More Cuts/End to Benefits for EPO Workers (Europe's Working Conditions Incompatible With the European Patent Convention)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 08, 2024

"The Office is now reviving it but plans to introduce new cuts on benefits"

The Central Staff Committee (CSC) at the EPO has circulated a new publication detailing further erosion of working conditions - a process that started with Benoît Battistelli and continues under António Campinos. Knowing that "multiple days would improve the effect" of publication, as an associate told me, we've not published this until today. The publication is now dated 3 days ago.

The CSC has told colleagues that "In the Intranet Communiqué of 9 October 2024, the Office announced having developed a proposal allowing staff to request a change of place of employment for personal or family reasons. Such a transfer policy actually existed at the EPO since decades and was stopped in 2020. The Office is now reviving it but plans to introduce new cuts on benefits. This paper brings explanations."

The paper is not long. It's 2 pages in length. We're converting it into HTML, plain text, and GemText:

Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 05.11.2024
sc24063cp

Cross-site transfers for personal or family reasons
Reviving a policy with cuts on benefits

In the Intranet Communiqué of 9 October 2024, the Office announced having developed a proposal allowing staff to request a change of place of employment for personal or family reasons. Such a transfer policy actually existed at the EPO since decades and was stopped in 2020. The Office is now reviving it but plans to introduce new cuts on allowances. This paper brings explanations.

Transfers for personal or family reasons: a policy which always existed
For decades, EPO employees or their family have sometimes had difficulties in adapting to the country of their place of employment: e.g. distance from relatives, medical reasons, childrens education, etc. When EPO employees found themselves in such a situation, they could request a transfer, for personal or family reasons, to another place of employment. The Office fulfilled its duty of care by considering the request for transfer and considered it also as directly beneficial for the Organisation. Indeed, an employee with personal issues alleviated, thanks to a transfer, would be an employee in a better position to perform at work.

Transfers for personal or family reasons sometimes took time to obtain, as they should be also compatible with requirements of the “business”, the site capacity and with any commitments on behalf of the Office towards its host states.

When transferred, an EPO employee was entitled to

• one-off benefits: special leave with pay of up to 5 days¹, an installation allowance between 1 or 2 months basic salary², reimbursement of expenses and advances³, lump-sum compen- sation for the removal of household and personal effects⁴, travel expenses⁵.

• long-term benefits, if applicable after a change of country of employment: home leave⁶ and expatriation allowance⁷. For instance, a German national working in Munich could have be- come entitled to these benefits when moving to The Hague.

New Ways of Working puts a stop to cross-site transfers
The Office considers that with digitisation, cross-site teams and the New Ways of Working there is little to no business need for cross-site transfers anymore. The Communiqué confirms that “[w]ith very few exceptions (e.g. for tasks related to on-site facility maintenance) work can be performed remotely, and staff can perform their duties whether they’re working on-site or anywhere in their host country, or even abroad.”

As a result, the EPO made cross-site transfers (almost) impossible since 2020. Around 20-30 staff members⁸ who requested a cross-site transfer for personal or family reasons since then are still

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¹ Article 59 ServRegs
² Article 73 ServRegs
³ Article 76 ServRegs
⁴ Article 77 and 81 ServRegs
⁵ Article 80 ServRegs
⁶ Article 60 ServRegs
⁷ Article 72 ServRegs
⁸ The figure is an estimate provided by the administration during the Technical Meeting of 1 October 2023.

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waiting in 2024 for a positive reply from the Office.

The staff representation considers that the New Ways of Working should not have been used as a justification to put colleagues in such a situation incompatible with the Office’s duty of care.

Under the New Ways of Working, EPO staff may work a maximum of 60 days abroad but they shall remain in the country of employment for the rest of the working days including 60 days at the place of employment. Furthermore, teleworking may also be withdrawn at any time. The scheme is such that EPO staff and their family shall remain primarily in the country of employment. Personal or family difficulties linked to the country of employment may therefore arise like in the past and such a transfer hence be justified.

Reviving the stopped policy with doubtful cuts on benefits
In the Communiqué of 9 October 2024, the Office announced “having developed a proposal allowing staff to request a change of place of employment for personal or family reasons”. Actually, the Office is reviving the stopped policy and sets the priority on financial sustainability rather than on the duty of care: “considering that the request is made for personal reasons, the move must also be cost- neutral for the Office.”

• for the one-off benefits: a complete abolition

• for the long-term benefits (home leave and expatriation allowance): no new entitlement after a change of country of employment. For instance, a German national working in Munich can never be entitled to these benefits when moving to The Hague.

This proposal is doubtful from a legal point of view. Article 64 ServRegs on “Remuneration” states that an employee “may not waive his entitlement to remuneration [which] shall comprise basic salary and, where appropriate, any allowances”.

Transfers for “you” and transfers for “them”
The proposal maintains the possibility for management to initiate cross-site transfers for business needs, in case of reassignments and promotions. In such a case, the full financial package remains applicable.

Little to no information is available on how reassignments and promotions take place at the Office. Management makes use of its broad managerial discretion on the matter and staff representation is kept out of any observer post in such procedures.

The border between “transfer at the request of the employee” and “transfer at the initiative of the Office” might therefore be thin when it comes to management themselves.

Conclusion
The EPO’s communication on the reform is incomplete and misleading. The Office is not putting in place a new transfer policy, it is just restoring what had been stopped since 2020 while introducing cuts on benefits.

Cross-site transfers for personal or family reasons will still remain subject to requirements of the “business”, the site capacity and with any commitments on behalf of the Office towards its host states. There is no plan to allow DG1 staff to be transferred to Vienna or to increase the size of the Brussels office.

Overall, this new policy of financially penalising transfers for personal or family reasons is difficult to reconcile with the official communication fostering mobility.

The Central Staff Committee

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The exact figure could be higher.

Notice the part about "long-term benefits".

Considering the European Patent Convention (EPC), not just ServRegs, this isn't compatible with what's needed to attract and retain properly trained and experienced staff. Then again, the goal here isn't to make a sustainable EPO but a cash machine with highly detrimental effect (great harm) for Europe.

This may be part of an even broader trend. To take Finland for example, workers are turned into serfs. This was in the news yesterday:

"Wolt has stolen the most from its workers who toil without pensions," someone explained to us. "Unlike Paananen he does not produce something or even provide a service, just tacks on a service fee while effectively stealing the pensions of his employees who have to work 12 hours per day to get a livable income. That's not a company, that's a slave plantation..."

"Not even minimum wage for its house slaves" (see wages and working hours).

"It is about 1/3 the average or about 2/3 of the median private sector hourly wage."

"[...] and that's for the in-house slaves earning 12 the field slaves are basically living on tips (in a country where tipping is a faux pax and most workers still paid an honest wage)."

It can be dubbed "slavery as a 'business' model" and "there are also the problems inherent in surveillance, tracking and such caused by proprietary closed source 'Apps' with proprietary, closed source APIs and protocols [1, 2]. Theft all the way around."

"Four generations ago, the Finns were known for 'Sisu'. Now, maybe it's for over-developed thumbs. A slave is a slave even if you fry him in butter...."

Speaking of slaves, the Linux Foundation is taking advantage of slaves or the work of unpaid volunteers. It's gross. Then it talks about "inclusive language", e.g. you cannot even mention concepts such as slavery. █