07.20.22
Gemini version available ♊︎Further Suppression of Speech at the EPO Shows That the Current (Recently-Reappointed) Administration Continues to Break the Law
Bribed media gives a delusion/illusion/false impression of calm under corrupt Campinos
When censorship is adopted not to protect anyone but to hide crime.
When you put crazy people in charge of institutions you get crazy institutions and if you bring in criminals they bring some more criminals, begetting institutional crimes and censorship of truth-tellers/whistleblowers/dissent.
Summary: The EPO‘s “f***ing president” (in his own words) António Campinos goes even further than Benoît Battistelli when it comes to gagging staff representatives, albeit the methods vary and are very obviously illegal (not that ILOAT can intervene fast enough; corrupt Campinos exploits the one-decade-long delays, just as staff representatives explained earlier this month)
IN LIGHT of this week's publication about EPO gagging staff representatives in new ways it seems both apt and timely that the Central Staff Committee of the EPO published the following paper this week.
“A growing body is final judgements piles up, but the EPO’s administration is ignoring these judgements (obeying them can be done in minutes, e.g. removing mass-mail restrictions).”“In its recent sessions,” the Central Staff Committee noted, “the ILO-AT has been taking a clear stance on the freedom of association, and how the EPO administration has been implementing it with Social Democrazy 1.0 (CA/D 2/14),” the Central Staff Committee said.
A growing body is final judgements piles up, but the EPO’s administration is ignoring these judgements (obeying them can be done in minutes, e.g. removing mass-mail restrictions).
“The Tribunal quashed the way the administration interferes with Staff Rep elections (Judgment 4482); declared the regulations on strike illegal (Judgments 4330-4335); gave back the access to mass email (Judgment 4551); and lifted the limitations on who the Staff Representation can nominate in the Appeals Committee (Judgment 4550) – all judgments are worth a read.”
Here’s the full publication as HTML (later today as plain text and GemText too):
Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du PersonnelMunich, 14/07/2022
sc22100cp -0.2.1/0.3.2/5.1A moment of self-reflection?
In its recent sessions, the ILO-AT has been taking a clear stance on the freedom of association, and how the EPO administration has been implementing it with Social Democrazy 1.0.
The Tribunal quashed the way the administration interferes with Staff Rep elections1; declared the regulations on strike illegal2; gave back the access to mass email3; and lifted the limitations on who the Staff Representation can nominate in the Appeals Committee4 – all judgments are worth a read. Even the inattentive observer will have spotted a pattern. In the latest Judgment5, the Tribunal formulated that the Appeals Committee reform “stem[s] from a certain lack of understanding of the specific nature of the tasks assigned to members [...] appointed by the Staff Committee”. In plain English, we would dare to say that the Tribunal has been telling the administration to keep their hands off Staff Representation.
We should not forget that all of this Social Democrazy 1.0 was aimed at hindering staff – and its representation – to make a stance against the administration, and that it came before a never-ending series of far-reaching and consistently detrimental reforms which have turned the EPO into an organization many of us do not recognize anymore – and that many of us cannot recommend to anyone anymore.
The health reform stigmatizes our sick and socially weak colleagues; the New Career System started a rat race, killed cooperation and gave the quality curve its evident downward slope, as it turned our career from a merit-based system into a winner-takes-all race; the 5-year contracts have all but dried up the pool where we fish for new colleagues; the education reform was implemented without taking into account site specific needs; the Salary Annihilation Procedure is one of the best implementations of a true lose-lose solution one can think of; the New Ways of Working which could have had great potential, but seems to be heading towards yet another utter failure.
At schools, children are taught to take a moment to self-reflect when they receive their graded assessments: what went well, what could they have done better. Every mishap is a learning opportunity.
We can only hope that also the administration as a whole, and the individuals accountable for these reforms, will take a moment to self-reflect following this series of Judgments.
We expect that they will come to the inevitable conclusion that it might have been a good idea to listen to staff and its representation all along: the fundamental flaws the Tribunal ruled upon, were the ones we had been pointing out to the administration all along.
It is still possible to turn the tide, for the administration to work with staff, rather than against it.
The Central Staff Committee
_______
1 Judgment 4482
2 Judgment 4430 et al.
3 Judgment 4551
4 Judgment 4550
5 Judgment 4550, cons. 14, p. 13
Tomorrow we’ll show that in the midst of these attacks on staff there are also further attacks on the law. The corrupt administration wishes to grant a lot of European software patents — never mind directives, EPC, common sense, national courts and so on — all in the same of propping back up a fast-imploding bubble. █
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