Give researchers two-year minimum contracts, UCU manifesto urges

Research staff at UK universities should be employed on contracts of at least two years in length, according to a new manifesto calling on employers to improve job security for thousands of researchers.

In its new Research Staff Manifesto, the University and College Union (UCU) calls on universities to sign up to five key principles that aim to reduce the use of fixed-term contracts and ensure that “open-ended contracts are the norm”.

The manifesto, published on 21 February, comes alongside the union’s release of analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency data, which shows that about two-thirds of university research staff (65 per cent) are on fixed-term contracts, some less than a year in length. Nearly 33,000 researchers were employed on temporary contracts in 2022-23 compared with 17,315 on open-ended contracts.

Those signing up to the manifesto will be asked to “implement policies that improve the security of employment of research staff with a view to breaking the link between an individual job and a specific piece of grant funding”.

“This would include a pooled resourcing model and the transfer of research staff to genuine open-ended contracts that are not linked to funding periods,” it says, stating that this would require “systems….that support the continuity of employment and minimise the risk of redundancy at the end of a funded research project, such as redeployment, bridged funding and extended notice periods.”

It adds that this would also include extra support for “development opportunities and secure career paths for our research staff”.

More broadly, institutions would need to “move to a situation where genuine open-ended contracts are the norm, reducing the use of fixed-term contracts” and “limit fixed-term contracts to specific circumstances, such as parental leave cover”.

This would require employers to ensure “any fixed-term contract…is no shorter than 24 months, other than in agreed instances such as parental leave cover”, it says.

The manifesto’s publication comes amid increased focus on how working conditions for UK research staff can be improved, with the Research Excellence Framework 2029 running a pilot to consider how excellence in the people, culture and environment section of the exercise might be assessed.

The UCU manifesto also echoes the IchbinHannah movement in Germany, which has highlighted the precarity faced by postdocs and other scientists on fixed-term contracts, with about 90 per cent of scientists employed on temporary terms.

Welcoming the UK manifesto, UCU’s general secretary Jo Grady said it was “scandalous that most of the staff who actually do the work behind the UK’s world-leading research output are denied secure jobs”.

“University bosses must stop making excuses for keeping research staff in perpetual limbo and begin working with us to provide them with the job security they deserve,” she added.

“Researchers bring billions of pounds worth of funding into university coffers each year and enable institutions to tout their credentials as research powerhouses, yet more than six in 10 are on a fixed-term contract, some of which last mere months,” said Grady.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com