Today we write together the trade union ST that over half of the doctoral students in our survey "How is the doctoral student?" states that they do not know who is responsible for issues concerning their terms of employment, work environment, wage setting, employee interviews, etc. This is a figure that would be considered unlikely in many other workplaces. It needs to be clearer to the doctoral students who is responsible for them. Read an excerpt below and the article in its entirety here
Doctoral student employment is a special type of employment. The doctoral student is also a student and can sometimes be seen as an apprentice (and the supervisor then becomes the master), and in other contexts as an employee. The latter applies in particular to departmental service and teaching. The responsibility for the doctoral student is clearly stated in the Higher Education Ordinance and in the higher education institutions' governing documents on postgraduate education. But our study shows that despite this, it is unclear to the doctoral students who is ultimately responsible.
The uncertainty does not only apply to who has the managerial responsibility. One-fifth of the doctoral students who answered the questionnaire stated that they had not received any information at all about either their rights or obligations. Almost a tenth of the respondents were contacted by work when they were off several times a week and just over a fifth stated that they had not had the opportunity to take a holiday.
SFS and Fackförbundet ST in the newspaper Curie.
Simon Edström, Chairman of SFS
Pil Saugmann, Chairman of SFS-DK