Page 43 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

Formal policy prescribes that the recruitment procedure for postdocs entails the publication of an open call and then a selection by a committee consisting of three tenured members of the department. The chair of the committee is the person in charge of the research grant.
The Swiss university distinguishes two types of postdoc positions: positions funded by research funding organisations and postdocs funded by the university. Externally funded project-based postdoc positions are part of the so-called “administrative and technical staff ”, which is originally a non-academic staff category. Because they are not part of the academic staff category, externally funded postdocs do not have representatives in faculty and university bodies. Therefore, it is more difficult for these postdocs to participate in and get informed about the strategic and scientific decisions taken by the academic bodies of the faculties, which puts them in a more precarious position than researchers in the academic staff category. For positions funded through external grants, which is often the case for postdoc positions, the directive states that: “No selection committee needs to be established. It is the responsibility of the person in charge of the funding to propose the hiring of a suitable candidate”.
In the Dutch university, postdocs receive a university employment contract and therefore they fall under the collective labour agreement for Dutch universities. In the Netherlands a new law implemented in 2015 prescribes that academic staff cannot get more than three consecutive temporary contracts. The total period of temporary employment cannot exceed four years (this used to be six years). As a result, academics on temporary positions, also academics who attract external funding, are not able to renew their contract in their current university when they reach the four years of employment. Given the current financial structure of universities, this law will most likely increase precarity, as universities are often not willing to turn fixed- term positions into permanent ones.
In the Belgian university, postdoc positions are conceived as bursaries or scholarships and therefore lack social security and pension scheme contributions. In both the Belgian and the Dutch university the recruitment and selection processes for postdocs are not formalized. External research funding finances postdoc positions and it is the grant holder(s) who make(s) the selection decision. Postdocs are sometimes recruited via an open call and with the use of a selection committee, but in many cases there is no open selection procedure and no selection committee.
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