Dossier
Report inspectorate
Social safety
At TU Delft, the care for employee social safety has been neglected to the point of ‘mismanagement’. The Dutch Inspectorate of Education recently concluded this after an investigation lasting almost 10 months. The harsh conclusion led to anger among the university board. TU Delft submitted a defense. Read more about the Inspection report and everything related to it in this dossier.
- Delta is looking for current and former TU Delft employees who are willing to share their experiences. This can be done anonymously if preferred. Email tudelta@protonmail.com.
The Inspectorate of Education considers that TU Delft’s plan to improve social safety consists ‘largely of objectives and direction’ but lacks firm actions. It also lacks critical reflection on the role of the Executive Board.
In September, employees of Dutch universities will get a salary increase of 3.7 percent and a one-off payment of 300 euros. In January, salaries will be increased by another one percent. Social safety will also be improved. What do the local TU Delft unions think about this?
Unions are disappointed that the negotiations for the collective labour agreements for universities have been difficult. Universities are reportedly reluctant to talk about social safety in particular.
In its report about social safety at TU Delft, the Inspectorate of Education was critical about the role of the Supervisory Board. Outgoing Minister of Education Dijkgraaf subsequently had several meetings with the Supervisory Board and set out four points of attention in a letter. In this interview, the Board’s Chair, Tijo Collot d’Escury, responds on behalf of the full Supervisory Board.
During a consultation meeting with the Executive Board (cvb), the local unions at TU Delft repeated their earlier viewpoints and recommendations for increasing social safety at TU Delft. Cvb-member Marien van der Meer said that she would consider them. She also asked for trust.
Students and Staff for Safety asks the Executive and Supervisory Boards for self-reflection and transparent actions to regain the trust of students and staff. This open letter has been signed by 25 of them.
The only concrete actions in the Plan for Change for social safety at TU Delft are preventative, communicative, and therapeutic in nature, observes columnist Jan van Neerven. He saw alternatives at a university abroad.
The Executive Board will share the response of the Inspectorate of Education to TU Delft’s Plan of Change with the Works Council and the Student Council. Rector Magnificus and Executive Board Chair Tim van der Hagen promised to do so at the monthly meeting with the representation bodies.
Despite ‘several incidents’, including at Delta, outgoing minister Robbert Dijkgraaf does not believe that the independence of higher education media is under pressure across the board.
The Innovation & Impact Centre has set up a social safety work group to help ‘restore balance’, according to the chair Jan Schiereck. The Centre’s employees were negatively affected by the way the organisation handled the departure of their director. “We want to ensure that everyone feels senang (happy) again.”
The Supervisory Board needs to ‘keep an eye on the administrative relationships’ during the process of improving social safety at TU Delft. Minister of Education Dijkgraaf wrote this in a letter to the Supervisory Board that was made public this week.
The CNV, FNV, AOb and FBZ trade unions are ‘livid about the lack of social safety at TU Delft’. They note that there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the action plan that is intended to improve the situation. They also say that they are receiving dozens of comments from concerned employees after an investigative article appeared in the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.
Delta was awarded two prizes for the best journalistic work within higher education media on 6 June. Delta received the so-called Kring Awards for an investigative story on social unsafety at the Innovation & Impact Centre (I&IC) that caused much controversy in April and an interview with planetary researcher Daphne Stam, who left TU Delft out of discontent.
TU Delft does not comply with the Work and Care Act. It does take measures to address heavy workload and undesirable behaviour, but these are rarely based on an analysis of the problems. There is also no information on their effectiveness. In the meantime, 37% of the employees are at a higher risk of a burnout. The time in which to deal with these issues systematically is coming to an end.
Columnist Jan van Neerven champions press freedom in his first column for Delta. His inspiration comes from his father, who passionately defended this cause as Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Limburgs Dagblad’.
It is important that the higher education press can operate independently. These were the words of outgoing Minister Dijkgraaf on Tuesday at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Culture and Science in response to questions by NSC Member of Parliament Hertzberger.
Professor of Mathematics Jan van Neerven is one of three TU Delft academics who have joined the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). As he states, he teaches the only course at TU Delft whose learning objective is that students know less afterwards than they did before. What motivates Van Neerven, and how does he feel about improving social safety six weeks after his critical letter in Delta?
Columnist Birgit van Driel is surprised about the lack of self-reflection in society. She believes that politicians and administrators should look – publicly – in the mirror more often.
The Netherlands Labour Authority concludes that universities have only taken ‘minimal’ action in dealing with excessive workloads and undesirable behaviour since 2020. If they do not demonstrate improvement by 2025, the Authority will start enforcement procedures. What have the universities done and not done, and what does the Netherlands Labour Authority suggest that they do now?
A high proportion of teaching and academic personnel at universities in the Netherlands suffer from a heavy workload and undesirable behaviour. Universities have not been able to improve things over the last few years. This is the conclusion of the Netherlands Labour Authority in a damning report. Universities are given until 2025 to comply with their legal obligations for staff welfare. Should they not do so, the Labour Authority will enforce it.
The social safety plan of action that TU Delft needs to submit to the Inspectorate of Education in mid-May is almost ready. At least, the version that the Executive Board wants to submit. It concerns a ‘living document’ that has been renamed a ‘change management plan’. In the document, the Executive Board expresses repentance, recognises that looking back is needed, and names a few potential measures for the short and longer term.
Despite repeated requests, the Supervisory Board did not share the draft report by the Inspectorate of Education about social safety with the representation bodies during the reappointment process of Rector Tim van der Hagen. The Supervisory Board claimed that there was nothing in the report that would jeopardise the reappointment.
At the Democracy Day organised by students on Wednesday 1 May, staff members and students discussed how TU Delft could be governed differently. “We do not have to accept the situation as it is now.”
During the consultation meeting of April, the Student Council and the Works Council again discussed social safety with the Executive Board. The Councils’ members agreed with the Executive Board that they could share an ‘80% version’ of the social safety plan of action with their constituencies.
Involve PhD candidates more in initiatives around improving social safety. The University PhD Council issued this call in a letter to the Executive Board on Friday 26 April. In the letter, the advocacy group shares its ideas on improving the social safety.
It is concerning that TU Delft hires so many consultants to solve its problems, writes Delta’s new student columnist Alex Nedelcu in his first piece. It hinders us from actually solving problems, he argues.
Staff members, students and alumni talked about problems around social safety at four meetings. The moderators hoped for solutions, but it appeared that they had difficulties with the process.
On Monday 15 April, the Executive Board sent a Delta reporter away from an open meeting with three internal trade unions. The public and a Berenschot advisor were welcome. Both the FNV Government trade union and the Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten condemn their action.
The Students and Staff for Safety pressure group does not believe that the current Executive Board can pick up the pieces and make good. The pressure group was specially set up in connection with the social safety issue, and it wrote this in a statement on Thursday.
Let us not allow our academic community to be forced into silence by lawyers, argues Professor Richard Goossens (Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering) in connection with the legal pressure put on Delta. Address the culture of fear and self-censorship by learning from our mistakes and restarting the open debate.
After TU Delft ordered Delta to take a critical article about the work culture at I&IC offline, the Executive Board Chair Tim van der Hagen today offered his apologies to Delta on behalf of the Executive Board. At the time of writing, it is not yet certain if the article can be put online again.
Monday morning Delta published an article entitled How confidentiality led to anxiety among I&IC staff and a loss of confidence in the Rector. Under protest, we removed it the same evening.
The Executive Board has imposed a duty of confidentiality on the management team of the Innovation & Impact Centre (I&IC) regarding the performance of the Director appointed on 1 April 2023. It has brought about such a level of uncertainty and frustration among I&IC staff members that they feel hurt. Twelve staff members spoke to Delta about a loss of confidence in Rector Magnificus Tim van der Hagen, the Director of Human Resources, and the Ombuds functionary. How one issue illustrates the conclusions of the Inspectorate of Education: welfare of employees at TU Delft is not being mismanaged
During an extra meeting, the Works Council and Student Council could question the Executive Board about the social safety plan of action. Reporting by Delta was also discussed.
Just over a month after the Education Inspectorate report came out, columnist Dap Hartmann gives the Executive Board some free advice: come clean, be accountable and quit window dressing.
In this letter to the editor, Mathematics Professor Jan van Neerven takes up columnist Bob van Vliet’s hashtag #NotMyExecutiveBoard. He wonders whether the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board will live up to their own words.
The ‘Social safety project team’ has set four dates on which TU Delft employees, students and alumni can share ideas about ‘a safer working and studying environment’. The Supervisory Board will attend one of the sessions and the Executive Board another.
Now that the Inspectorate report is published, TU Delft too quickly jumps into its traditional role of problem solver, turning its back on the past and closing its doors. If we really want a socially safe university, we should not let this happen, writes Saskia Bonger, Editor in Chief, in this opinion piece.
Tim van der Hagen, Rector Magnificus and Chair of the Executive Board at TU Delft, does not think he made a misjudgement by threatening the Inspectorate with a lawsuit. How does he justify this when it took three weeks of protest before he changed his mind?
Jan Schiereck, staff member at TU Delft’s Innovation & Impact Centre, is concerned about his ‘colleagues and our working conditions’, he writes in this letter.
The Student Council’s monthly consultation meeting had to proceed without the Executive Board, while both should have discussed the Inspectorate’s report publicly for the first time.
TU Delft employees could share their ideas about a safer working environment in a meeting organised by the Works Council. “Don’t say that you want everyone to enjoy a good working environment, but say that it is your responsibility to create a good working environment.”
The Executive Board will not file a case against the Inspectorate of Education. This was stated in email to all staff on Wednesday morning, 20 March. Delta talked to Rector Tim van der Hagen about it.
The internal trade unions at TU Delft pose ‘serious questions about the continuity of the change processes required by the Inspectorate of Education’. Two Board members will only be in office for a relatively short period to come, while the unions believe that changing a culture needs long-term stable leadership.
All TU Delft staff members can share their ideas about creating a safer working environment with the Works Council (OR). The OR has invited all staff to a meeting on Wednesday 20 March. The OR will share the ideas with the Executive Board, that is planning to submit its plan of action to the Inspectorate of Education on 19 May at the latest.
The central and local representation councils at TU Delft are not in agreement with the ‘highly unempathetic’ way in which the Executive Board responded to the Inspectorate’s report. ‘We expected more self-reflection’, writes the Works Council.
An anonymous group of people from TU Delft, the Students and Staff for Safety, started a petition against the plan of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board to bring the Inspectorate of Education to court. Delta interviewed them by email.
Let us stop acting as though the reports made to the Inspectorate of Education are exceptions in an otherwise pleasant community, writes Assistant Professor Marieke Kootte. “Correct anyone that says that ‘women are like numbers, they are pretty to play with’.”
Executive Board member Marien van der Meer has ‘the fullest confidence’ that TU Delft can take ‘steps forward’ to ‘also become a top university in social safety’. She said this during her first public appearance since the Inspectorate of Education’s crushing report on social safety was published.
The four unions affiliated with TU Delft do not want the Executive Board to take the Education Inspectorate to court. In a statement to its members, the unions write that many TU Delft employees do not support the board’s view.
A group of TU Delft employees is calling on the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board in a petition not to file a lawsuit against the Inspectorate of Education.
TU Delft is ‘determined’ to bring the Inspectorate of Education to court for its ‘defective investigation’. The Inspectorate is confident that its report will survive this test. In the meantime, the outgoing Minister of Education Dijkgraaf has informed the House of Representatives of his plan of action.
The Inspectorate of Education’s investigative report covers transgressive behaviour and finances. While the financial management is in order, the Inspectorate still sees ‘room for improvement’.
The court proceedings TU Delft is considering in response to the Inspectorate of Education report seem more an attempt to put their own house in order than to address the underlying causes of the reports. You do not restore TU Delft’s good name in court, but by being an excellent employer, Dap Hartmann believes.
TU Delft accidentally put confidential information online while defending itself against the Inspectorate of Education’s report. Passages that had been blacked out were still legible. These passages suggest that TU Delft is mostly fearful about damage to the reputation of its administrators.
After an investigation into possible transgressive behaviour on the work floor at TU Delft, the Inspectorate of Education concludes that there was mismanagement. It says that TU Delft failed at the highest level to ensure social safety. TU Delft calls this investigation ‘flawed’ and a ‘big steps fast home report’ and plans to go to court.
The Inspectorate of Education’s examination into transgressive behaviour at TU Delft is in the analysis phase. The latter’s finances are also being examined.
The Inspectorate of Education is receiving responses to its call for TU Delft staff to report inappropriate behaviour on the workfloor. Enquiries show that the call is wider.
The Inspectorate of Education calls on TU Delft employees to report any transgressive behaviour on the workfloor. The reason for this is multiple reports received.
