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Constructive Collaboration
We aim for constructive exchanges with departments, the HR department, and position management as well as with the management of Freie Universität. We strive to foster mutual understanding even in more complex or unfamiliar situations and value factual, unbiased exchanges, as well as open information flow between the conversational partners.
Realistic Goals
We all desire improvements in various areas, such as upgrades in job classification, position evaluations and staffing, workplace design, flexible working hours models, etc. However, we reject arbitrary notions and demands – our actions are based on the broadest interpretation of legal regulations. Unfortunately, we have no direct influence on certain areas, such as the payment of the capital city allowance to Berlin university staff. Here, we can only try to indirectly influence to positively affect the relevant committees, administrations, and commissions.
Strengthening Inclusion – Living Diversity
Universities and colleges are certainly among the employers with the greatest diversity of employees in terms of origin, education and training, activities and skills, development, and lifestyle. This naturally includes our colleagues with severe disabilities. However, their share of the total number of employees is not as high as it should be according to legal requirements. We will commit to hiring more people with severe disabilities at the FU than before.
Employees from Uncertain Countries of Origin
We want to particularly focus on the contracts of colleagues coming from states with undemocratic political systems. Since scheduling appointments with the State Office for Immigration is often quite difficult and lengthy, we want to work more closely with the HR department than before to ensure that the applications of these employees are given priority so that their residence permits, asylum procedures, etc., can be extended in time and not be jeopardized by too short a lead time in processing the application. We also want to prevent our colleagues from being subjected to unnecessary psychological pressure.
Scientific Staff
The regulations for the employment of scientific staff at German universities and colleges or research institutions, as well as at the Free University of Berlin, are strictly defined and leave little room for flexibility by the university. Nonetheless, we advocate for a good working environment for our scientific staff.
The following legal bases must be observed:
- The Act on Fixed-Term Employment Contracts in Academia (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz – WissZeitVG from 2007, last changes from 2020: https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/de/forschung/wissenschaftlicher-nachwuchs/wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz/wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz.html),
- The Berlin Higher Education Act (Berliner Hochschulgesetz – BerlHG from 2011 with amendments from 2021),
- The administrative regulations on the fixed-term employment of scientific staff from 2018 (with Annex 1: Catalog of Qualification Objectives).
The so-called career path model R1-R4 (Federal Report on Young Scientists 2021 (BuWiN 2021)) describes possible (future) career phases.
Especially for postdocs, the amendment of the BerlHG in 2021 (https://www.fu-berlin.de/informationen-fuer/beschaeftigte/aktuelles/news/211104-berlhg/index.html) regarding a potential follow-up commitment for a permanent employment (§110 Abs. 6 BerlHG) is significant.
Always to be considered are the sometimes divergent regulations for scientists in third-party funded projects.
In the future, we will advise and inform within our capabilities based on legal provisions.