The EPO is Boiling the Staff, According to the Central Staff Committee
This was initially sold as "convenience" or "work from home", but now they're gutting everything
THE EPO's Central Staff Committee has just circulated a new publication about New Ways of Working [1, 2], which we made some memes to explain, e.g. [1, 2].
"Dear Colleagues," the Central Staff Committee wrote. "Many staff have expressed their desire to at least maintain the teleworking conditions as they are, and this is what the Staff Representation has strived to achieve. However, the administration now disregards this minimum expectation by increasing the number of required on-site days for the majority of our colleagues working part-time."
This is a classic "boiling frog" scenario. Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos have been boiling the frog for over a decade already. Being French, perhaps they think of that as cuisine. Cook the workers.
"This paper analyses the situation," the authors say. Today we reproduce it as plain text, HTML, and GemText:
Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du PersonnelMunich, 04.06.2024
sc24032cpNew Ways of Working
Planned increase of minimum on-site presence
for majority of part-time staffMany staff have expressed1 their desire to at least maintain the teleworking conditions as they are, and this is what the Staff Representation has strived to achieve. However, the administration now disregards this minimum expectation by increasing the number of required on-site days for the majority of our colleagues working part- time. This paper analyses the situation.
How the minimum on-site presence is currently calculated
Currently, the minimum on-site presence is reduced to 20 days where at least 125 days of yearly absence is taken (Circular No. 419, Article 4(3)). Because of the high number of absence days required to reach this provision, this was only applied to a few colleagues.A more common provision is when a colleague is working part-time (13% of all staff2) or has reduced daily working hours due to sickness. For those colleagues, the minimum on-site presence is reduced pro-rata (Circular No. 419, Article 4(2)). However, when a colleague is on full-time sick leave, no reduction is applied. This difference of treatment for different types of sick leave was raised to the Office as an item that could be improved, in addition we requested to include the pro-rata calculation to all kinds of leave (e.g. maternity leave, adoption leave, parental leave, unpaid leave, etc.) and for staff recruited mid-year3. The staff representatives proposed a simple, uniform solution of a true pro-rata reduction of minimum on-site presence4.
How the administration proposes to calculate minimum on-site presence in the future
Instead of taking into account the simple and pragmatic changes proposed by the staff representation to bring uniformity and equality to the minimum on-site presence calculation, the administration proposes in GCC/DOC 4/2024 a new threshold system, shown in the table below. The administration imply in their intranet announcement that many colleagues will benefit from the new system, with some being disadvantaged._____
1 “EPO Staff Survey 2024: Engagement in the New Ways of Working”, results from Willis Towers Watson, April 2024
2 “Social Report 2022”, page 46/78
3 “Report on the first and second technical meetings on New Ways of Working“, CSC paper of 23-04-2024, page 2 (sc24024cp)
4 “Report on the third and fourth technical meetings on New Ways of Working“, CSC paper of 16-05-2024, page 3 (sc24028cp)
Active working days in the new Article 4(2) of GCC/DOC 4/2024 are defined as each working day during the normal working week, as defined in the Guidelines on arrangements for working hours, an employee performs their duties, regardless of the number of hours worked that day.
The first threshold is at 140 “active working days”. Assuming 210 working days in the year, 140 working days amounts to working for only two thirds of the year, which is an incredibly low threshold to reach, making it useless for the majority of staff. In particular, staff with part- time percentages of 67–99% (most commonly 70%, 80% or 90%), which amount to approximately 84%5 of the staff working part-time, are essentially excluded from any reduction, removing the pro-rata reduction they currently benefit from. The change can be seen in the table below.
Yet another deterioration in the treatment of part-time staff
Unfortunately, this targeting of part-time staff comes as no surprise, but is very disappointing. Staff working part-time, which is a necessity for those with caring responsibilities, including mostly women6, and those with chronic health concerns due to age or otherwise, have come under attack in many ways. The Office has been putting pressure on them to return to full- time work7 to address their own self-inflicted issue with a lack of capacity, completely disregarding the well-studied research that access to part-time work is a key factor in improving women’s participation in the workplace. But at least we’ve now got the purple logo8 to make up for it.Those working part-time are also continuously under-rewarded9 in the annual reward exercise, despite the spotlight put on the issue by Staff Representation. And now the part-
_____________
5 “Social Report 2022”, page 47/78
6 “Share of women working part-time higher than men“, Article of Eurostat, 03-03-2023
7 “Capacity push for 2024: More work for less staff“, CSC paper of 15-02-2024 (sc24012cp)
8 “Reflecting our commitment to society“, Intranet Communiqué of 06-03-2023
9 “Celebrate International Women’s Day with us!“, CSC paper of 08-03-2024 (sc24018cp)
time staff face having some of their NWoW flexibility, in terms of teleworking from home, taken away.
We therefore urge the administration to reconsider this proposal, and to revert to a true pro-rata approach.
The Central Staff Committee
This "NWoW" sham is yet another example of the attacks on workers across Europe. We started writing a lot more about this over the past half a decade, more so due to lock-downs. █