TODAY we continue a long series which explores and details the ethical depravity which prevails at the high 'circles' of EPO management (Team Battistelli). Previously, in part 5, we explained how workers were left to 'rot' after their family had fallen critically ill. This would typically be a good point for staff union/s to step in and help, but at the EPO the sole genuine union, SUEPO, is under severe attacks. Battistelli's union-busting campaign has instated a reign of terror which paralyses not only union activity but also ordinary workers. SUEPO has been writing about exploitation of illness for quite some time, so it seems like a golden opportunity to intervene.

“It hampered heavily both union and staff representation functions.”
      --Anonymous"SUEPO is also not a focused structure," however, as a source told us because "it has always been torn apart from its inner nature of internal unions; people in it first and utmost care for their position in EPO. Same attitude that in present times translates into fear for themselves. It hampered heavily both union and staff representation functions."

A seatbelt analogy was once used to explain this. Or an oxygen mask. Staff union members -- and especially leaders -- have had to ensure their own safety too, as under Battistelli's notorious reign of terror they can suddenly find themselves wrongly accused and then dismissed in a kangaroo court. What Battistelli has therefore done leaves vulnerable staff (or staff he does not like) almost totally defenseless.

"Now I haven't been paid for months," a source one told us about the EPO, "they fabricated a new rule just for me: they assume that I am not present at my residence (which I am not obliged to be, but nevertheless) and for every assumed day of absence they take away a twentieth of my wage. I have been forced to interrupt my medical treatment and notify myself with a passport to the Office premises. As it is, I won't receive my wage again. They spare themselves the trouble of a questionable dismissal, yet they exert upon me the same type of pressure that a dismissal can cause: no wage. Office rules require that no deduction shall overcome 50% of the wage, but they kept up to 80% in the past and now 100%. They know it: who could ever complain and how? And before which court?"

“They know it: who could ever complain and how? And before which court?”
      --AnonymousThe dubious 'legality' of it aside, it's not hard to see why not many people even bother applying for a job at the EPO anymore. The required qualifications went down by a lot just in order to attract more applicants (low-quality applications).

"I am aware of intimidations and other more or less explicit pressures made onto medical doctors," a source told us, "some I found out about during my activity as a staff representative, some other are those actually following me as a patient right now. I also have evidence that the doctors put in charge by the Office under contract or as internal officers have broken rules of their own professional national order."

Such is the 'joy' of working for the EPO...

“They have their own inconsistent convenience of career interests to preserve: truly it's nothing, but to an emotionally and morally semi-blind creature that has lost any professional profile and moral sense, that's all that matters.”
      --Anonymous"The Office has been sowing evil and bad acts all over," the source continued, "inside and outside the Office, for over a decade at a point that nothing can be covered, let alone erased for much longer. There is reason for that, which cannot be found at just one level, such as corruption or private interests: everything is made possible by anthropologically well understandable mechanisms, the same type of mechanisms that allow the existence of things such as the Gulags, the Stasi, Auschwitz and the Holocaust: human beings with the soul and mind of worm-like creatures. They have their own inconsistent convenience of career interests to preserve: truly it's nothing, but to an emotionally and morally semi-blind creature that has lost any professional profile and moral sense, that's all that matters."

Antipathy now seems like a recruitment criterion for Team Battistelli, which probably serves to explain why one of the top hires (Vice-President) has corruption indictments against him in Strasbourg and many criminal investigations against him in his home country. ⬆