News from the NWO Central Works Council (Inside NWO-I December 2019)
NWO Central Works Council seeks new members! If you work at one of the university research groups of NWO-I, then please read this piece below. In addition, NWO Central Works Council (COR NWO) has advised the executive board representative about the change of governance at NWO-I.
COR NWO elections for university research group employees
University research group employees are not currently represented in COR NWO. New elections will therefore be held for this group of NWO-I employees. Candidates can register until 22 December and the elections will be held on 13 January 2020. Good to know: employees with a temporary contract such as PhDs and postdocs will receive an extension to the contract for the time they devote to COR NOW. Are you a university research group employee and are you interested or would you like to know more? Then please contact the official secretary of COR NWO: Sanne Prins via COR@nwo.nl.
Change in the governance of NWO-I
As we reported in the last newsletter, COR NWO received a request for advice about a change to the governance of NWO-I. In response to that, COR NWO sent an official advice to the executive board representative. This contained several points of concern with respect to the proposed change. For example, COR NWO stated that it wanted to receive more specific details for the job descriptions of the director NWO-I and the director Operations NWO-I office before the recruitment and selection process starts. COR NWO would also like clarity about which reporting lines will be used to convey information. Efficiency is the key aspect in this regard so that the institutes are not overwhelmed due to a lack of harmonisation. With respect to the evaluation of the change, COR NWO requested specific attention for how the institutes experience the representation of their interests within the NWO executive board.
If the executive board representative takes these points into account, then COR NWO supports the proposal for the change of governance in order to strengthen the efficiency of the NWO-I organisation.
Other points on the COR NWO agenda
In the coming period, COR NWO will be busy with the Implementing Regulation (IR) negotiations. We hope to complete the negotiations during the first half of December. COR NWO has also received a draft text about the central NWO-I vision concerning the training of PhDs and postdocs. We will of course examine this document critically before we issue our response to it.