to conduct research that is financed on a project basis with external funding.”

AOb cannot yet confirm whether postdoc contracts will be part of the upcoming negotiations by the unions.

What stands out are the differences between universities, even just among assistant professors. At Tilburg, Leiden, Delft, and the University of Amsterdam, UDs rarely have temporary appointments. However, at Erasmus University Rotterdam, 29 percent of them do.

The contrast is even greater among lecturers without research duties. In Utrecht, 85 percent of them have temporary contracts, compared to only 6 percent in Rotterdam. So here, Erasmus University sits at the opposite end of the spectrum.

For postdocs, the place where they work also makes quite a difference. At Erasmus University Rotterdam, 66 percent are on temporary contracts, compared to over 90 percent at Delft, Eindhoven, Groningen, Utrecht, and the two Amsterdam universities, UvA and VU.