Researchers saying science ministry has not taken into account their career progression
Hundreds of early career researchers in Serbia are demanding back pay amounting to millions of euros from the country’s science ministry, saying they are overdue work evaluations and salary adjustments.
The researchers say their contracts and the law mandate an evaluation and related salary adjustment every two years but that, despite repeated promises from the ministry, no evaluation has taken place since 2011, when the last big ministry grant cycle began.
This means researchers’ earnings have not reflected their results or career progression for almost a decade, the researchers say. About 90 per cent of Serbia’s roughly 12,000 researchers could have been affected.
The delays have “harmed all young scientists employed at universities and institutes over the last ten years”, according to a petition handed to the ministry in December 2019 that demanded a “halt to discriminatory and unlawful calculation of researchers’ earnings” and compensation for lost earnings. The petition was signed by about 250 researchers.
A law passed in July 2019 scrapped the evaluations and salary categories, so that all researchers with the same job title should in theory get the same salary. But the science ministry told researchers in December that salaries will stay the same in 2020.
“That was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ and we started with our petition,” Sanja Milošević Govedarović, an assistant research professor at Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Belgrade, told Research Professional News.
Govedarović organised the petition with her colleague Katarina Batalović, also an assistant research professor at the institute. “We have started a very ambitious fight with the ministry,” Govedarović said.
The salary difference between categories is significant. For example, the difference between top and middle categories for a research assistant works out to at least €2,550 per year—about a third of a typical salary for that role, Govedarović said.
“You can imagine how people are furious about another year without their earned money,” she said.
Govedarović said she is not sure why evaluations have not been happening, but suspects it was because some decision makers would lose their top spot and higher pay, so preferred the status quo.
“We were young scientists and our voice was not strong enough to change anything,” she said of why the situation has gone on so long. “Besides, we expected every other year that the evaluation will take place because of the promises that it will.”
Those behind the petition hope for salary adjustments before the end of February, when the first payments under the new system are expected to kick in.
Govedarović said the ministry told the petitioners on 16 January that “nothing happened” as a result of its submission, and on 21 January that no changes are imminent because the ministry fears a pay cut for researchers dropped from the top categories would cause “chaos”.
A ministry spokesperson denied that researchers’ contracts “specify the obligation to carry out recategorisation” of researchers. They said the ministry is “changing the funding system” in accordance with the new law and that an act to evaluate and re-categorise researchers ceased to apply at the end of 2019.
“Researchers often overlook the fact that the implementation of this act, which is otherwise out of force, would mean to many of them a salary reduction,” the spokesperson said. “According to the act, at least 45 per cent of the researchers were supposed to be in the two lowest categories, and the fact is that there are no more than 15 per cent in those two categories.”
They concluded: “The ministry will take actions to ensure that all researchers are in the same position and will contribute to the improvement [in] the system in the field of science, both in terms of salaries and by strengthening the position of all institutions.”
Govedarović said that the team behind the petition will continue to push, even though the ministry’s response and the relatively small number of signatories do not bode well for them. She said the next steps will include a demand for an urgent meeting with ministry officials and, failing that, a group lawsuit.
A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe