Summary: Strike action at the EPO is imminent despite attempts to ban strikes and new efforts to suppress/prevent them from taking place

We recently posted images with information about the strike which is planned for later in the month. Someone has done OCR of the "call for strike" documents. Here is the first one:

Notification of a strike vote

The Office has been notified of a call for a strike on 10 February 2016 signed by 754 staff members in accordance with the Service Regulations, in particular Article 30a, and Circular No. 347, the Office will now organise the required secret ballot to determine whether the strike can start.

The call for strike may be consulted by following this link.

The list of signatories may be consulted through the Supervisory Committee, which will comprise the following four members of staff:

Designated by the President

Ms N. Lefèvre Mr L. DeKock

Designated by the Central Staff Committee

Mr. S. Écolivet Mr. A. Wansing

Voting is open to all staff in active service¹ on 8 March 2016.

The list of voters may be consulted by following this link.

Voting will be conducted online and will take place on 8 March until 17:00 on that day. Further background information on the voting process can be found by following this link.

Employees who are entitled to vote will receive an invitation by e-mail on the morning of 8 March 2016.

Employees who are entitled to vote but are unable to do so in person have the option of voting by proxy through another voter at their site. In order to do so, send an e-mail to ballot@epo.org before 17:00 on 3 March 2016 giving the name of the employee who is to vote on your behalf.

Proxy holders will receive an additional e-mail invitation to exercise their proxy vote.

Each proxy holder may hold a single proxy only. If a proxy holder is identified as holding more than one proxy then only the first proxy received will be accepted. All further proxies held by that proxy holder will be disregarded. You should therefore make sure that your chosen proxy holder is not acting as a proxy for anyone else.

The vote is organised by the Office and will be managed by a Vote Manager reachable at ballot@epo.org

Élodie Bergot PD Human Resources ____________ ¹ Staff on full time parental or family leave, secondment or unpaid leave on the day of the vote are not on active service and do not appear in the list of voters.

Here is the second document:

Call for strike in accordance with Circular 347 "Lawfulness at the EPO"

The undersigned, noting:

● the dismissal of two elected staff representatives on 15 January 2016 and the severe downgrading of a third ● their lack of confidence that the procedure conducted against these colleagues complied with sound European legal principles based on Human Rights ● the sustained deterioration of the legal framework under which EPO staff work since the current President took office

request:

● the immediate suspension of the disciplinary measures against the three staff representatives ● a truly independent review of the cases against the staff representatives by a body that enjoys the full trust of both the management and the staff of the EPO ● the revocation of all recent changes to the Service Regulations and their implementing texts concerning the legal framework, Including:

    ● Social Democracy     ● Strike regulations     ● Internal Appeals Reform     ● Health and sick-leave regulations     ● Investigation guidelines     ● Reform on invalidity

● the Initiation of open and fair negotiations between management and staff representatives, led by an internationally recognised mediator/conciliator

For the above reasons, the undersigned call for the organisation of a ballot among all staff at the EPO on the question of a single day of office-wide strike during the month of March 2016. The contact person representing the undersigned is:

Rechtsanwalt Tobias Kirchgessner, Pettenkoferstraße 37, 80336 Munchen.

We shall publish some new material in the morning. ⬆