83%

There was a strike ballot in Munich today. Märpel learned that 83% of staff voted in favour of the strike.

Märpel wonders what is next.

Social unrest

SUEPO organized a general assembly yesterday in Munich. Märpel has rarely seen the canteen that full, people were standing for lack of seats. It thus appears that President Campinos plans to pressure staff even more and reduce benefits when the EPO yearly surplus are above 400 millions Euros raise some concerns. An official strike ballot is registered.

Demo on Wednesday

SUEPO is calling for a demonstration next Wednesday during the meeting of the budget and finance committee. This is the letter SUEPO sent:

Dear colleagues,

Last week, EPO staff in Munich gathered in a General Assembly against the 17 financial measures proposed by Mr Campinos and has u nanimously adopted (ca. 700 attendees) a resolution which has now been transmitted to him and to the delegates of the Administrative Council.

SUEPO is convinced that the proposed reforms will be unfavourable for the EPO. They will further demotivate staff that is already suffering from an excessive work pressure combined with a lack of recognition of the efforts made. The punitive measures are likely to lead to an exodus. We have already seen a significant lowering of the average retirement age as older staff heads for the most obvious exit, but also younger staff is likely to leave when faced with considerably reduced benefits and a total lack of career perspectives. At the same time the EPO's ability to hire new employees "of the highest standard of ability" (Art. 5 ServRegs) will suffer. Patent quality will suffer as a consequence. Mr Battistelli did a lot of damage to the EPO. Will Mr Campinos finish the job?

On 23 and 24 October the EPO Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) will meet. During that meeting Mr Campinos will present this new attack on staff as "necessary adjustments".

SUEPO invites staff to show Mr Campinos and the BFC its opinion on the finance report and on the reforms. Next demonstration: Wednesday 23 October 2019

SUEPO Munich

——————————————

Attached to that letter was the following document which explains a bit more:

Mr Battistelli's inheritance

In his final publication "Modernising the EPO for excellence and sustainability (https://www.epo.org/news-issues/news/2018/20180611.html)" Mr Battistelli bragged that: "Thanks to an ambitious series of reforms, the EPO of today is a vastly different organisation ... We are more competitive, more efficient, more financially secure and ready to face the challenges of tomorrow."

According to the above publication, during Mr Battistelli's tenure examiner production increased by 36% and the number of grants increased by 82% (!). In the same period the operating surplus of the EPO increased to about 470 million Euro/year, i.e. almost 25% of the EPO's annual operating budget. These results were obtained thanks to the efforts of staff. For this staff was "rewarded" with reforms that have led to a considerable loss of rights, including the loss of permanent appointment for new staff, and a reduction of various benefits, in particular a significant reduction in career progression. The single-minded focus of Mr Battistelli on efficiency led to a generally recognised loss of quality in the patents granted (https://www.juve-patent.com/news-and-stories/legal-commentary/open-letter-suggests-epo-patent-quality-problem/). His extremely harsh social practices devastated staff morale (http://patentblog.kluweriplaw.com/2018/06/21/tarnished-legacy-epo-president/). When Mr Campinos took over as the next President he announced that quality and dialog with staff were among his priorities.

Déjà vu all over again

The communication style of Mr Campinos is certainly softer than that of Mr Battistelli. He has shown himself ready to talk with and listen to ordinary staff. But he did not distance himself from, or change anything to, Mr Battistelli's reforms. And now staff is again confronted with the message that the EPO is in dire straits, requiring another massive (23-32%) increase in productivity in DG1 and unprecedented financial sacrifices of staff as a whole. How is that possible?

Mr Campinos has tried to explain the need for further increases in productivity and for his punitive reforms with yet another financial study (https://www.epo.org/modules/epoweb/acdocument/epoweb2/377/en/CA-46-19_en.pdf). The financial study is a hoax. As we have pointed out before, it is based on totally unrealistic assumptions, among which a 20-year complete freeze infee income while costs continue to rise. When we pointed at the many inconsistencies the reaction of Mr Campinos was "I don't care, I will go ahead anyway." This is typical for the "social dialog" that we experience at the moment. Mr Campinos is happy to talk with the staff representation, but that will not change anything.

What next?

SUEPO is convinced that, if anything, the proposed reforms will be unfavourable for the EPO. The announced measure will further demotivate staff that is already suffering from an excessive work pressure combined with a lack of recognition of the efforts made. The punitive measures are likely to lead to an exodus. We have already seen a significant lowering of the average retirement age as older staff heads for the most obvious exit, but also younger staff is likely to leave when faced with considerably reduced benefits and a total lack of career perspectives. At the same time the EPO's ability to hire new employees "of the highest standard of ability" (Art. 5 ServRegs) will suffer. Patent quality will suffer as a consequence. Mr Battistelli did a lot of damage to the EPO. Will Mr Campinos finish the job?

The next demonstration

On 23 and 24 October the EPO Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) will meet. During that meeting Mr Campinos will present this new attack on staff as "necessary adjustments".

SUEPO invites staff to show Mr Campinos and the BFC its opinion on the finance report and on the reforms.

Please note the date:

Next demonstration: Wednesday 23 October 2019

Increase compliance!

In a post dated Mai, 15th, Märpel wrote that our internal quality control (DQA) noticed that compliance decreased from 85% to 75% in 2018:

http://rip-kat.blogspot.com/2019/05/survey-2.html

The consequence, apparently, is that DQA will be reorganised. Märpel fears that the re-organisation might break the thermometer instead of breaking the fever. All present DQA auditors will start moving back to DG1 this autumn and it appears to be the intention that the unit will be totally re-staffed in 2020. New auditors will be assigned to DQA for two years, extendable to three at the discretion of the appointing authority.

President Campinos said that the challenge facing the Office is to increase compliance. Mark this words.

What time is it?

There was a communique from President Campinos last Thursday. From the look of it, it seems that a massive reorganisation is planned for September. What Märpel finds particularly bizarre is that the communique says, at the same time, that "staff will be informed well in advance of the new structure" but also that the structure becomes operational in January 2020. Märpel thinks that President Campinos must have some kind of time-distorting machine that will make the 4 months left till 2020 into a much longer period. Märpel also thinks that President Campinos will need that time-distorting machine to extract even more productivity, since that is apparently also planned. The amount of files produced will also be checked quarterly instead of at the end of each year…

Below is the text of the communique:

Update on main topics

 

Dear Colleagues,

Last week, myself and the other members of the MAC held a meeting dedicated to examining the preparation of the budget and to a number of other issues currently on the agenda. Although I had said the previous MAC communication could be the last before September, you may find it useful to be updated on some of the matters discussed.

I do not know if many of you are familiar with the procedure for the preparation of the budget at the EPO so I think it could be interesting to give you a very brief overview without going into too much of the technical jargon.

The cycle starts in March each year with a notice sent by the President to all DGs indicating the timeline of the budget preparation and some indications on the assumptions. This helps PD Finance to build the first main budgetary orientations which are presented for opinion to the May Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) and June Admin Council (CA/25/xx).

At the end of July, a dedicated MAC gathers to review and refine the assumptions. The CA/50/xx document on the draft budget needs to be finalised in September to be ready on time for the publication on Micado around the end of September or beginning of October. It is then presented for opinion to the October BFC and for decision to the December AC.

For the 2020 budget, PD Finance provided an overview of the EPO's financial situation for the first semester 2019 which you can find here [internal link].

Moreover, linked to the discussions on the staffing level and posts requests for each DGs, we addressed the need to better align our structures of the Office with the goals of the strategic plan to ensure they will be in a position to implement and deliver it in an optimal manner.

I want to take this opportunity to underline that this will be a series of gradual changes, of which staff will be informed well in advance of the new structure becoming operational in January 2020. It will be based on the principles of streamlining some functions that are currently spread over different DGs, causing a loss of efficiency. Bringing together those resources on a permanent basis therefore makes sense. In some cases, all staff will already have a good idea of the changes set to take place as outlined in the Strategic Plan: a Project Management Office embedded in a Corporate Governance Service will be established; a concept will be developed for an EPO Observatory; internal and external communications will be brought together; the Council Secretariat should be relocated in DG5 and the status of the Academy should evolve. So it is not at all a big bang but more a case of some readjustments.

Finally, sharing the very constructive feedback I received during the recent Discovery sessions with Team Managers and Directors, we had an initial discussion on how the appraisal process might be improved to better reflect the efforts of our team, as a whole, in addition to evaluating individual performance. As you know, I believe strongly in a more collaborative style of working, where we can benefit from each other's expertise and input, share our knowledge and increase staff engagement.

Overall, I'm of the opinion that more cohesive teams help to raise the quality of our work - as we saw in the recent CQI pilot - and are also more productive. We therefore held a first exchange on how both the appraisal system and the point allocation system could be adjusted to better reflect the outcome of a team's collaborative efforts. I also think that since the adoption of the New Career System in 2015, we have now the experience to evolve from the yearly formal appraisal report to more regular feedbacks - on a quarterly basis for example - which will give greater support to staff throughout the year. Later this year we will therefore undertake a thorough assessment on how - and if - this could be done with a view to proposing amendments.

I look forward to updating you on these matters in due course. As many of you are heading off to the summer break I wish you some good rest with your family and loved ones. I am very grateful for all the hard work that's been done and I hope you will feel that it has been suitably recognised, not least by the allocation of a collective bonus as a token of recognition for all your efforts.

António Campinos

President

More scandals

Märpel reported about the financial study and how it is based on false assumptions, but in the mean time another document was issued by the Staff Committee and then Märpel found a third document distributed in the canteen. It seems that the financial study is a huge hoax. One might wonder why...

Possibly the Council might not be impressed by the financial study. In any case, the members of the budget and finance committee were not impressed by the pharaonic building refurbishing projects and gave a negative opinion. Will that be enough?

In the mean time http://epostaff4rights.org also published a document, this time about reporting. In a nutshell: staff is working harder than ever and getting the lowest performance ratings ever, with over 500 examiners being targeted for dismissal.

Performance ratings are somewhat linked to salary raises, bonuses and promotions (if your boss likes you) and staff may here as well prepare for a bad surprise. Promotions are normally announced in June. It is only a rumor, but Märpel heard that the rewards exercise may be delayed this year. Directors will not be nominated before the end of this year. Vice-President Steve Rowan apparently said that examiners were paid far too much and that he wanted their career to end before grade G12.

Financial study

The Central Staff Committee has just published a document titled "The Financial Study: Yet another hoax". Here is the summary

 

Dear colleagues,

In the EPO, financial studies tend to be a prelude to cuts in staff benefits. The latest study is no exception. The present publication explains one of the tricks used to make the Office look poor. More publications will follow.

The recently published financial study (CA/46/19) by Mercer and Oliver Wyman seems to indicate that more bad news is to come.

The studies' conclusions ...

The key message of the financial study (p 34) is:

"The EPO faces a structural operational gap, with costs increasing faster than revenues, leading in the future to significantly decreasing cash flows.

The EPO has greater control of cost levers than revenue levers which presents an opportunity to better meet its future obligations through careful cost management."

In other words: the Office must be reducing costs - staff costs.

... and how they came about

The EPO's main income is from fees. The Financial Study includes this 4% fee increase for 2020 but assumes that there will be no further fee increases from then on till 2038. On the other hand Staff salaries and pensions follow the normal increase. For any organisation - as rich as it may be - such an approach will lead in the end to budgetary gaps. According to our first calculations the alleged gaps could be offset by merely continuing the biennial 5% fee adjustments in place.

Märpel is no accountant but checked the study and it seems that the Central Staff Committee is indeed right and that the document was drafted on unreasonable assumptions chosen to make the financial situation appear catastrophic. In contrast, the proven historical records show that the EPO has a yearly surplus of over 350 millions Euros.

It seems that President Campinos has decided to prepare for a new conflict. What other reasons could there be to publish such a blatant lie? A staff strike is planned for the next meeting of the Council.