SPL
Future shock? Fixed-term contracts provide researchers with flexibility, but they lack security.
The locksmith who let me into my apartment after I had locked myself out turned out to be a drop-out from a career in academia. When his university adviser had asked him to share his wages (already half-time pay for full-time work) with the lab technician, he decided to look for an alternative career. He thought there must be a better way to earn a living. So he started his own business.
Meagre wages are not the only problem in building a career in research. Many scientists are employed on fixed-term contracts, allowing funding agencies and governments the flexibility to adjust their research agendas.
But one person's flexibility is another's uncertainty. The lack of security and low wages provided by contract research may be turning talent away. The efficiency of research carried out under fixed-term contracts is also in dispute.
Hubert Markl, president of Germany's Max Planck Society (MPS), is content with the situation as it is in his institution. "Contract research is necessary and unavoidable," he says. "If all research was done using permanent positions, science would be paralysed, with no flexibility." More than half of the MPS's scientific staff hold fixed-term positions — allowing them to be employed for a maximum of five years under German law. "The situation is not bad at the moment," says Markl.
Turning point
Dirk Hartung, chairman of the MPS's general works council, a body that represents all the employees, disagrees. "The discussion seems to have reached a turning point," Hartung says. "People are beginning to realize that the excessive use of fixed-term employment affects the quality of research." Hartung believes that continuity is an essential ingredient of good research — as is internal criticism. "People don't dare to dispute their boss's work when they are on a fixed-term contract, for fear of not getting renewal," he points out.
European legislation has directed its attention to fixed-term contracts in several fields, not just science. A directive from the Council of Ministers published in 1999 (1999/70/EC) concerning the framework agreement on fixed-term contracts calls for "achieving the required balance between flexibility and security". The directive must be implemented in national legislation within the European Union (EU) by the end of July 2001. (Ironically, the EU's own research programme is one of the driving forces behind the use of fixed-term contracts in science.)
The new directive aims to limit successive fixed-term employment contracts. It asks member states not to allow people to be hired on a series of fixed-term contracts unless one of three criteria is met. One of these criteria is a specific reason for the renewal of a fixed-term contract: for example, work on a PhD thesis, which is by its nature limited in time. The second option is to restrict the maximum duration of non-permanent employment — current German law, for example, allows only a maximum of five years of work in science on fixed-term contracts. The third criterion is a restriction on the maximum number of permissible contract renewals.
The directive's impact on scientific research would vary by country. For example, France already has legislation that conforms with the directive, but the United Kingdom and Ireland will have to make significant amendments.
The potential difficulties for researchers on consecutive fixed-term contracts are manifold. The concern mentioned most often in a survey of the situation of postdocs in Europe, carried out jointly by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and Nature (see Nature 397, 640–641; 1998), was the uncertainty of contracts and the lack of prospects to obtain permanent positions.
The survey, of people attending ESF conferences who were under 40 and held a PhD, revealed that only a third were in permanent employment. The situation became little better with age and length of experience: half of those aged over 35 were still on fixed-term contracts.
"This research position was intended to be a transitory situation towards a more stable scientific career, although it is becoming a state of permanent uncertainty. There is an anguishing lack of prospect for a career in science for young researchers," writes one survey participant.
France stands out, with three-quarters of the survey participants in permanent positions. France restricts short-term contracts, allowing only a maximum total of 18 months on fixed-term contracts (with the exception of PhD students, who can be employed for up to three years). "Only a very small proportion of researchers are on short-term contracts — most are employed permanently," says Pascal Yiou, a researcher at the Laboratoire de Modelisation du Climat et de l'Environnement near Paris. "From a social point of view, nothing can beat the French system."
But he acknowledges that job security has its downsides. "There is no incentive to go abroad, or to change labs. People tend to stay where they are. This is not very dynamic."
In other countries, contract research is not restricted to young postdocs. Sarah Raper, for example, an internationally recognized climate scientist and lead author in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, works on a fixed-term basis — 23 years after taking her PhD.
"Having failed to get funding in Britain, I now have a three-year contract at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. As it is now, I commute," she says. Her family, with two children aged 16 and 14, lives in Norwich, England, where she spent the 19 years until 2000 working on fixed-term contracts funded by various sources, including the US Department of Energy, the EU and the UK government. "The flexibility of contract research has suited me," she says, "but it is not a career I would recommend."
Starting a family
The pressures of short-term contracts can increase the difficulties for women trying to combine a family with a career in science. Fixed-term contracts, with no job guarantee after maternity leave and an enormous pressure to produce results within a short time, is not the situation a woman would necessarily choose to be in when she starts a family, unless she is happy to let her career take second place. And women are more likely than men to be employed on fixed-term contracts.
"We cannot accept that women are so far under-represented in science and that they are the first ones to be employed on uncertain contracts," says Achilleos Mitsos, director-general for research at the European Commission. "This is not only unfair and unjust, it is simply a stupid discrimination which can have far-ranging negative effects on the quality of European research."
Hubert Markl believes that contract research is 'necessary and unavoidable'.
Speaking for the Max Planck Society, Hubert Markl says: "If you look closer at the situation of women on fixed-term contracts, you find that many young women between about 30 and 36 make a decision about having a family. They often leave science out of choice, much as I find this regrettable, to move where their partners have found a job." He also believes that re-entering a research career, for example after maternity leave, can sometimes even be helped by fixed-term contracts.
Michelle Peckham, now a lecturer at the University of Leeds and a mother of three, started her family while working on a fellowship from the Royal Society. "At least I had secure funding for five years when I first became pregnant, otherwise I would have been very worried," she says. But it is difficult to find a general pattern that might work. "Trying to fit children into a career structure is very difficult for women," says Peckham. "There are two ways: either you have them very early or very late, after you have become established. But neither of these ways is easy."
Permanently temporary
Sarah Raper points out the difficulties of persuading potential funding agencies to support the research of experienced scientists. "As you get older, it gets harder and harder to get another contract, or a permanent position. You are just not competitive any more. Young postdocs cost half as much," she says. When applying to the EU for project money, just the cost of her wages for the duration of the project will make the work more expensive than most rival proposals. And with limited amounts of money to spend, expensive proposals are less likely to succeed. "I don't know how long I can carry on like this," says Raper. "I have three years in Bremerhaven now, but what will come next, I don't know."
Susanne Rolinski, of the Drittmittlerinitiative — a group of activists on contract research — at the University of Hamburg, is employed on a permanent 'soft-money' position. "Research in small chunks of two- to three-year projects wears out researchers through the never-ending duty to write reports for the old project and proposals for new ones," she says. In 2000, the European Commission received 8.3 times more proposals than it could fund, which shows why writing proposals takes up so much of researchers' time.
Colin Bryson, a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University whose research interests include fixed-term employment in UK higher education, also questions whether research based on fixed-term positions is cost-effective. "Contract researchers tend to be clustered at the lower end of the pay-scale," he points out. "But we have some evidence that experienced researchers are more than worth their salary." He adds another aspect: "Good research is based on team work. It is very difficult to get a good team together with the high staff turnover that's a consequence of extensive fixed-term contracts."
Where exactly the right balance lies remains debatable. But it seems that this question should be re-investigated from the perspective of efficiency as much as of social acceptability.
European directive
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/lif/dat/1999/en_399L0070.html
UK consultation document
