The European Patent Office’s (EPO) Communication on "Reform" is "Incomplete and Misleading," Says the Central Staff Committee at the EPO
A long "report on the GCC meeting of 13 December 2024" has been published and disseminated by the Central Staff Committee (CSC) at the EPO. It's a very long PDF with annexes (it's lengthy because of the latter).
Quoting the CSC:
Our report and opinions: Cross-site moves, Office wide reorganisation, Rewards
Dear Colleagues,
The General Consultative Committee (GCC) met by videoconference on 13 December 2024. The following items were on the agenda of the meeting and the CSC members of the GCC raised their concerns and tried to get further clarifications:
Cross-site moves for personal reasons – for consultation GCC/DOC 25/2024
Reconstruction of career – for consultation GCC/DOC 26/2024
Simplification and digitalisation of processes related to spouse income – for consultation GCC/DOC 27/2024
Office wide organisational adjustments 2025 – Stream 1 – for information GCC/DOC 28/2024
Amendment to the general guidelines on rewards 2024 – for consultation GCC/DOC 29/2024
The detailed and reasoned comments and opinions by the CSC members of the GCC are annexed to this paper.
This is page 26 (out of 119).
Flipping through these pages, one immediately gets the feeling that those people really do not want to work there but feel stuck or trapped there (there are many reasons it's hard to leave the EPO and find a different job; we covered that years ago).
As someone told us recently, "I am getting older and fed up of the miserable patent office. This place is an unrecoverable piece of excrement."
Well, at least the public should be made aware. EPO corruption is already spreading to the EU. This puts Europe at risk and makes it more vulnerable. █