Hi Richard and all, I checked into the liability and benefits questions with our HR department and WMF's Chief of Finance and Administration, and here is some more info from them:

Individuals who have been awarded Fellowships from the Wikimedia Foundation are covered by the insurance of the Wikimedia Foundation for work done as part of their Fellowship agreement.

If they are in the United States, through third party service, the Wikimedia Foundation is able to provide health insurance. If they reside outside the United States, then the Wikimedia Foundation provides a financial supplement to enable the Fellowship recipients to cover their own health insurance.

If a Fellowship recipient is traveling on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, outside of their home country, then they are provided with travel accident insurance by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Hope this helps! If you're looking for more specifics on WMF's HR practices, I might suggest we take the conversation off-list and can try to put you in touch with someone in a relevant department to advise.

Best, Siko

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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 19:15:50 +0100 From: Richard Symonds richard.symonds@wikimedia.org.uk To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing 2 Community Fellow Message-ID: <CACHSVDxfojm=d56q9Z6G825Mo2JHEP83kMxZqnmTuCFgK8k-OQ@mail.gmail.com

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I'm asking from a purely good faith perspective, by the way: I tend to deal with HR here at WMUK, and I'll be dealing with it more and more in future. The more I know about how other Wikimedia orgs do things, Tyre better :-)

Richard Symonds On May 21, 2012 7:09 PM, "Richard Symonds" < richard.symonds@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:

...

I must admit to being curious, as do at least two others i've spoken to about this. With no benefits and no pensions, and what seems like hazy employment rights that vary from state to state (not to mention fellows from overseas) and person to person, this does seem a little odd. How

much

...

notice are they given, and what support they are entitled to from the

WMF,

...

would be very helpful.

I'd appreciate a more technical explanation so I can understand how the WMF deals with people on these short term contracts. :-)

Richard Symonds