STA, February 19, 2018 – Almost 400 Slovenian researchers have called on Prime Minister Miro Cerar to deliver on his promises of providing additional funds for research. They stressed that economic growth is a result of research work that researchers are not properly paid for.
The researchers from various institutes and universities noted in an open letter to Cerar that companies' profits had almost doubled, but this was not reflected in the average gross pay in science, where staff mostly worked overtime without being paid.
It seems that the economic growth is not the result of new findings, technological innovation and new solutions, but poorly paid work, the researchers said in an open letter.
They also pointed to calls from international organisations and Slovenian experts that Slovenia must change its development paradigm, which should be based on growth and productivity supported by research and innovation, rather than on increasing the intensity of work.
In order to prevent brain drain and provide for the safety of young researchers' jobs, the government should allocate the promised additional funds to research.
The researchers propose that the EUR 4.4m which the government promised would go for research in 2017 but never got there, be offered as part of a call for applications for research projects which is open at the moment.
This would allow for the "shamefully low" share of project that win state funding, which currently stands at around 16%, to at least slightly improve, they argued.
Researches had already protested against cutting the funds for researchers at a rally in Ljubljana last April.
