An excellence of service thanks to adequat supervision ressources
At the meeting of the Tripartite Employment Conditions Forum (TREF) of 30th May, HR Department presented some key statistical data concerning CERN staff and, more particularly, its evolution since 2001. The Member States delegates were in particular interested in various diversity issues, especially the distribution of age, seniority, and gender. As far as the distributions of nationalities of current staff and at recruitment are concerned no significant bias was observed, a result of efforts over the last years to ensure a more balanced situation for “under-represented” countries.
The Staff Association stated it is very much concerned with the evolution of the number of staff members, which has been decreasing continuously during the last decade (in 2001 we were 2663 staff members; in 2011 only 2424 of which 2358.4 full-time equivalents and 2256 remunerated by CERN). At the same time the number of users (5512 in 2001, 10388 in 2011) has almost doubled (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1
On top of that, in 2011, there were 1092 temporary staff (477 fellows, 306 associates, 288 students and 21 apprentices). Fig.2 shows the evolution of the various populations working at CERN since the year 2000 (year of reference). It is clearly seen that during the period in question only the number of staff members decreased while the numbers in all other categories increased considerably. In particular, the table highlights the number of users, which almost doubled over the last six years, proof of the huge success and of the attractiveness of CERN as an international scientific organization. However, given that simultaneously staff numbers continued to decrease, the work load of CERN staff has now reached a critical point and it becomes more and more difficult for us to:
- provide high-quality support to this ever-increasing number of users (office space, administrative support, communication and computer infrastructure);
- organize and supervise the work of the temporary staff (fellow, students, associates, apprentices) to make the best of their integration into the CERN teams;
- ensure a level of continuity and guarantee the safety in order to keep the machines and infrastructures in an excellent condition, not only to find the Higgs (or whatever) but also to prepare for the future of high-energy physics in Europe.
Consequently, this continuous erosion of staff numbers should be stopped and indeed reversed to give CERN the proper personnel resources to provide an adequate level of service to the whole community. This is the important message we have brought before the delegates.
Fig. 2
