On 24-9-2014 2:08, Saul Luizaga wrote:
> Probably, but the bottom line is the same, money, and the fact that you
> were not given a position in a scientific environment that's not for
> profit and working for the issuer of Laws, your own Government, breaks
> them, it's even more disappointing, the only reason I see is to save
> money; why you could've been hired as a freelancer maybe  for better pay?

The bottom line is money indeed. Tax money to be precise.
There is a limited amount the government can spend on health care, 
education, and research (the three areas of my work).

The labour laws about temporary contracts are to protect the employees. 
That is good and useful for ordinary workers in factories and shop 
assistants, but researchers are a bit different. As there are no special 
rules for them, people needed to find loopholes to make sure that 
research was possible at all. The problem with holes is that once one 
finds one, it tends to be used also for the situations that the original 
law was actually intended for (see also my sig). I think that in my case 
the use of loopholes was indeed illegitimate, because for a part of my 
time I was doing things that were structural and essential for a large 
group of people.

Coming back to your post, why could I not be hired, e.g. as a 
freelancer. Well they could, the problem is money again. The money 
should come from grants. Only those are in general to ask for money for 
specific equipment and personal. So they should have included me (partly 
and for many project) in the grant proposal. Which they didn't, even if 
already for years I have been warning them that they should also include 
technical and data analysis support in their grant. Why they did not do 
it? because it would diminish the change of getting the grant at all too 
much. Yet another situation where there is a mismatch in pace of change. 
So that more or less rules out the freelancer (and they are in trouble now).

Why can I not get a fixed position at the place I was working? Indeed 
the most logical and clean option. Problem is money again. That has to 
be paid from the money the university gets from the government. That 
budget has been shrinking over the last years, which means that all 
universities are over budget, because most money was for salaries of 
people with fixed positions and they could not be fired at the time of 
the budget cuts. So if someone leaves, that means the university is less 
over budget, and that person can not be replaced, and certainly no new 
people can be hired. I was working on an externally financed project, I 
would now be a 'new hire'.

See, you can simply (well, not really simple) explain the situation 
without having to refer to capitalism once. I therefore object to the 
simplistic world view as you express it time and time again. And if we 
hadn't had an interaction elsewhere I would not have bothered to answer. 
Not because it is not a valid point, but from the wording it seems clear 
that an intelligent debate with you is impossible.

I give you that there is actually some clear capitalism involved, not as 
overt as you imply, but still. Keep reading, there will be something at 
the end.

One of the reasons that the budget is shrinking is that the government 
is taking money away from the universities and giving it to 
organizations that hand out grants. It is converted into soft money and 
redistributed as a way to influence the direction of science. That 
direction is of course according to the latest hypes. Both 
scientifically (meaning that there will be more money for people doing 
the same thing as everybody else) and directed at research that is 
applicable by the industry (is the horrible term 'valorisation' also 
used in English?).

Some of the bigger industries have lobbied to redirect money in this 
way, hoping they could outsource their R&D to the universities and have 
the government pay for it. Sadly it did not work out so easy for them, 
and only the foundations of the universities were damaged. But that is 
the only way short sighted unethical capitalistic behaviour has had an 
impact on why I am unemployed at the moment.



-- 
Everytime the IT department forbids something that a researcher deems
necessary for her work there will be another hole in the firewall.

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