If it's like our uni, it's precious little use to you. In our case, it means that when you get a grant to fund your RA for 3 yrs, instead of having a 3-yr fixed-term contract, they get an open-ended contract and get made redundant after 3 yrs. I assume they are entitled to some redundancy pay when that happens, which if true is certainly helpful ... but it's not really an "open-ended contract" in the same way like say if you get a job as a teacher.

However, yeah the unions probably helped achieve that. They are probably also responsible for all the employment law which makes it a complete nightmare to actually take anyone on even when you have got the funding for them ... a real problem when you have very small and short-term pots of cash, as you risk the recruitment procedure eating up a large chunk of the time which would potentially have been available to do the project.

-Neuromancer