Dear Anne-Sylvie, dear Genevieve, dear James,
We are writing in our capacity as the two 'Early Careers, Gender and
Diversity' (ECGD) officers of the LHCb collaboration. One of our tasks
is to convene meetings during Collaboration weeks at which topics of
concern that impact upon young colleagues, women physicists and
minority groups within LHCb can be addressed. At our most recent
meeting in February we discussed the challenges faced by physicists on
limited term contracts, in particular fellows, who wish to start a
family. We understand that CERN is conducting a five-yearly
review of its employment strategy and believe that the opinions
expressed in our meeting would be useful input to this process.
We concentrated our discussion mainly on CERN Fellowships that provide
the opportunity to produce career-defining research. Currently, CERN
Fellows who take maternity leave lose a substantial fraction of this
research time and hence of the opportunity to kick-start their
scientific career. We therefore suggest that their contract should be
extended by the amount of maternity or paternity leave taken.
Special attention should be given to women starting their maternity at
the end of a fellowship that cannot be extended. The same principles
should apply to adoption.
In order not to create a disincentive for hiring women through this
measure, we suggest that the cost of the contract extension is covered
by a central fund, rather than the budget of the group or department
that employs the fellow.
On the same meeting, LHCb colleagues felt that the existing provisions
for paternity leave provided by CERN are inadequate, and we encourage
the review to investigate whether improvements can be made in the same
spirit. We also suggest that identical entitlement should be made
available to unmarried and same-sex couples.
Finally, in our meeting we discussed also the case of long-term illness
and of caring of a relative or partner, and we were wondering if what
stated above could be extended also to these cases.
We hope that these suggestions can be considered during the review
process. We also note that they are supported by the Spokesperson
and Deputy Spokesperson of the collaboration, who attended out meeting
and are CCed in this message.
Best regards,
Barbara Sciascia and Jonas
Rademacker
Early Carer,
Gender and Diversity officers of LHCb