Bonum Certa Men Certa

Insufficient Time for Staff of the European Patent Office to Comment on Managers' Proposals

Video download link | md5sum 53f6cca0b5bbd52cf2438aa6e6dd0036 Cooking Disastrous EPO Policies Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: The rogue management at Europe's second-largest institution is not tolerating dissent; it does not listen or does not facilitate input from staff that does all the actual work (except a token or a box-ticking exercise to give the mere illusion of participation by staff)

The Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the EPO is once again complaining about António Campinos, 'brainchild' of Benoît Battistelli, who literally referred to himself as "the f***ing president".



Here's the latest communication with staff.

Zentraler Personalausschuss Central Staff Committee Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 16/12/2022

sc22148cp

Report on the GCC meeting of 22 November 2022

Dear Colleagues,

There were fourteen (!) documents on the official agenda. Of particular impact on staff were the documents on:

● Adjustment with effect from 1 January 2023 of salaries and other elements of the remuneration of employees of the EPO and of pensions paid by the Office (CA/74/22; GCC/DOC 19/2022); ● Adjustments to the health services (CA/85/22; GCC/DOC 27/2022), which we requested to withdraw, in vain; ● Flexibilisation of parental leave (CA/87/22) & amendments to Circular 22 (GCC/DOC 28/2022); ● Adjustment in medical coverage for children beyond 18 years (CA/92/22; GCC/DOC 29/2022).

The President had scheduled two hours (!) for the meeting. He agreed to our request for additional time. The meeting lasted about 3,5 hours, which was too short, as usual.

For the second time, the President was absent and delegated the chairmanship to Vice-President DG5. He announced that he would personally chair the next GCC meeting on 16 December 2022.

We provided the President and the GCC members with a written and reasoned opinion on all documents submitted (see annexes).

The Central Staff Committee


The full publication is available in the "Report on the GCC meeting of 22 November 2022" [PDF] and it is discussed in the video above. It is very long (nearly 50 pages).

Recent Techrights' Posts

The UEFI 9/11 - Part VII - This Coming Week Many PCs Will Refuse to Boot "Linux" (Because of Microsoft's Expired Certificate)
The real solution is, disable "secure boot" or "SecureBoot" while it's still possible. [...] Just like submarine patents, a lot of this problem was "hibernating" for a while
The Thing Nobody in Red Hat Wants to Talk About Openly
There is a real sentiment or worry among Red Hatters, Europeans and Americans in particulars (because of higher salary expectations)
Slopwatch: Small Parade of Fake News About "Linux" and Scams Borrowing the Name (or Word) "Linux"
In practice, LLMs are a risk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 05, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 05, 2025
Genini Links 05/09/2025: Community, ROOPHLOCH, and PITkit
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Vaccine Sceptics Poison the Well, Two Exploited Vulnerabilities Patched in Android
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News