The European Patent Office (EPO) Holds a Public Demonstration Tomorrow and It'll be Live-streamed
As noted last night, tomorrow at around midday there will be a demonstration at the EPO, followed by at least eight strikes, 2 this month, 6+ more next month. The next strike is scheduled for Thursday and those strikes have high participation rates (the equivalent of about 50 full classrooms).
The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences (years or experience, competitive salaries). Instead the examiners are turned into 'Locums' who can barely make ends meet and cannot afford to - or only barely so (with discounts) - join a union (forming one would be pointless because SUEPO is already large and eminent).
For those who don't know, here in the UK "Locums" are part of 1) privatisation of the NHS and 2) the trend of taking away the rights of workers (sick leave, holiday pay, pension/s etc.) because it's a race to the bottom and it's meant to benefit private firms with quasi-contractors controlled by "apps", perpetually living at the edge of uncertainty/misery.
At the EPO, they call them "YPs" these days. Don't be misled. They're not bad people, they're just desperate people used by bad people. It's ruthless system that grinds people down to a pulp, using unfair competition to erode the rights and salaries of all workers. With Locums, the service tends to get worse (lack of familiarity with facilities, colleagues and so on). With YPs, a lack of experience and poor familiarity with past patents means that many new European Patents will be wrongly granted. That's good for people who profit from abundant, frivolous patent litigation. But at whose expense?
Remember: Locums or YPs aren't the enemies, but those who control (or exploit) them are. So we need more protests, strikes etc. The status quo must be disrupted for things to improve in meaningful ways. █