Oh well I understand that funds are allocated for a project. But in my experience, postdocs who are coming to the end of the funding for one project tend to be

Oh well I understand that funds are allocated for a project. But in my experience, postdocs who are coming to the end of the funding for one project tend to be moved to another incoming one. I.e. they're essentially permanent staff anyway. I know of people who've gone on like this for 10+ years. "Revenue generating" centres within unis have targets and projections (e.g. commercialization teams) so they DO have an idea of what funds they'll have in the medium term, even though it's on a project by project basis. I don't see how this is any different from any company that needs revenue in order to keep staff, but yet companies manage to keep staff permanently. In fact, even universities seem to be able to keep staff permanently, unless they're researchers.