Academics set to cycle from campus to campus to protest temporary contracts

Academics from all over the Netherlands plan to get on their bicycles on Monday to take part in protest tours of the Dutch universities. They will do so to raise awareness of the fact that many university employees are on temporary contracts.

The protest tours during the Opening of the Academic Year are initiated by the trade unions Algemene Onderwijsbond and FNV and the protest movement WOinActie. Erasmus University will be a stop on a tour that will depart from Leiden University and end at the Woudestein Campus, following a stopover at Delft University of Technology.

Symbolic

“The tour of the universities symbolises the fact that academics are forced to switch from one university to the next because no university will offer them a permanent contract,” says Patricia de Jong, a trade union liaison at Erasmus University. She is on the tour’s organising committee in her capacity as an FNV representative. “Young lecturers and researchers, in particular, are only offered temporary contracts, one after the other.”

The tour was an idea of academics who feel that the universities’ refusal to offer permanent contracts is resulting in a waste of talent, increased workloads, increased rivalry with fellow academics, and unhealthy working conditions. According to De Jong, the problem is even more pressing than usual at present due to the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus crisis.

Academics affiliated with Leiden University, TU Delft and EUR will cycle from Pieterskerkhof in Leiden (opposite the Academy Building) to TU Delft’s Auditorium, and then to EUR’s Woudestein Campus, where participants will be welcomed in front of the Hatta Building. Participants can start either in Leiden (at 10.30am) or in Delft (at 12.30pm). They are expected to arrive at Woudestein around 2pm.

For more information, or to join the protest tour, go to Algemene Onderwijsbond’s website.