Academics to report overtime to Labour Inspectorate

On 20 December, WOinActie will pay a visit to the Dutch Labour Inspectorate (‘Inspectie SZW’) in order to report frequent overtime on behalf of a great number of lecturers. However, the protest group will first try to determine exactly how much overtime the academics are doing, and the consequences of those many additional hours of work.

Remco Breuker, a professor affiliated with Leiden University, has warned the Labour Inspectorate on Twitter: they’re about to get really busy. Breuker, one of the driving forces behind the WOinActie protest group, has called on his colleagues to fill out a form that will give the group a good understanding of the number of hours academics put in on top of their regularly scheduled hours, as well as of the causes of the overtime and how it is affecting their private lives and health.

This is not the first action the protest group has organised, and it won’t be the last. Previously, they organised a ‘white strike’, during which academics refused to do overtime. The emails they received were answered by an automatic reply that read: ‘We are too busy to respond to your email quickly.’

Breuker announced his plans as far back as September. He suggested that lecturers might soon stop teaching and marking assignments. If they do, their students will not be able to graduate. The action group is taking this action to make it abundantly clear that the current situation cannot continue, as far as academic staff is concerned. For this reason, the group has demanded that Ingrid van Engelshoven, the Minister for Education, earmark €1 billion for higher education and research.

Van Engelshoven admitted earlier this week that more funding is needed, but says her ministry does not have enough money in its coffers to give the universities what they need.