University professors in 'hostels' for adolescents: "Diets have not risen since 2002"
According to the INE Hotel Situation Survey for March, the average daily rate for a hotel in the Community of Madrid is 113.65 euros in low season. In Catalonia they are 114.11 euros. The national average rate for three-star hotels is 76.17 euros, and for two-star hotels, 63.82. The amount that a group 2 official receives for daily accommodation in per diems has been, for years, at 65.97 euros (in addition to 37.40 euros for maintenance). Just little more than the cost of a two-star hotel.
For this reason, two researchers from the University of Barcelona, José Antonio Díez Calzada, from the University's Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science, and Carl Hoefer, an ICREA researcher, have just launched a campaign to get diets in national territory for researchers are reviewed for the first time since 21 years ago, when they were approved in Royal Decree 462/2002 of May 24.
“In 2002 it was not a luxury, it was something reasonable that allowed you to find options, but now with the tourist boom it is impossible,” Díez explained to El Confidencial. “I had to go to Madrid recently to give some conferences, I asked them to find me accommodation and the only thing they found was in a hostel full of two teenagers who slept in shared rooms, although mine was individual”. The problem is not so much the bad conditions for the Spanish teachers, but that these limits are also imposed for guest teachers: “You can't put Nancy Cartwright or Philip Kitcher in there because they can't even last the first night”.
“If they put me in a hostel or fifteen kilometers from Valencia, I'll put up with it and take a train, but with the guests, because we live academically from international exchange,” he continues.. This budget limitation has caused his department to have to delay or cancel meetings with international participants during the most expensive months. “At Logos we schedule one or two congresses a month with guests, and we plan to do nothing from May to September due to accommodation issues,” he explains..
As the researchers explain in their petition, the limit of 65.97 euros “makes it practically impossible to find minimally acceptable accommodation for participants in congresses and scientific meetings in the vast majority of Spanish cities”. That's why they make two requests. On the one hand, although they do not calculate an exact amount, that “the maximum amount per overnight stay be updated to an amount that corresponds to the average price of a three-star accommodation at present”, as well as implement “a review mechanism due to inflation in the sector so that a situation like the current one does not occur again”.
“When this starts in 2002, you are throwing away a few years and doing what you can,” adds Díez. “In 2010, it starts to be hard, but you endure the crisis. Starting in 2015, it began to be a scandal, and when you commented on it to your colleagues, you realized that everyone was outraged.. When the topic is hot, the pandemic arrives and is paralyzed. Now that there is no crisis or pandemic, we have stood up, because otherwise we will end up without being able to organize scientific meetings”.
an inefficient system
Other researchers agree on this lack of adequacy between the needs of the departments and the current rates for groups 2, the second level in the civil service scale.. “In most cities today there is no longer any hotel that falls within the diet, and the travel agency sends you to the outskirts or to neighboring towns, so you have to waste a lot of time to get to the congress site, conference, seminar or whatever, and often with the cost of the taxi it ends up being more expensive than if you had had a closer hotel”, explains the professor of a Spanish university who prefers to remain anonymous.
An inefficient system, as Díez adds, who recalls that “a decent three-star hotel in Barcelona in normal season, which is at least quiet and clean, is very difficult to find for less than 100 or 110 euros”. One of the resources that they use is to look for accommodation in the far periphery, such as Mataró, which is half an hour from Barcelona, and pay for the trip. “It doesn't end up being cheaper, but it is less functional,” he adds.
The petition does not address the bureaucratic intricacies involved in justifying this kind of expense, because as the researcher recalls, it is something common to all of Spain, although he explains that, for example, for a restaurant it is a whole labyrinth “to be our client”. The professor ironically adds that “everything you have to do to justify the expenses is crazy (for example, an affidavit that you have stayed at the hotel, when you hire it through the agency instead of paying for it directly) “. “The system is designed under the assumption that the researcher or professor is a criminal whose sole objective is to steal from the State,” he adds sardonically..
Another researcher who recently alluded to the subject is Miguel Rebollo, from the Department of Information Systems and Computing of the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering of the University of the Basque Country, emphasizing the role of hotels in the two large cities, Madrid and Barcelona, to whom he considered that “it would be necessary to give a touch”. Often, universities have agreements with certain establishments of which they are regular customers that allow them to reserve rooms at a lower cost.
“Until now I have always been able to move in three-star hotels (which seems to me something worthy) in all the places I have gone,” he qualifies. “For what it does not give (nor did it give 20 years ago) is when the congress is in a hotel, to stay in it”, since those are usually held in four-star establishments. another paradox. Rebollo will have another congress in Portugal in July which, being cheaper, allows him to stay at the hotel recommended by the organization thanks to the 97.36 euros he receives as group 2 in Portugal. In some cases, diets are higher in other countries that, however, have a lower standard of living than Spain.
A problem that affects other professions
The campaign launched by the researchers is similar to other mobilizations of public officials that have taken place in recent years.. At the end of last year, the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) and the Unified Police Union (SUP) denounced that the freezing of their diets forced them to stay in campsites and shelters when they were summoned as reinforcements.. An even more delicate case because they belong to group 3, that is, they receive 48.92 euros in subsistence allowances: “They must have more problems, because I can find accommodation for less than 50 euros in very few places now,” says Rebollo.. “Before there was room to choose and you stayed below the diet. Not now, you're at the limit”.
Last autumn, the CCOO and the UGT signed an agreement with the Ministry of Public Administration to review the 35% increase in per-kilometre allowances for civil servants, from 0.19 euros to 0.26 per kilometer. However, Díez recalls that their request focuses on accommodation, because when they travel, they do so “by public transport”. “The strange thing is that they have reviewed the displacement and not the accommodation,” adds the researcher, who will address the petition to the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
The professors aspire to gather the signatures of between 50 and 70% of the main researchers of the Ministry's projects to get it to finally make a move. “With those of us who have spoken, no one disagrees, we only disagree with the radical nature of the actions to be taken,” Díez says ironically.. “There are those who are not going to organize any more congress until the diets are reviewed”.