THERE HAS BEEN NO announcement/news from or about the European Patent Office (EPO) since the start of the year. It's totally quiet, but that doesn't mean things are going well. As a reminder, based upon well-documented evidence, staff representatives have been severely limited in their communication and work security is very low right now. The management still fires people, without warning, for flippant/dubious reasons.
your point is valid under optimal conditions (theoretical ones) but not in real life.
For instance recently at Air France you had a major social fight (with guess who at head of the company : an énarque of course). Eventually, he had to leave the company (lose a referendum on his course of action) and the social conflict went on.
A new boss arrived (a canadian). Within 15 days he had met with all unions (it took FIVE months to Mr Campinos to meet with SUEPO alone), the HR chief resigned and a solution to the social conflict was found.
At EPO the HR chief largely responsible for the social mess and deterioration of staff careers, motivation and in fine quality, is still seating comfortably.
NONE of the pending cases of the abusively sanctioned staff reps and union officials has been solved, NOT A SINGLE ONE (Els Hardon is still in the dark and Laurent Prunier still dismissed his case pending at ILOAT)
Wake up MaxDrei please: as a new boss Mr Campinos had space (and the moral duty) to change a few heads (of course I agree with you: not fire the entire HR dept.). This would have send a clear signal to all stakeholders.
Instead, he chose to keep them at their positions (where guess what: they continue to act as they did under Battistelli since they are programmed to perform like this).
Campinos is wasting his credibility with “sweet” communiqués full of hot air and storytelling which fool no one (staff is highly educated and understand too well the manipulation).
The pressure on production remains the investigative unit, the management style by fear too (recruitment of new staff has become an issue, newcomers resigned after 2 to 3 years, experienced staff retire). This is the recipe for an industrial disaster since the only asset of the EPO is (was) its STAFF.
"The EPO is going dark and less transparent."Cynic wrote: "I’ll refrain from adding to the comments above, except to say that management is, so far, less visible. Why, I don’t know. But that is neither effective or comforting."
The EPO is going dark and less transparent. Moreover, as insiders keep insisting, Campinos has pursued even greater powers than Battistelli's and has just turned his boss/supervisor into his lapdog. Isn't it 'funny' how nobody in the media (never mind corporate media, even patent-centric media) mentioned this very obvious breach of topological authority? Who is actually bossing Campinos? Nobody. Maybe Battistelli still 'bosses' him; after all, he gave him this job (he had rigged the process), so Campinos is indebted to him. It's pretty clear who has the most leverage here.
The next comment is correcting a mistake from Kluwer Patent Blog, which wrote: "in an ILO decision that the Irish judge Patrick Corcoran should be reinstated, attempts were made to transfer him from Munich to The Hague to do work he was not qualified for (it seems this decision was reversed by Battistelli’s successor António Campinos)."
"The silence is actually a lot more harmful and it gives a false impression of calm while things quietly exacerbate (e.g. quality of patents and quality of staff).""Alas," says a reply to it (seemingly from another insider), "the room allocation shows that Mr. Corcoran has been assigned a working space in our wonderful and modern building. Which is situated in The Hague."
This is what we understand as well. We were a bit surprised/baffled by that above-mentioned assertion of Kluwer Patent Blog.
As we said yesterday, nothing has really changed, certainly not for the better. The silence is actually a lot more harmful and it gives a false impression of calm while things quietly exacerbate (e.g. quality of patents and quality of staff).
"Since 30 December 2018, 11.24 hrs CET," the EPO wrote a couple of days ago, "we are experiencing some issues with New Online Filing (CMS). The issues continue. Our technicians are working to fix the problem as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience."
The USPTO had similar issues for the same duration back in summer. Brain drain means technical deficit and assured downtimes or other technical issues. The EPO isn't even recruiting new people as its current goal is to reduce the number of workers without it seeming (to the public) like mass layoffs. This is how institutions generally collapse, technically as well as in terms of their reputation (upon which ability to recruit talent directly depends). ⬆