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Unions demand ‘real emergency plan’ for French universities

     

Snesup-FSU calls for May Day demonstrations, as academics fear Covid-19 chaos in 2021

French higher education union Snesup-FSU has called on its members to hit the streets on May Day to express unhappiness about the research ministry’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The union said that a “real emergency plan” was required for higher education and research institutions. Previous measures to support universities throughout several lockdowns imposed to reduce Covid-19 transmission were haphazard and arbitrary, the union said.

Among Snesup-FSU’s concerns were the postponing of exams, the non-alignment of university and school holidays—which have been shifted due to the health crisis—as well as insufficient funding for doctoral and other research contracts that had to be extended.

“Once again, staff are ordered to manage on their own,” the union said.

French universities have vacillated between being open, shut and partially closed since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. A partial reopening has been underway since February, but a fresh set of restrictions, announced in March, saw students’ campus attendance reduced to only one day per week.

As a result, most teaching and exams have been moved online or postponed until May. However, research work that cannot be performed remotely has been allowed to continue on campus.

Snesup-FSU has demanded that the French government create 2,000 additional teaching and research positions at the start of the next academic year in September 2021. These are needed to make up for lost research and teaching performance, the union said.

It also called for funds to improve ventilation in university buildings, and to offer Covid-19 testing and vaccinations to all staff and students.

The union took the opportunity to reiterate wider criticism of France’s research ministry, accusing it of seeking to “bring the university world to heel”. Complaining about the Research Reform Act (LPPR), which passed into law in December 2020, the union blamed the ministry for exacerbating the precariousness of research careers in the country.

Other French research and education unions are also showing signs of restiveness. The CGT, a union federation that includes France’s National Union of Scientific Research Workers (SNTRS), held a meeting with research minister Frédérique Vidal about the latest lockdown measures this month.

The CGT is France’s second largest union confederation and considered its most militant. The group said that existing measures to support universities were unsatisfactory, and accused Vidal of “either total ignorance of the risks” faced by researchers or else “gratuitous provocation”.

Meanwhile, union Sud Education, which operates in both universities and schools, accused both the minister and French president Emmanuel Macron of being blind to the academic plight. It said: “After a year of confinement and near-closure of universities, do they still not see the sometimes dramatic consequences for students, but also for staff?”

In a statement, the union said that another academic year carried out under the same conditions as the last was an inconceivable prospect. “It is time for the ministry and the government to hear these demands and to put on the table—whatever the cost—significant means for higher education and research, in time to prepare for the start of the 2021 academic year.”

A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe