During the opening of the academic year, Casual Academy and 0.7 already announced that they wanted the universities to take action before Christmas. Now, WOinActie has joined them in their efforts.
The action groups are calling for three specific things, they write in a press release. Firstly, limits must be imposed on the number of temporary contracts for lecturers. The flexible shell must be reduced to less than twenty per cent, academic employees must be given teaching as well as research time and all structural teaching tasks must exclusively be carried out by employees with a permanent contract.
Secondly, they demand an end to the ‘structural employee overload’. In order to achieve this, a third of all the tasks must be eliminated.
Thirdly, the university must ensure a safe working environment ‘by tackling undesirable behaviour immediately and thoroughly by means of a transparent procedure’.
These demands come with a hard deadline: the universities have until 20 December to come up with a concrete plan that shows how the three demands will be met. If there is no plan by then, actions will be taken ‘at local and national level to force employers to meet our demands’.
These actions will take place on 14 February 2022, Valentine’s Day, to make it clear that ‘the love is not mutual’. The action groups will call on employees to organise walkouts, demonstrations, sit-ins and public meetings.