Bonum Certa Men Certa

Staff Representation of the EPO Explains to EPO Management That It's Breaking the Law, Robbing the Staff, and Lying to Staff

Breaking the law is not OK. Or is it now?

Breaking glass

Summary: Human rights, basic dignity and labour protections of EPO staff are routinely violated and the staff is also being robbed based on false pretenses; the staff representatives write to refute "[t]he Office’s report [which] has been made available on the Intranet"

AS MANY of our readers must know or be aware of by now, last week EPO staff started mass-mailing EPO management, including António Campinos. Collective action is intensifying and this morning an insider passed to us the latest report from staff representation regarding a meeting that predated by one week this collective action (and is partly published in response to white-washing lies from Office management).



"They also mention the EPO’s violation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) somewhere along the lines. The EPO gets away with violating just about any law it wishes to."We'd like to share it here because the EPO's staff representation is routinely gagged by the management (later this month we'll publish suppressed documents that the EPO's managers prevented representatives from disseminating to the very people they represent).

The Central Staff Committee wrote to staff:

Report on the CSC meeting with the President of 18 November 2020: “Living in a bubble and the reality check”



The President invited the Central Staff Committee (CSC) and the chairpersons of the Local Staff Committees (LSCs) to another exchange meeting within the frame of the social dialogue.

The Office’s report has been made available on the Intranet, our report of the same meeting might address the same topics, but definitely from a different perspective.


Here's the full content of the publication:

Munich 30.11.2020 sc20177cp – 0.2.1/4.2.2/4.3

Report on the CSC meeting with the President1 on 18 November 2020



Living in a bubble and the reality check

The meeting (by video-conference) addressed issues of particular interest for staff. It lasted one hour more than scheduled. The present report does not intend to repeat the feedback already given by the Office in its report in the Intranet. It merely addresses a few points from a possibly different perspective, i.e. that of staff representatives.

Salary Adjustment Procedure (SAP) and its implementation

The Administration explained that the adjustment had been correctly calculated to yield 0.50% for NL and DE and 0.36% for AT respectively.

We stressed that staff was being furious about such a low adjustment, which violated the principles of parallelism with the evolution of salaries for civil servants and parity of purchasing power. It is below inflation in NL (–1.20%), AT (–0.74%) and DE (–0.30%), even when housing costs were not taken into account. As to the alleged predictability, it seems that management itself is surprised by the savings already achieved in the first year of the new SAP. As a last attempt to limit litigation, we asked the President to consider our last-minute three proposals, which would prevent punitive savings at the detriment of staff (and pensioners).

The President did not agree and explained that he met much more staff members than we did and that he did not feel that staff would be furious. He recalled that we still have no nominal decrease, which is already a reason for satisfaction in the present times. Therefore the new method was there for six years and that was it. He suggested to “go to Geneva”, i.e. to litigate, if we so wished.

________ 1 The chairs of the four Local Staff Committees were also invited.




Career reform

The President announced that a new Circular 364 would be proposed next year but that the career system would remain essentially untouched. As a one-off measure for the current exercise, an additional budget would be spent for automatically granting a step to staff left behind. He had made a similar exercise in January 20202. We expressed that we were not enthusiastic with the low frequency of 1 step every 5 years which is far below the EU regulations for instance. On the PhD recognition, the Office is proposing a new flat-rate approach of 3 years to recognising PhD experience in cases where it does not fulfil the current criteria. It is our common concern that staff is treated with equity. We hope that such provisions will also be applied retroactively to all colleagues under the same circumstances.

Education Allowance

The President sketched again the main lines of the reform and stressed his will to obtain a better childcare and educational system for all staff which is also easier to administrate. However, we stressed again that there are “site specific” differences which must be taken into account to maintain the attractiveness of all sites. There are still no credible alternatives proposed for The Hague, Berlin and Vienna, and staff in these places of employment are thus not ready to embark in the reform as it stands. The President acknowledged that he is aware of these site specific constraints, structure of costs, and expressed his wish to address the matter in the coming months.

Production target setting 2021

The President pointed to the fact that staff should be satisfied to receive a monthly salary for fulfilling an official mission (providing services to the users, generating Gross Domestic Product and employment in Europe...). This was the reality. For DG1, he pointed at a reduction of the global target to 400.000 products and efficiency gains. We argued that the pandemic put a lot of pressure on staff and that the global reduction did not reflect on an individual basis3. VP1 suggested that examiners could discuss their targets on an individual basis with their team managers.

Data protection

We raised the issue of data protection: some tasks and services would be outsourced to companies or workers outside Europe, thus outside the realm of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EPO-internal Data Protection Guidelines4. The President replied that the Office was being cautious but that the cloud services the Office intended to use increasingly in the future were mostly controlled by Chinese or US American

________ 2 See his announcement: “One-off measure - Pensionable reward for eligible colleagues” 3 Inter alia because of the reduction in the number of examiners. 4 German Data Protection Offices have published an Orientation guide on video-conferencing systems “Orientierungshilfe Videokonferenzsysteme”




companies. However, in his view, there was presently no alternative and he asked us once again to be more realistic.

Reaching staff by email

The President expressed willingness to allow the distribution of mass-emails by staff committees for other purposes than General Assemblies. However, the President insisted on the possibility for staff members to opt-out. We have no objection against providing such an option. We are now looking forward to seeing the promises of the President materialize.

Verification of sick leave / “house arrest”

As a reaction to our open letter requesting an urgent remedy, PD43 announced that Circular 367 would be reviewed. We stressed again that the Appeals Committee has unanimously declared “house arrest” incompatible with the fundamental right to privacy.

Conclusion

We explained in the past why the new SAP was based on unrealistic assumptions. The adjustment figure of 0.50% and 0.36% respectively is now clearly also disconnected from the real life of staff members, the real evolution of purchasing power in the host states and the real adjustment of salaries of civil servants5. In view of this, we wonder why the President accuses us of living in a bubble outside any reality.

Already now, staff has contributed about €1bn to its €2bn alleged additional liabilities until 2038. It remains to be seen which share the member states are ready to shoulder. They discussed document CA/F 27/20 in the latest meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee in October 2020. This document deals with changes in the fee structure but contains no concrete recommendation about fee adjustment following real inflation.

The President is technically right in saying that the adjustment in January 2021 has nothing to do with the performance in 20206 since it relies on data from 2019. Actually, the SAP has always been disconnected from the performance of staff, which is supposed to be rewarded in the career system. However, the President still refuses to rework the career system, which creates frustration every year.

When is enough enough?

The Central Staff Committee

________ 5 1,51% in DE, 2,75% in NL and 1,45% in AT 6 The Chief of Staff mentioned that the performance in 2020 would be below target.


They also mention the EPO's violation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) somewhere along the lines. The EPO gets away with violating just about any law it wishes to. Consequences are none. This is wrong. This needs to stop. They also note that "Appeals Committee has unanimously declared “house arrest” incompatible with the fundamental right to privacy."

Later this month we're planning to publish more documents that explain why the grievances of EPO staff are very much justified and deserve the interest/sympathy of Europeans across every sector (except perhaps patent litigation/trolling). People's families, living abroad, are besieged by a corrupt regime that lies to them and represses them. We're supposed to think it's done in the name of science, yet almost nobody in the EPO's management is an actual scientist and they rarely ever meet scientists. They don't care about innovation, all they care about is printing as many patents as possible and as fast as possible to collect fees and then illegally gamble this money away. The European Commission is informally fine with that.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Hiring for Tech Roles Based on Perceived Loyalty is No Better Than Hiring to Meet Diversity Quotas
What we're seeing right now is a national security disaster and it is almost purely about technology
S.E.O. SPAM by Serial Sloppers With L.L.M. Garbage is Hurting Linux
We continue to run Slopwatch
IBM Says That Half of Its "Assets" is Basically Pure Fiction ("Goodwill")
It times get tough, IBM can sell "Goodwill" at the local pawn shop and pay back the lenders, right?
 
Links 01/02/2025: Belated Happy New Year 2025 and Gabbro 0.1.2
Links for the day
Links 01/02/2025: Administrative Chaos and Aviation Disasters Persist
Links for the day
Arrested: Albanian Outreachy whistleblowers, Sonny Piers GNOME & Debian connections
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 1/2/2025: LLM Hype Revisited, Linuxwashing by Oumi
Links for the day
Growing Evidence That the Patent Industry Has Become a Major Scam
Seeing that the patent "industry" has turned to serious crimes (sometimes to cover up corruption) and seeing that the net negative is clearer for all to see, people who argue for abolition of all patents will have a field day
Planet Ubuntu Overrun by LLM Slop? Faizul "Piju" 9M2PJU Seems to be Publishing Fake Articles About "Linux"...
Maybe it is "assisted" by LLM slop, but slop is slop and it introduces many problems
Gemini Links 01/02/2025: LLMs, Analog Computer, and BorgBackup
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 31, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, January 31, 2025
Links 31/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft, Sweden Again Fails to Protect Critics of Violence
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux" and More (Latest Roundup Featuring BetaNews, Janus Atienza, and Brittany Day From Guardian Digital, Inc)
LLM slop season
Microsoft Staff Explains How Microsoft Swindled Employees and Avoided Paying Out Severance Pay (Microsoft Hasn't Much Money Left in the Bank)
This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
Links for the day
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
success story for SSGs
Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
We're now better off
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
numbers released hours ago
The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
Credibility cannot be purchased
[Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025