The EU's unwillingness to do something about the EPO will imperil the EU itself (the EU and EPO are very much connected through the illegal Unified Patent Court)

Summary: Gender inequality, or the considerably lower probability of women progressing at Europe's largest patent office, as explained by the EPO's elected staff representation only days ago

The Central Staff Committee at the EPO started talking about the empty words from António Campinos regarding inclusion, equality etc. Campinos is basically a low-grade liar. He last brought that up just weeks ago in a pre-recorded speech.

"Under the current career system," the Central Staff Committee says, "the gender pay gap has widened after every reward exercise. Progress has been made to fix the huge under rewarding of colleagues on maternity leave, but there is still much work to do in other areas. In particular, three issues are highlighted, including the under-rewarding of double-steps and promotions to women, and the under-rewarding of colleagues working part-time."

The paper below is dated 5 days ago. Originally a PDF circulated among stuff, here it is as HTML:

Zentraler Personalausschuss Central Staff Committee Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 07/04/2023 sc23040cp

Gender Pay Gap: at last a fair reward exercise in 2023?

Dear colleagues,

Under the current career system, the gender pay gap has widened after every reward exercise. Progress has been made to fix the huge under rewarding of colleagues on maternity leave, but there is still much work to do regarding other minority groups, such as part-time workers and women, as detailed below.

The President's Instructions on Rewards confirm the reality of this trend with his recommendation to managers that states “as a proactive measure in order to ensure a fair distribution of rewards to all categories of staff, (...) to pay specific attention to part-timers and colleagues on maternity leave.”

In recent years the administration has relentlessly affirmed its will to tackle the issue of gender inequality, but progress has been slow. The gender pay gap remains a stubborn problem and last year’s reward exercise was not an exception. While women and men were rewarded a single step at a reasonably equal rate, the gender differences in the reward of double steps and promotions, as seen below, remains an issue practically unaddressed with the gaps showing no signs of closing. As an example, for these gaps to close in the last reward exercise, an additional 41 women would have been awarded a double step, and 34 more women would have been promoted.

Another issue that impacts women more strongly than men is the under-rewarding of colleagues who work part-time. The difference between rewards for part-time colleagues and full-time colleagues is quite large (as can be seen below), and because a significantly larger percentage of our female colleagues work part-time when compared to the men as the pie charts show, the under-rewarding of part-time staff disproportionately impacts the women. This is another area where there is still work to be done.

These three areas for improvement were presented in a recent diversity and inclusion working group meeting with VP1, who made a commitment to look into these specific issues during the reward harmonisation process. We also reiterated our request for an updated gender awareness report including an analysis of the career opportunities for women.

This year, Staff representation expects not to see another reward exercise that disadvantages our female colleagues. In 2023, we hope that our management takes bigger strides towards equality to demonstrate the true political determination this issue demands and deserves. Close the gender pay gap and empower women in our workplace.

Your Central Staff Committee

The management at the helm quit caring about facts; instead it is "doping" on stakeholders' money (application fees, renewal fees, searches etc.) and bribing the European media to relay a false narrative/image of the EPO. Sometimes that money even bribes international media and scholars outside Europe. ⬆