63-Page Response to the EPO's Effort to Decrease the Salaries of Workers While EPO Management Snorts Cocaine for 20,000 Euros a Month
Last week: Is the Second-Largest Institution in Europe (EPO) Gradually Becoming More Like a Sweatshop?
Earlier this week EPO staff representatives circulated a response to salary reductions (de facto reductions) by António Campinos et al. The message sent to staff by the Central Staff Committee said:
Salary adjustment for 2025 as of January 2026
Our comments on the proposed adjustment and lump-sum submitted to the GCC
Dear Colleagues,
The President has tabled in the General Consultative Committee (GCC) meeting of 17 November a document on “Adjustment with effect from 1 January 2026 of salaries and other elements of the remuneration”.
The consultation was substandard. PD4.3 tried to explain the calculations in a presentation made in a technical meeting on 13 October but refused to provide a copy of the slides. It is only after protesting to the Social Dialogue unit that the staff representation could get a black and white copy of the slides with the watermark “CONFIDENTIAL” making them hardly readable.
This year, the calculations contain several issues. First, the Office makes an inconsistent application of its own rules when calculating the adjustment per site and contradicts the explanations made in the Council documents. Second, the purchasing power parities are not respected and hence the outcome causes unequal treatment among sites. Third, the calculation of the periodical settlement lump-sum from the redistribution pool is not consistent with the explanations made by the Advisory Group on Remuneration in 2022 and results in lower amounts than the ones statutorily due to staff. Finally, pensioners will remain deprived of any compensation with a periodical settlement lump-sum despite a unanimous opinion of the Appeals Committee considering their exclusion as being unlawful and violating Article 33(2)(c) of the EPC.
"Read more in these written comments we sent to the members of the GCC," they said, passing around this lengthy document with graphs and tables:
This will be discussed in an online gathering 2.5 days from now.
It seems ridiculous that management that does illegal things to be stoned while breaking the patent laws has the audacity to crush examiners who do all the actual work. █