Annex 2
WHO SPEAKS
FOR CONTRACT
RESEARCHERS?
In my view
By Dr Rachel Flecker
Of the many people involved in trying to improve
conditions for contract research staff (CRS), contract researchers
themselves are conspicuously absent. Should we, Royal Society
post-docs, be filling this gap?
The CRS population has grown rapidly and at
30-40,000[57]
it is now comparable in size to the research population holding
permanent contracts. A plethora of recent articles, reports, concordats,
statements and surveys all agree that changes to the structure
of our research institutions and their management have not kept
pace with this dramatic shift in demographics. Hence, despite
the fact that in science departments CRS commonly out-number their
colleagues in established positions, many have no role in departmental
or institutional decision-making even over issues directly affecting
their own working conditions.
The same lack of representation occurs at national
level where many of the committees entrusted with formulating
future strategy in this area are void of members on fixed-term
contracts. The Research Careers Initiative, for instance is a
committee that identifies good practice in the career management
and development of CRS, yet its senior panel includes no one with
recent post-doctoral experience. In my own university, the CRS
Working Group met for over a year before appointing two post-doc
members.
These omissions do not imply a policy of deliberate
exclusion. After all contract staff are consulted, most often
through surveys. Regrettably one of the weaknesses of questionnaires
is that they limit the participants' input to the information
requested. New, timely or unexpected contributions to the debate
are much more likely to result from having CRS as active committee
members.
One barrier to including CRS in committee activity
and policy-making is their inherently short-term contracts. This
problem is not, in the longer term, insurmountable. The CRS Working
Group in Cambridge was devoid of contract staff membership only
while there was not postdoctoral organisation in the University
able to furnish it with willing committee members. These members
change as frequently as their contracts so that continuity is
supplied by the organisation not the individual. Fledgling post-doc
organisations do now exist in various institutions across the
country, but until they are well established, contract researchers
will remain a large, vulnerable population without a voice.
As Royal Society-funded contract researchers
we are less vulnerable than most of our peers. We have longer
contracts and in many departments are given a status that allows
us access to strategic planning for the future and an opportunity
to be heard. Clearly than we Royal Society post-docs are not representative
of the huge diversity within the CRS population, but then no other
post-doc group is either? At least most of us have held other
types of short-term research contract before receiving our fellowship
and so have recent direct experience of a wide range of the issues
under scrutiny.
The Royal Society commits itself to excellence
"in science itself and in scientific leadership...to openness,
inclusiveness and engagement with a science in society"[58].
As participants in that vision, we could serve the wider CRS population
by actively contributing to the debate. For this the Royal Society
would be an ideal forum. Should we be using the independence and
status associated with our fellowships on behalf of ourselves
and the silent majority of our peers?"
Dr Rachel Flecker holds a Royal Society Wolfson
Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow jointly at the Department of Earth Sciences
in the University of Cambridge and the Scottish Universities Environmental
Research Centre. She is a founding member PdOC, a network for
CRS at Cambridge. The views expressed here are the author's and
do not necessarily reflect Royal Society policy. If you would
like to comment on these views or write an article of a future
In My View, please email excellence@royalsoc.ac.uk.
1 July 2002
57 RCI 3rd (Interim) Report, annex 3, (2001). Back
58
Anniversary Address 2001. Back
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