L’année 2016 s’est terminée comme chaque année par la semaine des Comités
Le Comité des Finances s’est réuni le 14 décembre 2016. Ce comité est composé des délégués des administrations nationales et traite de toutes les questions relatives aux contributions financières des États membres, au budget de l’Organisation et aux dépenses du Laboratoire.
Les principales décisions prises impactant directement ou indirectement les conditions financières et sociales du personnel ont été :
- la non-indexation des salaires au 1er janvier 2017, et ce depuis six années consécutives, avec encore une mémoire négative de - 0,4 % ;
- un indice matériel négatif à hauteur de – 4,93 % ;
- l’acceptation des modifications apportées au règlement du CHIS (CERN Health Insurance Scheme) visant essentiellement les conditions d’affiliation au régime d’assurance maladie du CERN.
Mais ce qui a marqué le Comité des Finances est l’annonce faite par la Directrice générale de sa décision de recruter 80 fonctionnaires supplémentaires sur des postes de durée limitée.
L’Association du personnel a soutenu cette décision par une déclaration de son Président pendant la réunion du Comité des Finances, soulignant que le personnel actuel est soumis à de fortes pressions pour atteindre les objectifs de l’Organisation et pour répondre aux demandes croissantes du Laboratoire.
L'Association du personnel tient à rappeler qu'elle a exprimé à maintes reprises les préoccupations du personnel du CERN en ce qui concerne le manque de personnel pour assurer la supervision des étudiants, la réalisation de projets de plus en plus complexes et autres activités. En effet, le rapport entre le personnel titulaire et les autres membres du personnel (boursiers et membres associés) a plus que doublé au cours des dix dernières années. Enfin, l’Association du personnel a mentionné que la viabilité à long terme des activités du Laboratoire repose fortement sur une main-d'œuvre stable et très expérimentée, ce qui nécessite plus de postes que les 80 postes de durée limitée annoncés par la Direction, avec des postes en contrat indéterminé.
Evolution dans le temps de différentes catégories du personnel
Défis 2017 : dossiers brulants et finalisation de la mise en œuvre de la révision quinquennale 2015
Aujourd’hui, début 2017, les sujets retenant toute notre attention sont liés à l’exercice annuel MERIT et à l’exercice des Promotions. Ce sont deux sujets extrêmement sensibles et importants pour le personnel titulaire, puisqu’il s’agit de votre avancement et de vos perspectives d’évolution de carrière. Nous reviendrons très prochainement avec un article détaillé sur ses points.
Par ailleurs, nous devrons travailler en 2017 avec le Management sur la mobilité interne, les entretiens en développement de carrière et la validation interne des acquis de l’expérience (VAE). Ces sujets font partie du paquet de la révision quinquennale 2015. Ces processus devront être mis en place dès que possible et au plus tard fin 2017. Là encore, nous vous tiendrons informés des avancées.
Nous vous rappelons en ce début d’année que l’Association du personnel représente tous les membres du personnel (MPE et MPA) dans les discussions qu’elle a avec la Direction et les États Membres. Aussi, n’hésitez pas à contacter vos délégués du personnel pour enrichir le débat en leur communiquant vos points de vue sur les sujets qui nous occupent ou sur tout autre sujet. Vos contributions nous sont très utiles. Il est également très important de soutenir l’Association du personnel en adhérant et en vous engageant au sein de l’association qui renouvellera son Conseil du personnel fin 2017.
Enfin, une année se termine, une autre la remplace, c’est l’occasion de vous adresser, ainsi qu’à vos proches, tous nos vœux de santé, de bonheur et de réussite.
Declaration at Finance Committee by Staff Association on paper CERN/FC/6065/RA
Thank you, Madam Chair!
The Staff Association would like to first state its strong support for the position presented by the Management to recruit some 80 additional staff on Limited Duration posts. The analysis provided by the Management matches and exemplifies many of our own concerns and our current knowledge of the situation across the Organization.
The CERN Management comes first to state that the “current staff complement is under significant strain to continue meeting the objectives of the Organization […] and to satisfy the increasing demands being made on the Laboratory.” Further the paper mentions “concerns […] expressed by Member State delegates, by the SPC and the CERN Directorate at meetings of TREF, the SPC, the FC and the Council about the shortage of staff in key fields…” The Staff Association would like to recall that it has on numerous occasions also expressed the concerns of the CERN staff regarding staff complement reductions that lead to such shortage in many important fields.
The analysis presented by the Management further gives very valuable information in section 2 titled “History and motivations”. The second paragraph in particular shows that the initial intention to reduce the staff complement by one thousand FTE was actually achieved by reducing the number of Indefinite Contracts by one thousand, from about 2700 in 1994 to about 1700 today. The efforts by Management to maintain a viable level of staff complement were materialized in the increase of the fraction of Limited Duration contracts, from 10% to now 30%.
This leads inevitably to two effects. The first effect is that we observe a loss of expertise in some areas of the Organization. When Limited Duration posts succeed one another, without any tiling, there is no longer an opportunity to transmit knowledge and know-how. This was pointed out by the Review Committee for the Cost and Schedule review for LIU and HL-LHC: “In many cases the expertise required does/will not exist (anymore) at CERN and must be recruited as soon as possible, be trained and brought into the projects.” The analysis is correct and the remedy of providing a number of Limited Duration contracts appears to be as well, because this concerns a couple of large scale projects which are time limited. However, there is significant extra cost in the hiring and training processes that come along.
And this brings us to the second effect which is the supervision effort required of the remaining staff on Indefinite Contract. With a higher fraction of staff on Limited Duration contracts, the investment to hire and train new LD staff falls upon the IC staff to a large extent. Beyond this extra cost, this is also lost productivity felt by the experienced long-term staff. However, we do recognize that training young professionals and giving them an opportunity for a work experience at CERN is one of our missions, and rest assured that all staff at CERN take this to heart and are eager to share their knowledge. We know that such training is essential for the Member states and constitutes a very valuable return to their own laboratories and industry. It remains that there is a significant shift of activities, for many IC staff, from production work towards training and supervision.
In Section 3 the Management points to another but similar effect: Figure 1 shows that the ratio of staff to all members of personnel (employed and associated) has more than doubled in the last ten years. Associated members of personnel and fellows also require supervision and services, which are provided, to a large extent, by the stable workforce of the Organization.
Figure 2 gives further insight concerning users on the one hand and fellows and students on the other hand. Users expect a certain level of service to be provided by the Laboratory but the ratio of users to staff has been multiplied by 2.5 in 20 years! Fellows and Students require active and significant supervision – they should never be thought as replacing missing staff as is sometimes the temptation – and the ratio of fellows to staff has been multiplied by 4.5 in 20 years!
The CERN staff fulfils its missions in a very enthusiastic way, be it to directly participate in forefront research in physics, provide and operate the accelerators and high technology equipment and tools required to carry out this research, provide all site services to support these activities, but also to supervise and train young scientists coming from all our member states. The trends regarding the workloads are however worrying, and we see little short-term relief. With new member states and associated member states, we look forward to welcoming on site more users, more students and young scientists. We are very happy and excited to work with our new colleagues and we really want to give them the service and attention that they deserve. But we are anxious to know whether we have the means.
Further, we would like to point out that, while the transfer of funds from “budget lines that have shown a slower time profile than planned” is certainly a sound decision, the technical infrastructure consolidation budget is also directly affected by the lack of personnel in key areas. The consolidation of the laboratory’s infrastructure must be considered with priority as well, and appropriate staff complement allocated in order to carry out the work and meet the timeline.
In conclusion, we would like to again state our strong support for the initiative of the CERN management to relieve the strain that has been placed on CERN staff over the last decades. However, this strain relief should be extended, beyond the scope of the high priority projects identified by the Management, to other key activities of the Laboratory, which in turn requires more posts than the number of 80 quoted by the Management. We also want to point out that the long-term viability of the activities of the Laboratory strongly relies on a stable and very experienced work force, which means also the need for an increase in the number of Indefinite Contracts in the staff complement.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
