Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO's Staff Union Fights for the EPO's Survival and Viability

SUEPO publicationSummary: With food comes the appetite and the Staff Union of the EPO, or SUEPO, presses on with legal challenges against the obscenely corrupt Team Campinos ("the law firms engaged by SUEPO are working on drafting them")

THE corporate media is not covering any of these scandals (I checked everything I could find this morning), but the EPO is deep in a crisis. Of course EPO management will never admit this. As someone put it this week: "If you define what your thermometer you are using, you will never be ill. Even on your deathbed you will be perfectly healthy. It makes me sad to see how the EPO is willfully drawn into the wall by would be managers who do not have a clue about the harm they actually do!"

Yesterday we wrote about ILOAT (or ILO-AT) undoing some of the most oppressive rules -- even if eight years late -- of Mr. Vichy Battistelli (Benoît Battistelli has skeletons in his Vichy wardrobe). Emboldened by that major victory, the staff union (SUEPO) is pressing on. It wants to stop or at least slow down these egregious injustices which impact not only EPO staff but also EPO pensioners.

"It's like partial wage theft and due to diplomatic immunity the thieves will likely get away with it. They always do."More people now pay attention to EPO scandals (the ViCo blunder contributed to that) and some even find their voice online, despite the smokescreen and the censorship. One person wrote: "Is it any wonder that the AC has given up its control function and that the tail is wagging the dog? Since 2010, the Office Administration has been completely infiltrated by former AC members. To list just a few: Battistelli, Casado, Lutz, Topic, now followed by Campinos (who used to head the Portuguese delegation before he moved to Alicante), Ernst and most recently Ficsor as PD in the Legal Affairs department. With such extensive cross-pollination and no effective external oversight is it any wonder that things have developed as they have?"

The AC is very much complicit at this point. It plays an active role in EPO crimes or cover-up of such crimes. Of course it wants to rob staff and pensioners next... while allocating a massive budget for legal disputes against them. As if the problem is justice seeking, not those who undermine justice and break the law.

Earlier today the SUEPO officials circulated the following letter:

9 July 2021 su21016cp – 0.2.1/0.3.1/5.2

Preparing for the upcoming appeals against the Salary Adjustment Procedure

Dear SUEPO members,

On 12 March 2021, SUEPO provided a model review request to its members with which the Salary Adjustment Procedure and its implementation could be challenged. Many of you submitted a review request on this basis. The administration decided negatively on these requests. The responses we are aware of (reference MR/2021-0013) are dated 11 May 2021. According to Article 110 ServRegs, an internal appeal must be filed within a period of three months, i.e. by 11 August 2021.

For some of you, this date falls in the middle of the holiday season. In order to simplify your work during the holidays as much as possible, we would like to encourage you to have the following documents ready as PDF files for the internal appeal.

- Request for review as submitted in March 2021 - Decision by the administration on the request for review - Salary slips or pension statements for December 2020 and January 2021

Your SUEPO Local Bureau will distribute model internal appeals to the SUEPO members at the end of July 2021. Currently, the law firms engaged by SUEPO are working on drafting them. The remaining work for you to be done by the above deadline is then to fill in the forms of the model appeal, to attach the above PDF files, to send it by email to the Appeals Committee, and to pay the appeal fee of EUR 200.

Your SUEPO Central Bureau

PS: We very much regret that the Office apparently intends to deal with an earlier test appeal that SUEPO organised against the salary freeze in the second half of 2020 in a summary procedure. Our efforts to have a well-structured appeal procedure with a small group of test appellants are thus neglected and even led ad absurdum. It therefore seems all the more important that you now continue the proceedings started with the review request before the Appeals Committee by filing your internal appeal.



The Appeals Committee is troublesome. So is ILO-AT, but this is what staff has access to.

The Salary Adjustment Procedure, or "SAP", has been mentioned here a great number of times, especially last year. It's a belittling euphemism for a massive attack on past and present workers, whose salary is being taken away while the Office is looted by the management. It's like partial wage theft and due to diplomatic immunity the thieves will likely get away with it. They always do.

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