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Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Agora” has devoted a lot of space to the matter
Image: Union Syndicale Fédérale
Summary: Last month Union Syndicale Fédérale spoke out in support of EPO workers who have felt besieged and abused by Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos since 2010; below one can find a new batch of articles related to the matter
Due to the highly specific technical and legal skills requested from the majority of staff at the EPO, it has long been considered that fixed-term contracts were not the appropriate form of employment for this Office. The need of a lengthy and thorough training of new employees is a condition “sine qua non” to grant quality patents. This necessary time and resources investment could be lost for the organisation if fixed-term contracts were the norm, let alone the knowledge accumulated and shared by the newly recruited staff. Furthermore, at the individual level, “a Golden Cage Syndrome” exists at the EPO, since after some years of employment, staff tend to specialise in the field of patents and lose their general expertise. The expertise in the field of patents is not easily recognised in other fields. Staff leaving the EPO after some years of employment could find it very difficult to find employment elsewhere at comparable conditions. These considerations were valid in the past and are still valid today.
The EPO, the second largest European organisation after the Commission in terms of the number of employees, is a substantially independent body, which is neither part of the European Union nor attached to it in any way like the EU agencies. Its member states include the 27 EU member states, but also 11 non-EU states. It is also not one of the Coordinated Organisations, although some links exist or were planned[1].In contrast to other European international organisations, which are mostly financially dependent on their member states, the EPO is entirely self-financing through the annual fees and royalties generated by (applications for) patents and even generates money for its member states. Being a typically scientific and technical organisation, its political visibility is lower, so that the management and the Administrative Council, which represents the member states, can operate relatively far from the public eye.
SUEPO (Staff Union of the European Patent Office) was born in 1979 out of the “Syndicat du Personnel de l’Institut International des Brevets” (SP- IIB) which was founded in 1969, following the creation of the European Patent Office (EPO) in 1977, and the merging of the IIB into the EPO.In agreement with its 1979 Constitution (SC), SUEPO comprises four local sections, at the four EPO sites: Munich, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna. A Congress, a Central Bureau and an Audit Board were established as central bodies of SUEPO. Despite the existence of these central bodies, the local sections enjoy quite a lot of autonomy and can be considered as quasi-independent entities. Some of them have legal status under their respective national law, like SUEPO-TH under Dutch law.
The overall trend is clearly quite negative, and the situation appears to be deteriorating. Only on a very few items the conditions have statistically stayed the same or improved a bit (“Understanding of managers”: positive replies 87% up from 84% in the past; “Did your employer provide the necessary equipment?”: negative replies 18% down from 21% in the past survey).Despite the fact that still a majority of the respondents consider regular teleworking as a benefit, the results of this second survey and the trends confirm and amplify the alarming signals of the first survey.In particular since the beginning of the COVID crisis, 40% of the respondents had to cope with a higher workload or more working hours (31% in the first survey), and/or an increase in work related stress (49%, against 46%). A significant number cannot easily disconnect outside working hours (36%, was 34%) and the great majority of the respondents (80%, was 73%) felt, respectively, not connected (15%, was 11%) or more or less connected (65%, was 62%) to their colleagues. It is clear that these factors and negative trends will inevitably have dramatic consequences on the health and well-being of, at least a substantial number, of staff of the European Public Service, if suitable and urgent measures are not applied implemented and effectively to resit and reverse this.
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