university function restructuring
'Twente aios lose their advantage'
All PhD-students in salary scale 10. This is the result of the so-called University Function Restructuring that applies to aios from 1 September. 'For Twente aios that is less favourable than it sounds', says Jon Barsema, chairman of the Twents Aio Beraad (the Twente consultation body for PhD-students). And the transitional regulation is also disadvantageous for many aios, reports the National AIO/OIO consultation body (LAIOO).
All PhD-students in the tenth scale. Nothing wrong with that, is there? And indeed, in Amsterdam and Utrecht they were overjoyed. 'But', qualifies Jon Barsema, 'for Twente aios it is less favourable. Here in Enschede we already had a good thing going. Even though our aios will also get a salary increase, we consider the secondary conditions much more important.Æ And there substantial cuts are made. 'Because everything is equalised nationally, the amount one normally gets at the UT to publish the dissertation is cancelled. To add to that, the amount the aio can spend on career development is cut in half.'
Bram de Jager, aio at Thermal Engineering, has the amounts at hand. 'Let's see. For career development we will be getting 2,269 instead of 4,538 euros. And the dissertation regulation was worth 3,100 euros.Æ
The idea is that the cancellation of these extras are compensated by the rise in salary. Whether this is the case in Twente, Barsema does not know exactly. 'I do not yet have a complete idea of the situation.'
De Jager does know that he will suffer a loss. This is because of the transitional regulation that applies until 2005 and is necessary to introduce the restructured function valuation. The mandatory periodical salary rise of first and second year PhD-students is linked to one reference date, 1 September. The LAIOO: 'The original periodical salary increases of all PhD-students will be cancelled. And this causes inequality in the salaries.'
This inequality applies in particular to PhD-students who started after 1 September 2002. Bram de Jager is a case in point. He started in October 2002 as aio. 'That is what happens, aios start the whole year.' This means that on the reference date 1 September 2003 he is still in his first year. The next salary rise will then not come until a whole year later, in September 2004.
'Thereby completely ignoring the periodical in the labour contract agreed on individually for each aio. It is in fact the denial of some of my experience', says De Jager surprised. 'And because I am a year behind I will no longer get to the top-layer.' He calculates that he will miss out on 5000 euros. And he will lose the extras discussed before. 'Because of the salary increase the personnel department feels that we should be able to reserve the money ourselves. But in my case this is impossible. This will cost me another five-thousand euros. And I am not the only one. Second-year aios will also lose their individual periodical date.'
The TAB-chairman will discuss this with the personnel department soon. 'The idea behind the new function restructuring is that nobody will lose out, which does threaten to happen now. I do expect that something will be done.'
Robert van den Boezem of the personnel department knows about the aios who will miss the boat because of the fixed periodical date. 'It could concern a limited group of aios already employed who will have to wait along time for a salary rise. If it is indeed true that this will cost aios money, we will have to consider the individual cases. It is not our intention to cause people to lose out.
Van den Boezem explains that the UT is adhering to the collective labour agreement that states that a national uniform system should apply from 2005. 'This is why we have to cancel facilities like the dissertation reimbursement. For the Twente aio this is indeed an adverse development. They used to have an advantage compared to other aios, but they have lost that now.' But Van den Boezem does not exclude the possibility that some extras will be added in future. 'Things are never as black as they seem at first. We will certainly look into the possibility of additional measures.'
Jannie Benedictus transl. DvA |
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