Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Has 'Guidelines on Rewards', But Promotions Are Down Sharply and Potential to Recruit is Very Low (Except Scabs)

Summary: The Central Staff Committee at the EPO has a new publication which reveals dishonesty about the EPO's budget, staff prospects, and so much more

THE OTHER day we mentioned how the EPO crisis had happened and what it looks like from the inside. The short story is, there's brain drain and the EPO can barely recruit. It's barely even trying to. From the looks of it, Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos only sought a 'production line' of monopolies and now they pursue a kangaroo court to blindly accept these monopolies as "valid", in effect bypassing national courts in many countries (that's both illegal and unconstitutional). EPO stakeholders aren't exactly happy about this and they're complaining.



"Lying and mischievous violations of the law have become so routine that nowadays they're simply expected."The 'production line' mindset/mentality impacts European software patents, based on EPO leaks, so something must be done about this.

Examiners are meanwhile warning that the regime keeps lying, typically relying on nice-sounding titles (e.g. "Teams Together") to do ruinous, harmful things. One new example of that is described in a newly-circulated paper from the Central Staff Committee. We're reproducing it in full below (HTML, text, GemText):

Zentraler Personalausschuss Central Staff Committee Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich,20/02/2023 sc23021cp

Reward Exercise 2023

Taking away with the other hand



Dear Colleagues,

In his Communiqué of 14 February 2023, Mr Campinos presented his Guidelines on Rewards 2023 as an improvement. However, in real terms, the number of potential steps and promotions decreases (-8,2%) compared to 2022 and the budget for steps and promotions decreases (-6,4%) compared to the budget approved by the Administrative Council (CA/D 1/22). The focus on bonuses rather than on career progression confirms that management is not willing to invest in EPO staff in the long term. This policy seems unsustainable at a time when production is behind plan, quality has decreased to unbearable levels for our users and the “Bringing Teams Together” project causes staff disengagement. This paper gives more details.

Budget: real decrease of the envelope for steps and promotions

The draft budget1 for 2023 contained an envelope for steps and promotions of EUR 14,690 million. The envelope was then reduced in the final budget2 approved by the Council to EUR 14,380 million. Instead of following the Council’s decision, Mr Campinos has further reduced3 the envelope to EUR 11,700 million.

The table below shows the evolution between the budget approved by the Council and the budget proposed by Mr Campinos:

EPO budget



60% of among eligible staff, but in practice?

____ 1 CA/50/22, p. 168 2 CA/D 1/22, p. 166 3 GCC/DOC 3/2023, p. 6




Two obvious comments come to mind:

Firstly, salaries have been adjusted by +10,8% as of 1 January 2023 to reflect the evolution of the purchasing power and the salaries of national civil servants. Steps and promotions are therefore “more expensive” in the same proportion. However, the envelope for steps and promotions will only increase by 1,7% for 2023. This means, all else unchanged, that about -8.2%4 less steps / promotions can be granted. In contrast, the budget for bonuses has increased very slightly in real terms.

Secondly, when setting the envelope, the Council budget took into account the salary adjustment as well as departures, replacements and recruitments foreseen in 2023 resulting in a calculated increase of +8,6%. In 2022, Mr Campinos had already proposed an envelope significantly below the one approved by the Council. One would expect him to increase his envelope at least by the same percentage as the one decided by the Council. This is however not the case. By increasing his envelope by only +1,7% instead of +8,6% the ratio between the two reveals that Mr Campinos has arbitrarily decreased his envelope by -6,4% compared to the envelope approved by the Council.

Quota: 60% among eligible staff

Steps or promotions are available for up to 60% of eligible staff, which remains the lowest level since the introduction of the New Career System in 2015. As explained below the effect is that, in absolute numbers, fewer and fewer colleagues are receiving a step or promotion and thus fewer and fewer colleagues are progressing in their career.

To justify his policy, Mr Campinos still dares to refer to5 the baseline scenario of the Financial Study 2019 corresponding to granting a pensionable reward to 60% of eligible staff. Management should refrain from referring to a study which has now proven undeniably fundamentally wrong as it predicts deflation6 instead of inflation. It is also questionable whether the 60% can even be reached in view of the President’s cut in the envelope.

After eight reward exercises, the demotivating aspects of the New Career System have also become obvious:

Staff in service on 31.12.2022 and still in service on 01.07.2023 may be considered for steps or promotion, provided that they are not yet in the last step of the highest grade of the respective job group or “off-scale”. (section II, 1. 2)


The number of staff members who have reached the last step (G9(5) for JG6, G10(5) for JG5 and G13(5) for JG4) has increased and they are now deprived of any pensionable reward. This could create some possibility of granting more pensionable rewards to the younger colleagues if the envelope as approved by the Council were used. However, the rigid 60%-quota combined with the arbitrary decrease of the envelope prevents this. The reward exercise is more of a budget-based and quota-based exercise than a merit-based one.

_____________ 4 100%-(101,7%/110,8%) 5 GCC/DOC 3/2023, p. 6 6 CA/83/19, p. 20




Calibration

At a time when production is a matter of concern for management, a new amendment is made:

The pensionable and non-pensionable envelopes are initially distributed to the DGs on the basis of the demographic structure (number and grading of staff). Each VP may then calibrate them within the DG considering unit performance and collaborative achievements. However, no transfer of the different amounts between the different envelopes is allowed. (section I, par. 3)


This new amendment now formalises the practice of arbitrarily reducing the percentage for the teams considered less productive without duly considering the specificities of their work. A COO, a PD or a VP may further reduce the percentage to show that he or she is acting more “sustainably” than other managers.

Conclusion

In his Christmas speech of 12 December 2022, Mr Campinos stated that the salary method is now delivering on an initial promise with a significant “pay rise”. However, in real terms, his envelope for steps and promotions now presumably allows for -8,2% less pensionable rewards and decreases by -6,4%. This gives the feeling that what Mr Campinos had to (reluctantly) give with one hand, he is now taking with the other.

Indeed, the Financial Study 2019 wrongly predicted deflation and limited salary adjustments to Eurozone inflation + 0,2% in the hope this cap would remain low. It was however not the case due to historically high inflation. The new salary adjustment procedure led after three years to a cumulative result similar to the previous procedure. Management is now trying to “repair” what it sees as a mistake with a real decrease in the envelope for steps and promotions.

Salary adjustment and rewards serve different purposes: the former is meant to maintain the purchasing power and parallelism with national civil servants, the latter are meant to reward staff’s performance in the previous year based on merit. The policy of the administration appears to link both with purely financial considerations.

Staffing levels are already too low, production is behind7 plan, quality has decreased 8 to unbearable levels for our colleagues and for users, and the “Bringing Teams Together” project is further disengaging staff. How does the management intend to motivate staff, if they only propose more of the same?

The Central Staff Committee

_____ 7 DG1 Beats - January 2023 8 “Concerns about deteriorating patent quality at the EPO”; Kluwer Patent Blog, 11 February 2023 https://patentblog.kluweriplaw.com/2023/02/11/concerns-about-deteriorating-patent-quality-at-the-epo/


As the above helps show, nothing that the EPO's management says can be trusted. Lying and mischievous violations of the law have become so routine that nowadays they're simply expected. There's no oversight, only complicity from the outside.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
 
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Google: Your Only Option is Google YouTube (Coming Soon: Mandatory DRM and Attestation?)
Digital Restrictions (DRM) to follow? Only for "approved" (attestation) browsers?
Mastodon Was Always Biased (Just Like Twitter After Abandoning Chronological and Neutral Timelines in Order to Become More Like Facebook)
So bury-brigading and click-farming control what people see
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Falls to Only 0.4% of the Total in Geminispace
Geminispace does not need to outsource trust
The Munich-Based EPO is Still Using a Platform That Promotes the Far Right and Rehabilitates Nazism
Active Twitter account
Links 29/01/2025: Dismantling Public Health in the US, Air Busan Plane Up in Flames (South Korea's Air Disasters Streak)
Links for the day
Announcements and Administrivia
This week we're going out for two days in a row to celebrate an achievement that's very respectable
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Japan, GTD, and More
Links for the day
Sir, Yes, Sir. The Life of EPO Patent Examiners.
If working for the EPO makes it harder to sleep at night, take action
How the EPO Pressures Staff Into Minting More Monopolies (Patents), Even Illegal Ones That Harm Europe and Ultimately Dismantle the Rule of Law
insights into the pressure examiners are under
LLM Slop Machines Are Not a Win for "Open Source" and If They Get Cheaper, It's Even Worse
If some program that claims to be "Open Source" pollutes the Web with fake articles (Microsoft SPAM and fake "Linux" articles), whose win is it?
Links 29/01/2025: Data Privacy Day and Growing Tensions in Europe
Links for the day
Nazi Twitter (aka "X") Became a Troll Site That Lets People Buy a Blue Tick While Its Boss Actively Promotes Neonazi Politicians
the intellectual level of people who infest the Web through "Twitter" or "X"
This is Why They're So Afraid of Richard Stallman (He Tells People the Correct History)
Then they post about it to Microsoft's LinkedIn
Richard Stallman Speech in Bengaluru, "Silicon Valley of India"
62 years have passed since his "young nerd" days and he's still at it
Claim: Facebook Deletes Posts of IBM Red Hat Critics
As always, follow the money (advertisers)
Links 29/01/2025: Climate Crisis and "It’s time for the Xbox to fade away" (Microsoft Lose)
Links for the day
Links 29/01/2025: Buying Groceries During a Trade War, Political 'Retro'
Links for the day
More Illegal Patents at the EPO, Legality of Granted European Patents No Longer Matters to the Office
breaking the law for profit
Network Improvements Tomorrow
"Network maintenance" down in London
Sharing is Caring (But Advocating Copyleft Makes You a "Target")
GPLv3 does not close all the loopholes which the "Affero" helps close
Articles About Free Speech at Facebook
'Facebook vs Linux' story is now receiving a lot more media coverage
We Were Right About stallmansupport.org Making an Error by Joining Social Control Media. mastodon.social Suspends stallmansupport.org.
From what we can guess, accounts can be banned by some oversensitive admin or a mob of users ("bury brigades")
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews Still LLM Slop and SPAM Composed by LLMs (It's Basically a Spamfarm Disguised as a News Site)
Only a fool would visit BetaNews in search of actual news
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 28, 2025
The EPO's Corruption, If It Remains Untackled, Helps the Far Right and Enemies of European Unity/Solidarity
Do not negotiate with evil
The Web, Including Wikipedia, Gets Filled With Lies About Bill Gates, Added by Bill Gates and His PR Team
Of course Wikipedia is funded by Gates
Facebook Banning Linux Sites (or People Who Link to Linux Sites) is Another Symptom of the Web's Demise
The state of media on the Web is really bad; Social Control Media amplifies the badness, as Facebook serves to show
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Neovim Telescope and Writing Less
Links for the day
Links 28/01/2025: Chaffbot as Commodity Fad, New Import Restrictions in Thailand
Links for the day
Links 28/01/2025: "Against Social [Control] Media", "Smart" Buses' Ticketing System Cracked
Links for the day
[Video] Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) in India, Talking About Proprietary Software's Dangers Only Yesterday
WebM file
Gemini Links 28/01/2025: Thinking About Not Much, Computing Fatigue, the Curse of JavaScript
Links for the day
"SuccessFactors" (SAP) Stunts at the EPO Used to Break Laws and Constitutions, Staff Tricked Into Harming Themselves
Ongoing corruption and lawlessness became the norm; Europe's second-largest institution (EPO) along with the largest institution (EU) has its very own Minsk
The GNU Manifesto Turns 40 in a Few Weeks
The FSF turns 40 later this year, too
Continued Support and Momentum at the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
"This helps protect our community."
Another Talk by Richard Stallman Tomorrow, This Time in Bengaluru
This means that in January 2025 he is giving at least 5 public talks
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, January 27, 2025