FRANCE: Big budget increases - and big job cuts

Academics and researchers reacted with alarm to an announcement by French Higher Education and Research Minister Valérie Pécresse that their institutions faced significant losses of tenured posts next year. They accused the government of endangering French research by replacing permanent jobs with short-term contracts, and of striking "heavy blows" against scientific employment.

Pécresse had acknowledged in a television interview* that next year's budget for higher education and research would continue to increase in line with the priorities of President Nicolas Sarkozy, but that her ministry would not be exempt from the job cuts affecting all government departments.

The budget for higher education and research will rise by EUR1.8 billion (US$2.86 billion) in 2009, an increase due to be matched by the same amount each year until 2011 when funding is scheduled to reach EUR25.89 billion.

"The President of the Republic said he would make higher education and research the priority budget during the next five years," said Pécresse. "Knowledge, research and innovation are the key to our growth, the key to our prosperity and the key to our children's employment."

She said she would unveil details of how the budget would be allocated in September, and that some of it would "serve to help a certain number of universities to make progress towards autonomy, one of our major reforms".

But, she said, higher education and research "will not be exempt from the great effort of rationalisation, of good management, required of all ministries, especially concerning personnel". One in six members of staff taking retirement from higher education and research would not be replaced - 0.9% of the workforce.

This will total an estimated 900 tenured jobs - a marked contrast with the 2008 programme under which no posts were lost (see "Higher education escapes budget cuts", University World News, 21 October 2007).

Unions and other representatives of higher education and research personnel have made clear their opposition to the Minister's plans. The action group Sauvons la Recherche said: "The rationalisation in question is 'job insecurity'; it means the government replacing permanent posts with contracts, mostly short-term jobs....

"Rationalisation therefore consists of transforming stable employment - allowing its tenured staff to engage in unpredictable research, and ensuring the independence of researchers - into insecure jobs on projects controlled to some extent by the administration or the government."

Such a strategy could only lead to "scientific decline", the group claimed.

Education and research federation Sgen-CFDT described the abolition of posts as "worrying and illogical". It said: "While very many changes in higher education are taking place which require increased investment in staff at all levels, the announcement that one in six retiring tenured employees will not be replaced goes against the advances that are needed. Resorting to the hiring of non-tenured staff and increases in overtime cannot be the solution to the investment needs of higher education."

Higher education union Snesup said the government was striking "heavy blows" against scientific employment and "turning its back on the aims it was claiming to uphold".

See also "Researchers protest against Sarkozy's reforms", University World News, 30 March 2008.

jane.marshall@uw-news.com

*Interview with Valérie Pécresse with Le Figaro:
www.lefigaro.fr