Researchers denounce the critical situation in which the French scientific landscape finds itself. Launched by scientists from the CNRS, a committee is organizing a large gathering in Paris this Friday.
“This Friday, October 17, everywhere in France, support the arrival of Sciences en Marche in Paris! This is the appeal launched by this movement which brings together researchers and technical laboratory staff. With the culmination of their movement, a large event organized today in Paris (Porte d’Orléans) from 2:30 p.m.
60 kilometers by bike
With about thirty of his colleagues, researchers, teachers or students, Patrick Lemaire, research director of the CNRS of Montpellier, at the origin of the operation “Sciences en Marche”, has just traveled about sixty kilometers from Le Péage-de -Roussillon (Isère). Another group is due to arrive from Grenoble. For them, the current situation of the higher education and research (ESR) system is untenable.
In their last press release, they write: “We are all seeing the resources (in time and money) that we can devote to the heart of our businesses melt away. We are all witnessing the phenomenal waste represented by offering only Pôle-emploi as a future to the thousands of precarious people recruited on fixed-term contracts even though they make an essential contribution to the functioning and discoveries of our universities, services and laboratories. We all see that sterile competition is gradually replacing collaboration in a world where exchange should be the rule… ”
Concrete proposals to save research
And for them, these dysfunctions are largely due to a policy which has “both dried up the means made available to the majority of us to fulfill our missions, and considerably reduced hiring for stable jobs in the world. ‘ESR. “
To get out of this impasse, Sciences en Marche focused on the roads of France, and will send this October 17 to the national representation, a triple requirement: the funding of a multi-year statutory employment plan in the ESR, the re-establishment of decent basic funding for laboratories and universities, and the establishment of measures finally allowing the recognition of the doctorate in collective agreements and in the senior civil service.
A movement supported by patient associations
And in this fight, researchers are not alone. Thus, the associations involved in health research, AFM-Telethon, Aides, the Arsep Foundation (multiple sclerosis) and Vaincre la Mucoviscidose, on Thursday gave their support to the Sciences en Marche collective.
“The development of ambitious and strong public research should be at the heart of the concerns of our decision-makers,” said these associations in a press release. “Because we are providing substantial financial resources to a large number of teams in France, we can only note the growing difficulties facing public research laboratories”, they explain.
“To sell off our research is to deprive yourself of a major asset for the economic success of our country, it is to compromise the health and quality of life of the French and it is to stifle the international influence of our country”, conclude -they.
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