[Video] EPO's "Heart of Staff Rep" Has a Heartless New Rant
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Selling Out the Staff
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
THE sarcasm herein merits careful attention. The wordplay is just for fun. But this article is absolutely serious. The video includes tone and body language, which reduces the chance of misunderstandings.
A few days ago [1, 2] and back in January we wrote about what seemed like a splinter group (we saw some before [1 2]) called "Heart of Staff Rep" at the EPO because EPO staff had become aware that - much like Benoît Battistelli crushed staff representatives (illegally, according to several ILOAT rulings) - there's the possibility António Campinos et al will do the same, based on some complaint from a small group of people. The video above recalls the "sniper" and "nazi" remarks/smears/straw men; the crackdown on staff representatives has always been spun as a matter of "protecting" people (if as there was some potent physical threat).
Tactlessly (in my humble opinion), the "Heart of Staff Rep" folks decided to simply attack the messenger (hi!) and issue this letter that uses insults, as discussed in my video (mostly ruined halfway through due to us losing the Internet connection in the entire house*). I am reproducing the whole publication - with disparaging language included - below:
The Hague, 4 April 2024The Heart of Staff Rep"
with Staff at Heart
The state of silence of the CSC
Dear CSC Chair,
Dear Derek,We refer to our letters from 20.09.2023 and 01.11.2023 requesting an internal inquiry concerning the events taken place on the 31 of August and the 7 of September, in the weekly meeting of the Central Staff Committee, which gave rise to a presumption of the existence of misconduct. These two letters where address exclusively to the chair of the Central Staff Committee (CSC), who certainly and within his duties distributed them to the 20 CSC members.
To our request “to open an internal inquiry” the CSC replied on the 3.11.2023 that the “CSC regrets that you have perceived the debate as defamatory, as a personal attack and as mobbing”. The CSC failed again to address the question of law, i.e. whether or not Vienna can appoint a person from another site, and second, if this invitation can be accepted by this other person. The vacuity of the CSC reply demonstrates that no inquiry has taken place, which brings us to the obvious conclusion that the CSC does not know how or is unable to self-regulate its powers, falling into the authority trap of excusing discretionary decisions. The same, or even worse, behaviour the CSC accuses management.
On the 16 of January 2024, we members of The Heart of Staff Rep (TH-SR) were alerted to a publication in Techrights https://techrights.org/n/2024/01/16/Video_The_Heart_of_Staff_Rep_at_the_EPO_Threaten s_to_Snitch_to_.shtml, where our letters and pictures were published. The author wrote an article drawing the opposite conclusions from the published letters, in a fallacious reasoning, and spent half an hour in a baffled video. No wonder that even the blogger knucklehead couldn’t figure out how to deliver the ordered services with the supplied contradicting evidence. In this publication the author(s) give wings to the vile defamation, in the attempt to set TH-SR aside through a personality assassination.
Considering that the letters were delivered and entrusted only to the CSC chair, it is certain that the leak comes from within the members of the Staff Representation, under your responsibility.
Yet, more than two months have passed from this external publication without any contact from the responsible chair of the CSC, offering support or a justification or an excuse for the wrong doings of fellow Staff Representatives. It comes as a basic duty of a chair to take responsibility, even not being directly responsible for an action, for the group she/he represents.
We recall that the CSC distanced itself from Techrights when the blog was attacking EPO managers and, obviously, we would have expected at least the same reaction as the blog is attacking staff representatives.
The silence from the CSC endorses the abject actions of the involved Staff Representatives. Not condemning publicly, the Techrights article is actually the act of taking part of the offence and offenders. In particular, it conveys that slander and libel is acceptable, instead of debate and reasoning. It appears that for the CSC, “the ends justify the means”, having no remorse in using the weapons of the cowards.
To conclude, it is our conviction that for the last 6 years of our lives we have served the Staff Representation with dedication, commitment, credibility and passion. We are one of the few who developed projects with positive outcomes, with real benefit gains for the EPO employees, which are possibly the reasons for us being excluded and persecuted by the Staff Rep status quo. The exclusion could come as a deterrent for the mediocre, however for us it is a confirmation that we are working in the right direction and so we will.
With best regards,
Alexandra
aforjaz@epo.orgCláudia
clopes@epo.orgJorge
jraposo@epo.orgThe Staff Representatives of the group The Heart of Staff Rep
CC: CSC and centralstcom
If there is some missing information, they can contact me and fill the gaps. Either way, at the moment it looks like they work against the "village" rather than for it. At least this is the perception or the sentiment inside the Office (among colleagues).
They are completely failing to point out what I was wrong about (any specific error). Maybe I will respond to them or follow up if they send me more/missing information. I'm all ears. They never contacted me. And when time is available for another batch of videos, maybe I can do a video to correct what I said that was wrong. If I don't hear from them, I'll be led to assume they just don't like what I said, and not because it was patently false. █
________
* For the second time in months it looks like there was a widespread UK Internet event around 5AM today, resulting in downtimes across cities. If that's due to some state-sponsored attack/s, then the media will probably be advised to not even mention it. The "attack" or "incident" or whatever lasted more than a few minutes. "Some UK sites are still sluggish / unavailable," a friend told me not too long ago. We don't have storms today, so it could be a cyberattack on Internet infrastructure. It ruined part of the video above because my mouse and keyboard depend on the LAN (for Barrier to work).