Valuable technicians

The Royal Society's report states that recruitment of laboratory technician staff is failing to support university research ("Technical erosion reaches crisis", THES, October 9) but makes no mention of support to teaching.

The report points out that between 1982 and 1994 the number of technicians fell by a third, and while the number of academic staff remained about constant, the number of contract research staff increased by a third.

But in fact reductions in the number of university technician staff began in 1972 with the introduction of the common grading scheme and, despite its claim to consolidate technician staff with a career-based, job-oriented grading scheme there has been an insidious erosion of career structure ever since. A rigid and poorly thought-out segregation of roles into a preconceived "value-added" structure was doomed to the failure that is finally being acknowledged.

Unstructured staff development for junior staff and little if any meaningful career progression for senior technicians beyond grade T5 has demoralised laboratory support staff. Reducing the numbers of laboratory technicians while increasing demands on their expertise and workload further exacerbates the problems.

Central to these issues is the acknowledgement of the value of laboratory technicians and the essential need to cost them into research funding applications. Failure to do this is only now coming to light.

The hiring of university staff is increasingly likely to be on short-term, fixed contracts. The loss of tenure may prove to be its own undoing if the necessary support staff are not forthcoming and if ill-planned funding applications and ill-judged cost-cutting measures become the norm.

M. M. Gay Resources manager, school of earth and environmental sciences, University of Greenwich