11.18.15
The EPO’s Management Has Just Reaffirmed Its Possible Role in Contributing to Staff Suicides
Another shot in the foot
The EPO’s own Great Purge?
Summary: Reports from the EPO’s staff union serve to show that the management continues to bully staff representatives in ways which are “criminal endangerment of the health of staff members is a clear violation of the Office’s duty of care and amounts to crossing a line.”
OUR previous post about the EPO already mentioned crackdowns on staff representatives. The EPO’s management has become so nasty in fact that it exceeds our rather low expectations. Here is what it does to remind us of its likely role in many suicides (reportedly a tenfold growth in the number of suicides) — a role which it strongly denies in the media, probably in order to dodge accountability.
This is what SUEPO had to say (internally):
16 November 2015
su15051hpFriday 13th in The Hague
Many of you have called or written enquiring about what has happened to the Staff Representation last Friday, and offering support. We are grateful for this.
“Upon return, he was visibly shaken and appeared to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Medical help
was called, and he had to be wheeled out of the office in bad shape. He appears to
have been subjected to severe, concerted and wilful pressure, especially intended
to harm and destabilise.”What we know from how the events panned out is this:• Jesus was picked up from his office by President’s emissaries. Upon return, he was visibly shaken and appeared to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Medical help was called, and he had to be wheeled out of the office in bad shape. He appears to have been subjected to severe, concerted and wilful pressure, especially intended to harm and destabilise.
• Laurent got or was scheduled to get a similar treatment. Noticeably distressed, he had to rush for medical help externally.
• The other members of the Staff Committee who witnessed the event were also
deeply perturbed.Given the regulations in place, our colleagues are not in a position to inform anyone, so we do not know the Office’s reasons or pretexts for targeting them. However the succession of events strongly suggest that it was in relation to their duties.
Staff representatives and union officials should be able to perform their statutory tasks without the danger of reprisal, much less danger to their health. In addition to medical care, steps will be taken to ensure that appropriate legal representatives are informed and instructed to act. Criminal endangerment of the health of staff members is a clear violation of the Office’s duty of care and amounts to crossing a line. All those involved in this dereliction of duty will have to assume the responsibility for their choices.
We will inform you asap on any further developments.
Please stay tuned and alerted, and contact us if you have any input. The SUEPO Committee The Hague
As Florian Müller put it, the last time he read “stories like that they referred to Romania under its communist dictatorship. They also picked up people who returned in a perturbed state, though they also made them disappear quite often.”
The original PDF (published by Müller) is being mirrored here in case someone like SUEPO gets threatened again (for censorship). Remember that even Müller had links to his blog censored before, again using threats. The EPO plays dirty with the “chilling effect”, as it has evidently done for a number of years (effort to censor critics). It’s happening under Battistelli’s reign and possibly his direct command. It helps to know who does what in case of legal action against persons inside the EPO’s management team.
“If the European public and various patent practitioners (or their so-called representatives, European politicians) fail to put an end to it, suicide number 6 is just a matter of time.”We wish to remind readers that this isn’t the first time that aggressive action by the EPO results in physical harm and serious health/mental impact. This is institutional abuse that can be grounds for a swift and firm legal action. EPO employees are encouraged to collect and retain evidence of harms and abuses to them (such as threats and illegal witch-hunting). They are also encouraged to support their fellow workers, staff representatives, and journalists who cover these abuses. The EPO is no ordinary ‘office’ or ‘organisation’. It increasingly resembles all sorts of unsayable things, where grinning sadistic people not only eliminate but also drag through the mud their perceived ‘opponents’.
If the European public and various patent practitioners (or their so-called representatives, European politicians) fail to put an end to it, suicide number 6 is just a matter of time. That’s almost guaranteed to happen. █
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