Bonum Certa Men Certa

More Broken Promises as EPO Management Pretends That the Office is Poor (While Looting Its Treasury for Personal Gain)

Video download link



Summary: The big scandal that the media and even the Commission still turn a blind eye to sees the workers of the EPO (even former workers or pensioners) robbed by EPO management, which abuses its granting authority to hoard money and then gamble with that money; staff isn't amused

Earlier this week we mentioned the impact on parents [1, 2] who had chosen to work for Europe's largest patent office. Some of them had to take their entire family abroad for this career path. This is no small potatoes. Many family members are affected, not just working parents.



"If the EPO cannot assure basic labour rights, and if amid all this there's also a financial scandal going on (an office pretending to be poor when it fact it is being robbed), what hope is there for the rest of Europe's workers?"Using COVID-19 as a pretext, never mind if the policies have nothing whatsoever to do with public health, various employers crack down on staff's rights. One might expect that the world's public or international institutions would keep up with higher standards than that. But no...

MoneyThe Central Staff Committee of the EPO wrote about "Education and Childcare reform" some time yesterday when it circulated the document above. "Report on the fifth (and last?) meeting of the Working Group," it said, noting that there are signs that António Campinos is shutting off even the pretense of dialogue (he's worse than Benoît Battistelli in many regards, as the union routinely notes). "On 4 February, the fifth (and last?) meeting of the Working Group on Education & Childcare allowances took place between the administration and staff representation," they write. There's then a breakdown of what was discussed:

The following main items were discussed:

- The date of entry into force of the reform. On 18.12.2020 we sent a letter - still unanswered – asking for clarification of the apparent contradiction between announcements of 30.07.2020 and 07.12.2020. In the meeting, the administration made it clear that the reform would enter into force on 1 July 2021 and be implemented for the school year 2021-2022.

- Revised ceilings for Berlin and Vienna (€15.621 and €17.753 for primary and secondary school respectively).

- The fact that the proposed reform is not cost-neutral but that it would lead to considerable savings for the Office.

- The fact that only siblings aged 3-4 are included in the transitional measures.

- The proposal of the administration for the childcare allowance, with a lumpsum of €346 per child and a top-up sum up to €575 per child on condition that the child attends a childcare facility, with no site-specific solutions.


"The administration has cancelled the next meeting of the Working Group," they note, which is why they insist this might be the last such meeting (more like a webchat at this point; they don't meet face to face). They recently complained about the mass cancellation of meetings, which no longer necessitate even travel or other such logistics. Here's the full document, which was circulated yesterday:

Zentraler Personalausschuss Central Staff Committee Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich – 15.02.2021 sc21016cp- 0.2.1/4.2.2

Report on the fifth meeting of the Working Group on Education & Childcare allowances

Dear colleagues,

On 4 February, the fifth meeting of the Working Group on Education & Childcare allowances took place between the administration and staff representation.

The first item in the agenda was the date of entry into force of the reform. On 18.12.2020 we sent a letter - still unanswered – asking for clarification of the apparent contradiction between the announcements of 30.07.2020 and 07.12.2020.

In his communiqué of 30.07.2020 the President had assured “a smooth and gradual transition”, anticipating that “measures related to school children will be implemented for the school year 2022-2023”. However, at the meeting the administration made it clear that the reform would be presented to the AC of June and that, contrary to the July 2020 announcement, it would enter into force on 1 July 2021 and be implemented for the school year 2021-2022. The transitional measures should therefore apply to children who were already enrolled in school on 1 July 2021.

The second item in the agenda was the special situation of Berlin and Vienna. The administration presented a proposal with revised ceilings for these sites (€15.621 and €17.753 for primary and secondary school respectively).

Thirdly, we discussed the demographic data of the children we had received from the administration on 25 January. With these data we could calculate the costs relying on the age pyramid. We were then able to show how the proposed reform is not cost-neutral but that it would indeed lead to considerable savings for the Office.

We also warned them of the legal consequences of abolishing the principle of equal treatment of distinct groups presently guaranteed in the Service Regulations.

Next, the administration presented a series of new budgetary scenarios in their transitional measures for the inclusion of siblings, the scenarios differing according to age thresholds of the siblings. So far, only siblings aged 3-4 are included in their transitional measures.

The last item concerned the childcare allowance. The administration presented the latest revision of their proposal, namely a lumpsum of €346 per child on condition that the child do not use childcare facilities, and a top-up sum up to €575 per child on condition that the child attends a childcare facility. They did not propose any site-specific solutions.

Once again, the administration refused to negotiate the terms of the reform.

The next meeting of the Working Group should have taken place on 15 February. However, the administration has just cancelled the meeting1 and asked us to give our comments in writing on only three items, namely the childcare allowance, the education allowance for Berlin/Vienna and the transitional measures for siblings.

We will keep you informed.

Your Central Staff Committee

____ 1 We have asked the President for reasons: see our publication “Social dialogue: meetings cancelled”.


If the EPO cannot assure basic labour rights, and if amid all this there's also a financial scandal going on (an office pretending to be poor when it fact it is being robbed), what hope is there for the rest of Europe's workers?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
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 or says can be trusted
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
 
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
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
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
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