European Patent Office Wants Staff to Work More Hours, for No Increase in Pay, and Abandon Families (E.g. Children, Elderly People, Disabled Family Members)
A COUPLE of months ago António Campinos was contacted by the EPO's Central Staff Committee, asserting that Benoît Battistelli's legacy of 5-year contracts was extremely harmful to families. "In this open letter to the President," the Committee noted, "we urge the President to instruct managers in the Office to put an end to these harmful practices."
Those practices are not limited to the 5-year contracts. There's a mention of "parental leave and family leave, which allows staff to care for both their children and their elderly relatives."
Also, to quote: "The most fragile population of the Office, e.g., parents, sons and daughters of elderly parents, colleagues with other caring responsibilities, sick staff and colleagues employed under five-year contracts, will be severely affected by this request for increased capacity."
Some need to look after disabled people. The EPO only pretends to care about such people (ticking a box in the DEI toolset). Here is the full publication or the open letter, citing this long report that peddles the EPOTIF scam.
European Patent Office
80298 Munich
GermanyCentral Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss
centralSTCOM@epo.orgReference: sc23133cl
Date: 10/11/2023
European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY
Mr António Campinos
President of the EPOISAR - R.1081
By email: president@epo.org
Increase in capacity for 2024
Dear Mr President,
In one of its past intranet publications1, the administration stated that:
“The Office strives to provide comprehensive health support for all colleagues, coupled with an attractive, family-friendly benefits package. To help staff to reconcile their work and family responsibilities, the Office will make our parental leave scheme more flexible as of 1 January 2023. In practice, that means the minimum duration of parental leave is now reduced to seven calendar days.”
These promises are however not reflected in the more recent announcements made in directorate and team meetings. Higher production targets for 2024 are now set by an increase of capacity. In practice, in directorate and team meetings, staff are discouraged from taking parental leave, family leave, or part-time, and part-timers are asked to increase their working time.
To justify this additional burden put on staff, the administration argues that the “New Ways of Working” have brought a flexibility that equals or even surpasses the advantages of the parental leave, family leave, and part-time. This new practice was announced in the Financial Study 20232:
“Achieving the productivity increase of 2.1% p.a. in the PGP (measured by products per FTE) is an Office wide effort that everyone will have to contribute to, e.g., by developing and providing state-of-the-art technological infrastructure and tools, fostering operational excellence across all DGs and fully leveraging flexibility through new ways of working.”
________
1 Family-friendly health and parental care benefits, 15-12-2022
2 Financial Study 2023, Oliver Wyman and Mercer, CA/68/23, page 99/145
Most staff, both nationals and expatriates, do not have the support of a family living close by. It is thus of the utmost importance that the colleagues who elect to work part-time3 receive the support of their management to reach an adequate work-life balance. The same reasoning applies to parental leave and family leave, which allows staff to care for both their children and their elderly relatives.
The most fragile population of the Office, e.g., parents, sons and daughters of elderly parents, colleagues with other caring responsibilities, sick staff and colleagues employed under five-year contracts, will be severely affected by this request for increased capacity.
Since 2018, a constant decrease in headcount has been observed, leading to 8% fewer staff by the end of 20224 (excluding young professionals and Pan-European Seals). This is the result of a low replacement rate for leaving staff and a recruitment freeze during the pandemic. The approach of a reduction in staff is one that is intended to continue under the current administration. Estimates foresee a replacement rate for examiners of 80%, no replacement at all for formalities officers, and a maximum of 50% for other areas of the Office5.
The Office will therefore have a reduced SEO capacity for the coming years, which however should not be compensated for by measures contrary to the principles of Diversity and Inclusion, and work-life balance. This lack of capacity should have been anticipated by a more precise planning with sufficient recruitment over the last years.
The “cautious” approach in recruitment, followed by the Office since 2018, should not impair the well-being of staff and should not limit the replacement of the foreseen more than 2 700 staff leaving over the next 10 years, including more than 1 500 examiners.6 Even though, we are happy to see that recruitment has started again, we note that the notably higher number of staff hired in 2022 is driven by the young professionals7. This is however not sufficient, especially since these colleagues are trainees on one-year contracts, extendable to three years, and are not necessarily expected to remain at the Office after their training.
We are therefore seeing a build-up of pressure on understaffed teams with no immediate prospect of improvement. There are clear signals that high production is now the overarching priority, and this is likely to increase the burnout rate which has already been alarmingly high in the EPO.8
The well-being of staff being part of the Office’s duty of care, we urge you, Mr President, to instruct managers in the Office to put an end to these harmful practices. The CSC is of course available in case you and your administration would like to start the discussion on this topic.
Yours sincerely,
Derek Kelly
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee_____
3 ServRegs, Circular No. 34
4 Social Report 2018, CA/55/19 and Social Report 2022, CA/40/23 Add.2
5 Draft budget and table of posts for 2024, Estimates 2025-2028, CA/50/23
6 Orientation paper on recruitment 2022, CA/100/21
7 Social Report 2022, CA/40/23 Add. 2
8 Technologia Staff Survey, 2022
Some of the 'blog posts' alluded to above come from the EPO's intranet, which looks like this:
Here is the corresponding text:
Family-friendly health and parental care benefits
More flexible parental leave & additional medical coverage for children ≥18 years
15.12.2022 in Office
The Office strives to provide comprehensive health support for all colleagues, coupled with an attractive, family-friendly benefits package.
In line with this commitment, the Administrative Council approved three updates to our Service Regulations tabled at yesterday’s meeting.
More flexible parental leave
(CA/87/22)
To help staff to reconcile their work and family responsibilities, the Office will make our parental leave scheme more flexible as of 1 January 2023. In practice, that means the minimum duration of parental leave is now reduced to seven calendar days. This strikes a balance between the emergency measures allowing to- tal flexibility – due to expire on 31 December 2022 - and the Service regulations in place, which foresee a minimum duration of 14 calendar days. More information will be available on the HR services pages soon. Adjustment in medical coverage for children beyond 18 years
(CA/92/22)
Children beyond 18 years sometimes experience gaps in their medical coverage between different educa- tional cycles or between completion of education and first employment. This can lead to uncertainty and even, in some cases, extra costs for parents. To provide a safety net and greater predictability with medical coverage, the Office will introduce a 6-month grace period for children aged 18 up to 26 years, starting 1 January 2023. This grace period will start on the date of the loss of status as a dependent child, namely at the end of the month in which the formal studies end, or in which the official diploma is issued, whichever comes first, as foreseen in Circular No. 411. The Office is committed to investing around EUR 0.5 million per year in this measure.
Support for staff on sick leave
(CA/85/22)
With the adjustments to our health services, the Office will introduce a seamless sick leave process. This im- plies a single health professional accompanying a colleague through their entire sick leave (sick leave - ex- tended sick leave - incapacity) and recovery process. The proposal will also enable colleagues on sick leave to schedule their medical appointments more flexibly according to their needs, rather than administrative deadlines. Changes are due to come into force on 1 April.
All of these adjustments reflect the Office's focus on improving the benefits package and providing higher service levels for staff, while making our internal services more efficient. The proposals were discussed at the GCC meeting on 22 November prior to their submission to the December Administrative Council.
More information will soon be available on the HR services pages , you can also contact your HR interlocutor in case of any questions.
"Changes are due to come into force on 1 April." So, in short, the "fools" will have rights further eroded and workload will continue to increase with salaries decreasing (as measured by purchasing power).
Imagine that. You do the same work as before and each year, as promotion and rewards have been severely curtailed, your real salaries are in effect going down, not up, in spite of growing body of knowledge and experience. █
