Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Strike Participation Will Help Correct a Corrupt Office Which Harms Science, Weakens Europe's Economy, and Abolishes Human Rights

Video download link | md5sum 2dcda7b17550f714380c2a762aaad77f The Call for EPO Strike Participation Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: EPO staff in all sites (multiple different countries and cities) will be on strike next week, coinciding with the "e-Meeting" of the Administrative Council (warning: epo.org link)

I MYSELF have long antagonised bosses, even at risk to myself. So I'm not being a hypocrite here; I think all EPO staff needs to go on strike next Tuesday. Risky? Maybe. But the more people participate, the lower the collective risk becomes. Show solidarity to your colleagues! Object to corrupt managers.



EPO CalendarAs noted in the video above, I don't expect media to pay any attention, but this coming weekend I'll examine the stock of news and blogs, as usual. I don't suppose many politicians, maybe just the usual few (e.g. in Germany and in Ireland), will bring up the subject. But lots of stakeholders quietly/silently -- sometimes just passively -- pay attention. They wish to get real information and based on that information they can decide what to do. The EPO's Web site has become 100% propaganda because EPO management is well aware of the harm to its reputation. Benoît Battistelli's departure solved nothing and António Campinos is even worse in some ways.

The video above mostly covers or goes through some of the 'pamphlets' motivating or rallying staff to go on strike 5 days from now, showing solidarity by joining colleagues. There's power in numbers and also safety in numbers. They cannot punish the staff when most of the staff refuses to work. Stakeholders do pay attention, even if most of them are too timid to say something in public. Many sympathise fully with the examiners, but at the same time they're afraid of retribution within their workplace (e.g. law firm or legal department of some large company).

It's going to be common to see people online at the EPO with a banner like the one below:

SUEPO strike banner

Tomorrow the staff will be meeting to coordinate action, sadly in a platform that's colluding with EPO management. "More good reasons to follow the Action Plan and to strike on 22 March" were published earlier today, showing the financial rationale [PDF] (there are many reasons other than money). To quote: "On July 2020 the new Salary Adjustment Procedure (SAP) has been implemented. After only 2 years of application of the SAP our salaries and respectively also our pensions have been massively cut. In The Netherlands, our salaries and pensions lost -7.2% of purchasing power only this year! If you don’t agree with losing even more, come and join our actions and strike on 22 March! Come to our get-together in Rijswijk."

A day earlier this caricature got published, reminding workers to slow down a bit and focus on doing things right (as per the EPC).

Why go faster?

There's this publication [PDF] that goes along with it. "The EPO saves money from having less people doing the work of more," it says. "Not even a several-year-long pandemic has slowed down this trend."

This is typical all across the board, not just the EPO. But at the EPO they're increasing fees and saving loads of money. There's no justification for penalising staff and pensioners.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October