A considerable number of people work at TU/e through an external company, whose contracts are regularly re-tendered. Whether people should be hired via an external party, instead of being employed directly by TU/e, is a structural question that TU/e ​​hopefully explicitly asks and carefully examines in every tender.

A Program of Requirements can stipulate that when the contract is taken over, the existing employees must also be taken over. In my 20+ years at TU/e ​​I have seen enough changes and heard enough first-hand stories to know that these takeovers often mean a step back in salary and other employment conditions for the workers (cleaners, catering staff, receptionists, etc.). Put yourself in their position: you work hard for an organization, feel part of it, but every few years you have to wait and see whether you can stay and whether you won’t be worse off.

I briefly want to talk about the reception staff, who fall into the beautifully named ‘hospitality’ category. This year, the provision of a portion of the receptionists – contracted to an outside company – was up for tender. Despite the ‘very careful process’, the Program of Requirements didn’t stipulate that the current employees had to be taken over under comparable employment conditions. Deal closed, contract signed.

The staff then had to apply for their own jobs in the hope that they would fit the profile of their potential new employer. They were immediately told that the employment conditions would be less generous; their salaries would be cut by at least €4 to €5 per hour. For this group – probably one of the lowest paid groups at TU/e ​​– that’s a dramatic decrease.

But in the end, the employment conditions didn’t even matter, because last week Tuesday (October 29) one of the receptionists came to me in tears to tell me that they had all lost their jobs at TU/e. A whole group of professional staff members, who know their way around campus in both the literal and metaphorical sense, who have years of experience, who know everyone in ‘their’ buildings, who do an incredible amount of visible and invisible work to keep the buildings running, that wealth of knowledge, skills and expertise is thrown overboard in one fell swoop. It will take years for a new team to get back to that level. And the current employees still have to wait to find out whether, when, and how they can get back to work for their official employer – the ‘old’ external company –  and under what conditions.

If this were the first time, you might think that an unfortunate mistake was made, that the position of this group of staff was overlooked. But that’s not the case. This same group has been through the same process before, having to settle for a big step backwards in the end. Then too, sympathetic TU/e ​​employees tried to intervene. And then too, they were only aware when it was a fait accompli. Once is an incident, twice is a pattern.

And talking about equality and inclusivity: some of the receptionists are employed by TU/e; they ended up in their positions via another route and don’t appear to be at risk because of the recurring tenders.

Is this the image TU/e wants to project? Is this ‘Leading by example’? Is this how seriously we’re taking the slogan 'Where people matter'? Is this how ‘Respectful’ and ‘Responsible’ – two of the recently launched core values – will play out in practice? It would seem that TU/e doesn’t feel that these values apply to the many ‘externals’ who are indispensable to the day-to-day running of our university.

Ellen Konijnenberg is a member of the University Council. The views expressed in this column are her own.