Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Vice-President Željko Topić Formally Weakens the Right to Strike, Threatens Financial Retaliation

Martial Law imminent in Eponia? It's definitely getting there, gradually...

Robert Koehler painting
La Grève au pays de Charleroi by Robert Koehler



Summary: Attacks on the right of workers to assemble, to protest, and increasingly the freedom of association as well (more to come, in relation to staff representatives being crushed)

Željko Topić's dark history and union-busting practices at the EPO are not really news. He seemingly likes to play the role of the bad cop. Attacks on the right to strike are a bad cop's task, especially in the public sector (see some historical background). Here is a recent Circular, apparently resent with updates as means of deterrence ahead of many of the recent protests (now a weekly thing with high staff presence and growing recurrence in Munich):



ServRegs - Circular No. 347

Circular No. 347 (27 June 2013)

1. No. 347 Circular on Strikes The President of the European Patent Office; Having regard to the European Patent Convention, and in particular Article 10 thereof; Having regard to the Service Regulations for permanent employees of the European Patent Office, and notably Articles 30, 30a, 63 and 65 thereof; Having consulted the General Advisory Committee; Recognising the right to strike, whilst having regard to the need for specific terms and conditions for its exercise in order to ensure a proper functioning of the Office; Considering that a strike should be a proportionate action of last resort; Has decided as follows: Guidelines applicable in the event of strike 2. A. Definition 3. 1. Strike 4. A strike is defined in Article 30a(2) of the Service Regulations. 5. Industrial actions which are not a collective and concerted work stoppage, such as go-slow or work-to-rule actions, shall not be considered as a strike. 6. The protection granted by the right to strike does not apply to employees participating in industrial actions other than a strike. 7. B. Exercising the right to strike 8. 2. Call for a strike 9. A Staff Committee (Central Staff Committee or a local section), an association of employees, or a group of employees representing at least 10% of all EPO employees may decide to call for a strike. 10. 3. Decision to start a strike 11. The start of a strike shall be the result of a vote by the employees entitled to vote. 12. Entitled to vote are the active employees either office-wide or at sites concerned by the strike which has been called for. 13. The voting process shall be organised and completed by the Office within a maximum of one month following the decision to call for strike. The voters' confidentiality shall be guaranteed. Employees not able to vote personally October 2015 180 1b 14. shall have the possibility to vote by proxy. An employee can be given only one proxy vote. 15. The voting process shall be supervised by a committee composed of two employees designated by the President and two employees designated by the Central Staff Committee on an ad hoc basis. 16. To be valid, at least 40% of the employees entitled to vote shall participate in the ballot. The decision to start the strike has to be approved by a majority of more than 50% of the voters. 17. 4. Prior notice 18. Pursuant to Article 30a(5) of the Service Regulations, prior notice of a strike shall be given to the President at least five working days before the commencement of the strike action. 19. As regards the scope of the strike, the notice shall indicate which sites of the Office are concerned. 20. The duration of the strike shall not exceed one month starting from the date indicated in the prior notice as the beginning of the strike. Beyond this maximum duration, any new strike shall be organised in compliance with Article 30a of the Service Regulations. 21. 5. Declaration of participation in a strike 22. Employees participating in a strike shall inform their immediate superior and shall register via an electronic self-registration tool made available by the Office. The immediate superior will have access to the self-registration tool. 23. The registration shall occur before or, at the latest, on the day of the strike. 24. Employees may be considered on unauthorised absence within the meaning of Article 63 of the Service Regulations if they were not at their workplace during a strike action, did not register and did not inform their immediate superior of their absence from work. 25. 6. Deduction of remuneration 26. For each working day during which an employee participated in a strike, the Office will apply a deduction of the monthly remuneration, in accordance with Article 65(1)(c) of the Service Regulations. 27. For participation in a strike for more than four hours in a single working day, the Office will apply a deduction of 1/20th of the monthly remuneration. 28. For participation in a strike for four hours or less in a single working day, the Office will apply a deduction of 1/40th of the monthly remuneration. 29. For staff working part-time, the deduction will be adjusted proportionally. ServRegs - Circular No. 347 October 2015 30. The basis for calculating the deduction is the remuneration defined in Article 64(2) of the Service Regulations. 31. A strike participant remains covered by the social security scheme during strike and therefore continues to contribute in full to the scheme. 32. C. Entry into force 33. This decision shall enter into force on 1 July 2013.

Željko Topić Vice-President DG 4

October 2015


This was sent around the same time the EPO was attacking bloggers, apparently defaming a judge in the media, and shortly thereafter preparing a simultaneous attack on at least three staff representatives. This is part of the ongoing escalation, echoing what we see governments do when there is a perpetual "war on terror", taking its toll on law-abiding citizens, supposedly for the greater good. EPO management can feel the imminent "emergency" and is adjusting the rules accordingly, in order to protect the management, not the rights of workers.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
 
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News is Slop, Google News is Plagiarism, Google News is Dying
Google is off the rails
Links 16/09/2025: "The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction" and ASRock Does Microsoft E.E.E. on GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Serious "Breach of Confidentiality of Personal Data" in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO
Yes, the same EPO that routinely uses "data protection" and "GDPR" as a pretext for hiding or covering up its corruption and white-collar crimes (it even uses that as an excuse for refusing to obey courts' orders)
Adrienne Rockenhaus Says Her Husband Was Arrested for Running Tor and Denied Basic Rights in the United States
the US seems to be getting "russified" in its approach towards Tor
This is What Happens When Microsoft Canonical Lets Decisions on Ubuntu be Made by a Youngster From the British Army (Where He Did Mass Surveillance)
"Is Ubuntu Compromised?"
Back Doored Windows Giving GNU/Linux a Hard Time (Under the Guise of 'Security')
Is this complication intentional? Most likely, yes
Links 16/09/2025: Science, Security, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/09/2025: Command-line Options in POSIX Shell and Introducing Acre 0.9
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Secure' Boot Versus Dual Boot With GNU/Linux
they're meant to assume everything is OK
Links 16/09/2025: While Oracle Pretends to be Rich It's Firing About 70 MySQL Workers, "Oracle's Revenge" (Faking Demand With "AI")
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Just Published a New Web Page About "Secure Boot Update Process" (Microsoft Also Admits Issues; PCs Can Stop Booting)
Why was this page issued and published only hours ago?
Microsoft Lunduke: I Spread Hate and Then I Receive Hate
Cry us a river, Microsoft Lunduke
"Use Wayland" Isn't a Bugfix for X (X11 is Still Necessary)
They tell us X is "dead" and we must all be herded into Wayland ASAP
"Disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot. Wipe and Start Over."
At least they didn't say, buy a new computer...
The Oracle Ponzi Scheme
Oracle isn't doing well, but it's nowadays fashionable to say "clown" and "hey hi" to prop up one's stock, even based on nothing at all
The New Head of OSI is an "Hey Hi" (AI) Obsessed Person
when Bryant says "AI" that doesn't mean AI
Taking Out the Battery, Opening Up Your Computer, Just Like a "Normie" Would
At this stage, any person who still says "enable Secure Boot" is misguided or persuaded by companies that sell rootkits
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux" Spreading FUD)
searching for "Linux" today yields a lot of FUD
"Governments, local authorities, schools and hospitals can lead by example by procuring only Free Software"
Crossposted from Tux Machines
Cindy Cohn Leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation While Its Co-founder John Gilmore, Whom She Apparently Helped Oust, Will Celebrate 40 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
EFF has been busy hoarding GAFAM money, whereas the latter is where all the real activism is done
The Reach of Techrights Has Broadened
We nowadays cover a broader range of issues
"Google is Googlebombing KDE's Project Banana"
So is Google googlebombing KDE's Project Banana? You decide.
Complicating Things for No Actual Benefit, Just Added Risk and More Difficulties Adding GNU/Linux and BSDs
Watch what it's like for people who wish to use BSDs
Some Very Large IRC Networks Are Growing
IRC will turn 38 next year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 15, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 15, 2025
Links 16/09/2025: Autumn Party, RPG Planet, and Optical ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Geminispace Growing at Pace of Over 10% Per Year
Contrary to what some pessimists try to claim
Linux Mint Forums Today: Disable 'Secure Boot', It Doesn't Improve Security, It's Just a Microsoft Obstacle to GNU/Linux Users
They also mention MOK
What Ruben Amorim and Stefano Maffulli Have in Common
Censors Wikipedia and Social Control Media
Microsoft Won't Cooperate in Trying to Tackle EPO Corruption (Microsoft Profits From This Corruption)
Use something like BigBlueButton, Jami, Ring, and Jitsi instead
Solved Less Than an Hour Ago: Trying to Escape Windows, 'Secure Boot' Gets in the Way
'Secure Boot' wasn't meant to even exist in the first place
Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative, Resigns or Gets Removed (We'll Continue Covering OSI Scandals)
A dozen mentions of "AI", not much about "Open Source"
Andy Has Just Nailed It (Regarding Complexity and Failure, a la UEFI)
The users no longer own or control what they buy
Compatibility Support Module (CSM) Versus GNU/Linux Simplicity
what Andy recently called "solutionism"
Links 15/09/2025: "Postal Traffic to US Down by Over 80%" and 'Smart' Spinozacampus Laundry Room Goes AWOL
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/09/2025: Dungeon Hustle and Deleting Oneself From the Net
Links for the day
Breach of EPO's Duty of Care or Cigna Reimbursement Issues
This is the sort of thing that motivated Luigi Mangione to assassinate a CEO
Ask Ubuntu About "Secure Boot" Violation and Laptops That Don't Boot GNU/Linux
Does anyone still believe that "Secure Boot" has anything at all to do with security?
We Are Sad to Hear the Story of Jonathan Riddell, Champion of KDE and GNU/Linux on Desktops/Laptops
I have enormous respect for Jonathan and everything he has done
Talking About the Problem vs Talking to the Problem
Wanting an audience is never a good excuse for compromising one's values and principles
Focusing on Patents
The reason we cover the EPO so much is that it's close to home
"Secure Boot Violation": The 'Joys' of Fake Security Gone Wrong
Not everyone reboots every day
Links 15/09/2025: Russia Invades Romanian Airspace, Penske Media Sues Google Over LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 15/09/2025: Bitcoin ATMs Scam and "Conservative Cryptography" (Backdoors Fantasies)
Links for the day
EPO Imitates Microsoft: "Three Days or More Per Week" Inside the Office to Get a Desk to Work on; "the Office Breaches Its Promise Towards Staff and Acts in Breach of Its Duty of Care"
The EPO serves no actual function in Europe
Links 15/09/2025: Political Affairs, Censorship, and Copyrights
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/09/2025: Music Genres, Invisible Networks, and Akademy 2025
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 14, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 14, 2025