The "Alicante Mafia" - Part X - EPO Strikes to Begin Next Week
Things gradually escalate this month [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
About a week before the first strike (there will be more), which is impending and already authorised, the staff union in Munich (SUEPO Munich) and the Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) both circulated this communication about a 'meeting' to take place before the strike. It gives some background:
Further salary erosion to come
Dear Colleagues,
The Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) invites all staff to a General Assembly on Thursday 29 January, at 10.30 hrs to be held via MS Teams.
Agenda:
Salary Erosion Procedure - Further erosion to come
AOB
The Office intends to reduce the evolution of our salaries to Eurozone (EZ) inflation ± 0.0% without any guarantee of maintenance of purchasing power in Munich nor any parallelism with civil servants. In addition, the proposal foresees the introduction of further limiting mechanisms: a new clause to prevent adjustments in case EZ inflation is considered too high by the Council and a review to possibly give even less than EZ inflation in three years’ time.
The trade union SUEPO has already adopted an industrial action plan to fight the erosion of our salaries with work-to-rule actions, demonstrations and a first day of strike on Friday 30 January.
Join us online and ask your questions.
It's interesting to see LSCMN (The Local Staff Committee Munich) involved, not just the union. This means those actions are becoming more mainstream there. This has moreover spread to the Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH), which has a similar 'meeting' this coming Monday. In its own words:
Staff Committee The Hague
Comité du personnel de La Haye
Personalausschuss Den Haag19 January 2026
sc26002hpGeneral Assembly
Salary Adjustment ProcedureMonday 26 January, 11.00 hrs
Dear colleagues,
The present Salary Adjustment Procedure (SAP) has been in place since 2020 and we have lost ca. 1% per year compared to national inflation (see here). The impact for staff is severe encompassing all elements of renumeration, allowances, and pensions. At the same time the actuaries have repeated that all pension liabilities are covered, and the EPO, a not-for-profit organisation, has made hundreds of millions of euros in annual surpluses, has €14.4Bn reserves in the RFPSS and €5.3Bn reserves in the EPOTIF.
A new SAP for 2027-2032 has been designed by the administration and shared with Staff Representation. The initial documents outline a salary adjustment method that would be even more detrimental to staff than the present one (see here). We would like to raise awareness with respect to the long-term, irreversible impact on our salaries and pensions. For example, the huge impact of an adjustment below local inflation that is applied also to the capped defined benefit of the New Pension Scheme (NPS). With the continuation of the rate of salary erosion we have experienced over the last 6 years, the already low NPS monthly pension will steadily move towards the poverty line. We will then present the next steps and what staff can do to protect their rights.
Staff Representation were invited to the first Orientation Meeting with the administration on 14th January. There are three more meetings planned in short succession before the “final proposal” will be submitted to the GCC on the submission deadline of the 9th February. This incredibly short timeline, set by the administration, means that there is only a very limited period for us to influence the direction of the outcome, and we need to act quickly.
Please attend the General Meeting of the Local Staff Committee The Hague:
Monday 26 January, 11:00 hrs
[...]
Provisional agenda:
- Salary Adjustment Procedure 2027-2032
- What next? Timeline and Actions
- Reminders:
o What can you do against high targets (see here); and
o Check your performance report carefully (see here)
- Q&A
Kind regards,
Your Local Staff Committee The Hague
They've included the relevant documents in question [1, 2, 3] and notice the mention of EPOTIF, which is basically the EPO's own pyramid scheme. █