Career opportunities

The main aims of the VAWO are improving the labour conditions, payment and pensions of its members. Our priority at this point in time is the improvement of the opportunities of the strongly increasing number of scientists with fixed-term contracts.

Since 1999, the permanent scientific staffs at the Dutch universities have decreased from 54% to less than 45% of all scientific personnel. In this period the number of assistent professor positions (UD's, in full-time equivalents) decreased from 4000 to 3000, which severely curtails the career opportunities of postdoctoral researchers.They are often forced to move from one employer to another again and again. Or they find themselves unemployed for longer or shorter periods of time. Many have to start new careers, outside science, when they are well over forty years of age.

The VAWO fights to increase the number of permanent contracts for scientists and to introduce tenure track systems on a broad scale. Scientists who have proven their skills deserve better job security and possibilities for career development. Not only for their own interests, but in the interest of the national scientific institutions and Dutch society as a whole.

This aim can be easily financed by reducing the vast and expensive institutional bureaucracies and cutting back on the managerial layers. Currently, most Dutch universities spend less than half of their budget on their main tasks of scientific education and research.

The VAWO rejects all attempts to have people (from the European Union) working on their thesis with a grant instead of an employment contract (with salary and social benefits). The VAWO strongly contributed tot the rights of PhD's being laid down in the collective labour agreements. As sentences in a number of lawsuits showed, grant systems for PhD's are not only breaching these agreements, but also both Dutch and European law.