Older: How Much Longer Can Guy Ryder and Claude Rouiller Ignore Abuses and Cement Injustice at the EPO?

Guy Ryder, Director-General of ILO

Summary: The perception of ILO complicity is being reinforced in light of new revelations about private meetings that exclude actual staff representatives (such as SUEPO, whose officials are themselves the subject of ILO appeals)

THE European Patent Office (EPO) is nowadays run by a quieter and even less transparent version of Battistelli. Many people still don't know what's going on (both insiders and outsides) and SUEPO is also being busted and/or gagged, albeit it doesn't know why (the EPO refuses to say why SUEPO's E-mails get intercepted and deleted).

IPPro Patents has a new report about António Campinos meeting ILO officials in private. Just like Team Battistelli back when Battistelli headed the management it seems like Campinos (whom Battistelli selected) is working behind the scenes with ILO in order to influence decisions against staff's interests. This makes ILO seem increasingly complicit and uninterested in justice. To quote some bits: (via SUEPO)

However, some critics have argued that the president’s actions have not matched his words, and Campinos has presided over the dismissal of an employee under new controversial 'incompetence' provisions, and the alleged upholding of a Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) email ban.

SUEPO also criticised the office yesterday (31 October) for allegedly censoring a publication from the Central Staff Committee (CSC) that discussed the EPO’s Conflict Resolution Unit (CRU).

The CRU acts as a receiving section for management review requests but does not itself carry out management reviews.

The CSC said that the CRU had been refusing to register requests and forward them to reviewers for a decision and that this procedure is “confusing for staff and defeats the declared purpose of the management review requests”, which were introduced to give management an opportunity to reflect on its decisions and settle disputes before they reach the stage of real litigation.

Sources close to SUEPO have told us that the communiqué from the president had taken the union by surprise as neither the CSC nor SUEPO were informed or invited to Campinos’s meeting at ILOAT.

[...]

When settlements are offered the vast majority usually “add insult to injury”, according to the sources, resulting in the lion's share of offers being rejected by appellants.

“If the number of complaints are decreasing, this is mainly due to the red tape introduced under Battistelli,” the sources remarked, “lodging an appeal has become an administrative nightmare”.

“EPO staff now have to pay to lodge an appeal when their rights are violated.”

The sources said that Campinos had failed to resolve pending ILOAT cases against staff representatives and union officials and has already taken several negative decisions that will result in new appeals.

“If [Campinos] continues to act as he has since taking up his duties, then we fear that new social conflicts will be inevitable in the near future,” the sources concluded.

The EPO did not respond to requests for comment.

Of course the EPO did not respond. Campinos just made it mute; it also refused to comment on Battistelli's corruption, knowing that the man and his associates may be criminally culpable. ⬆