After all, the University of Algarve will only have to definitively hire three of the 19 researchers with precarious links who applied to join the institution's staff. This despite the fact that, at first, UAlg agreed to hire them all.
The rectory of the Algarve Higher Education Institution will have, however, regretted its decision and requested the reassessment of the processes of 19 investigators by the Bipartite Evaluation Committee (CAB).
This commission, in which the rector, Fenprof and the Ministries of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Finance and Labor and Social Security have a seat, met on March 22 and ended up validating the original decision only in three cases.
Second revealed to Sul Informação Sandra Boto, the UAlg investigators' representative with precarious links, despite already knowing what the CAB's decision had been and that 16 cases had been reversed, the Algarve scientists only obtained a justification for what happened on the 28th of March.
"On Thursday, we met with the dean, who called us to detail the entire process and even what happened at CAB", revealed Sandra Boto.
Paulo Águas explained to investigators "that the position of the rectory, in relation to all the processes, was the negative vote – it voted against the integration of the 19".
“The dean justified himself based on a single criterion, the fact that no researcher accumulates a science contract with an FCT researcher contract. This would be, for the university, the condition sine qua non to consider a permanent need”, according to the UAlg researcher.
This is a criterion that, according to the dean, “has been used by universities that have gone to CAB to vote. It turns out that we all know cases of people, from other institutions, who have been validated and who do not meet this condition. That is, it is something defined by the institutions and following the best practices, which has no legal character».
Three of the processes ended up being validated "by proposal of the Ministry of Science, which was accompanied by the other ministries present and by Fenprof in that vote".
“In reality there were more people with research or science contracts, but the criterion that would have been followed by the ministry was seniority. The three integrated people are those who have been with contracts of this type for the longest time», he illustrated.
Investigators are not satisfied with the decision and promise not to lower their arms.
“I don't have any perspective that our situation can be reassessed in the CAB. What can be done from here on will be to demand the minutes corresponding to the meetings in which our processes were considered and go through the courts,” said Sandra Boto.
But, he admitted, a court fight "could take years", time that some of the investigators targeted by this decision do not have.
“Colleagues who currently have FCT contracts and who are ending them – within months or a year – will be out of work”, revealed the representative of the researchers. Altogether, it will be "two or three people" who are in this situation.
As for the remaining researchers, eight were recently hired on a fixed term basis under the Transitory Standard of DL57/2016, a six-year contract that, even so, «is still precarious». There are also those who remain at the university with FCT contracts or research grants.
"In other words, we have the situation postponed, because in four or five years we will be in the same situation as these colleagues", defended Sandra Boto, who accuses the UAlg rectory of assuming "a blind position" in relation to researchers who risk going to the unemployment.
Contacted by Sul Informação, the rectory of the University of Algarve said it does not want to comment on this process.
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