EPO: Special Permission Needed to be Ill or Care for the Ill When Issuing Monopolies to Foreign Corporations is a Paramount Priority
It's 'production' 'production' 'production'!
THE role of the EPO was to employ Europeans and serve Europeans by protecting their inventions from copycats. Under Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos, however, the EPO works for China, the US and other countries (Europe is about a third of patent recipients, so "European Patent" is clearly a misnomer) and any consideration for human factors, including basic health, are secondary at most.
The Central Staff Committee has just issued a new publication and told workers:
Dear Colleagues,The staff representation would like to start a series of short information papers to “translate” articles of the Service Regulations to EPO staff.
This first one pager refers to special leave in case of illness or hospitalisation of a family member.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee
We're reproducing the entire new publication, dated yesterday:
Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du PersonnelMunich, 10.07.2024
sc24040cpWhat you should know about special leave
The staff representation would like to start a series of short information papers to “translate” articles of the Service Regulations to EPO staff. This first one pager refers to special leave in case of illness or hospitalisation of a family member.
Dear Colleagues,
The CSC would like to bring to your attention the possibility to request so called special leave, which is covered by Article 59 of the Service Regulations (see also CA/D 9/04 for Article 59(3)).
The special leave is a fully paid absence which is granted for certain events or in certain circum- stances. If the situation requires you to travel during working time, travel days may be granted in addition (between half a day and one day each way depending on the distance or the journey duration). It is recommended to request any special leave as soon as possible, if the underlying reason is known in advance. However, in case of emergency, staff is encouraged to first inform their line manager of their absence and to request annual leave, and then upon their return, to file a request for the respective special leave retroactively.
The exhaustive list of cases covered by special leave can be found on the intranet. In this publication, we would like to focus on the specific case of illness or hospitalisation of a family member, ie a spouse, a relative in the ascending line, a dependent child, a parent, or a parent-in-law. Up to 3 days of special leave can be granted without providing any medical certificate depending on the case. For the hospitalisation of a dependent child aged 12 or under or for a very serious illness of a dependent child, up to 5 days may be granted with the requirement of a medical certificate.
According to the ServRegs, there is no limit to the number of times per year an employee can request a special leave for the sickness of a dependent child. According to HR, there is no guarantee to be granted the special leave in all cases. Article 59(3) ServRegs indeed states that "In addition to annual leave, a permanent employee may, on application, be granted special leave. In the following cases, special leave in terms of working days shall be granted as shown: …" Recently, the ILOAT confirmed the practice of granting special leave in case of illness of a child (see Judgment 4800).
In the past, such special leave requests could directly be addressed with the Medical Adviser. How- ever, since the reorganisation of the Medical Services as of January 2023, this is not any longer possible. Currently, the decision to grant special leave has been delegated to D422, specifically to the HR Interlocutors, who assess the requests and record the absences. According to HR, due to data protection reasons, medical details do not need to be provided when requesting such a special leave, which makes it challenging to evaluate whether an illness qualifies as "serious." In most cases, the evaluation is based on trust.
A high frequency of requests may however prompt further examination. In such cases, HR Interlocutors (HRI) could ask the Occupational Health Services to request additional information to deter- mine the severity of an illness, or HR Business Partners may contact the employee to offer support without seeing any medical details.
We would like to encourage all colleagues whose special leave request has been refused, to contact your local staff representatives, to assist in evaluating the specific case.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee
The world's respected organisations don't impose unnecessary demands - or barely any at all - when it comes to circumstances like these. But in today's EPO the desire to attract suitable talent - i.e. workers whose skills meet the requirements set in the European Patent Convention - is no more. The EPO is just a production line for (deliberately) fake patents. █
