"Le Iene": interview to JRC Ispra researchers concerning the alleged dangerousness of FAP filters
Watch the video
We go to Court!
We hope that you understand that it is impossible for us to translate it in English and Italian. However, we are available to answer to any question you may have on this subject.
We would like to thank explicitly the "father" of this dossier Paul Nauwelaers, for all the work done and everybody who participated or sent us useful documentation.
Language training courses: Italian, English, French and German
Our teachers are native speaking highly experienced in teaching English, German, French and Italian to foreigners.
Send a message to jrc-rd-ispra@ec.europa.eu by Tuesday 18th October and indicate the language lessons you would like to take: we will contact you for an appointment to determine your level and to agree on the next steps (length of the course/date and time, etc..).
What we are doing for you
What can you expect from us during the next 4 months?
a) Tomorrow, Wednesday 7/9 at 10:00 (New Auditorium – bdg. 58) there will be an Assembly on the Correction Coefficient. We will inform you on how we foresee to continue our legal battle in Court.
The actual proposal of the Commission for the new method would mean that the 2010, 2011 and in particular the 2012 Correction Coefficient will have a permanent negative impact on our salaries from 2013 on!
Please, join us tomorrow for a more detailed explanation.
b) We are participating in the working group (GTR) organized by DG HR and EUROSTAT trying to protect Ispra for a further decline of the CC in 2011.
c) We are actively participating in the negotiations with DG HR on the New Commission Reform. We will continue to encourage the Commission to increase the role of the JRC within the Institution.
d) Our people are active in the different appraisal and promotion committees, trying to help those colleagues who lodged an appeal against their 2010 CDR.
e) We will continue to push for further investments to improve the site. As you can see, our efforts have led already to some remarkable results. Some others are still under construction.
These are only a few examples of what we are doing at the moment. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you would like some more information or support on whatever subject. We are there for you!
PS: an info that might be useful for those who rent an accommodation: if you gave a “Libretto di Risparmio al Portatore” to your landlord for the 3 months guarantee, please note that according to a very recent Decree, the value of a Libretto must be less than 2500 EUR after 30 September 2011, otherwise a penalty of 3000 EUR is applied!
Ref.: http://www.posteitaliane.it/resources/bancoposta/pdf/normativa_antiriciclaggio.pdf
Correction Coefficient Varese
Especially now!
WHY?
Because the Commission has proposed, in its new reform proposals, to establish the yearly correction of the new Correction Coefficient based on the Local Inflation Data and no longer on the purchasing power differences between Brussels and Varese.In principle this doesn't sound so bad but please be aware that the starting point for this new method is of fundamental importance. If we were to get a yearly inflation correction starting from a CC of 92,3 ; an effective salary reduction of 7,7% for staff working in Ispra would have been fixed and established for the entire duration of the new method!
We are now ready to go to Court to defend our rights. We have asked all Trade Unions in Ispra to participate in the costs.
Our first estimate of the costs is around 20.000 Euro.
As far as we know we have 8 Trade Unions in Ispra:
R&D
Cisl
SE
USI
FFPE
SFIE
TAO-AFI
U4U
We have asked each Trade Union to pay 2500 Euro, in order to start the court case.
R&D Ispra is now waiting for their reply.
Joint Declaration of the Trade Union Majority
In the frame of the current development the undersigned trade unions join their forces to defend the interests of all staff in Ispra and Seville
This decision marks our aim for unity to face the dangerous reform of the Staff Regulations, as prepared by the Commission and bending to the will of the Council and the Member States
This joining of the forces, harmonised with the trade union majority of the Central Staff Committee, will reinforce our coordination and action capacity together with our colleagues of the same trade unions in Brussels
R&D CISL FFPE SFIE U4U
H. Nieman M. Gemelli S. Scheer C.Zonca S. Pakalin
CDR Appeals: template
EPSO Open Competitions training course
The course will be given on 10th June 2011 (whole day) in the Auditorium - bdg.58 - by our trainer Anne Draime.If you are interested, please subscribe at this page.The course is open for free to R&D members. Non members have to subscribe to R&D for 6 months.
Structure of the course:
- Introduction to the Assessment Center - (analyses of the competences assessed through the different step of the Assessment Center)
- Structured Interview
- In-tray exercise and word document
- Situational Judgement Test
Reform of Staff Regulations
A couple of weeks ago we informed you about the start of the negotiations on the Staff Regulations. This week Vice-President Šefčovič informed all staff and the European Parliament more in detail about it and that these issues will be the subject of constant dialogue with both staff and staff representatives. We would have appreciated to have received this information before the presentation of Commissioner Lewandowski to the press in which he revealed the existence of a plan to deeply revise the status and privileges of European civil servants to be disclosed in June 2011.Due to this reverse order one might have the impression that everything is already pre-cooked and that the social dialogue will serve only to just sell the plan.
In his message Vice-President Šefčovič refers to three elements to be taken into account:
1) The principle of having a method for adjusting salaries and pensions has shown its merit over nearly 40 years. The Commission will defend the need for a new method.
2) We have to ensure the attractiveness, high quality and independence of the European Civil Service; this includes being competitive in the jobs market for the best talent and includes the need for attractive salaries, pensions and working conditions for well qualified, multilingual staff willing to live outside their home country with their families.
3) There is an ongoing need to modernise our administration, to update our working methods and to find efficiency and cost savings in line with similar developments in the Member States and other international organisations.
To the European Parliament he said: "Savings on administrative expenditure must be envisaged very carefully, taking into account the savings and the changes in the Status already introduced by the 2004 reform."
These elements could contain both positive and negative points, opportunities and threats. But as long as the main goal is "HOW TO SAVE MONEY" in this current negative context driven by populistic and demagogic interests, we are not very optimistic.
For element 1) e.g. the Correction Coefficient comes across and without a method the Commission would have to negotiate each year our salary adaption with the Council (read: member states).. For element 2) "attractive" salaries sounds attractive, but attractive for who and what means attractive for different staff categories. Everything has to be envisaged in the frame of the "cost savings" of element 3). It will be clear that it could go in any direction during the "social dialogue". For the above mentioned reasons and especially the issues that might have an impact on Ispra, R&D Ispra wants to participate in these meetings together with our Trade Union in BXL. On May 19 the next meeting with Vice-President Šefčovič will take place. We will keep you informed about the general developments of these meetings.
Art. 90 CC US-I: our position
According to us it doesn't make sense because the new art. 90 is just a re-confirmation of the one launched by the Ispra Trade Union Majority, adding one or two points, which we deliberately left out.
After having found the argumentations of our art.90 reconfirmed in the one from US-I, we are convinced that this could be the start of a new era of all Ispra trade unions working together in the interest of the future of the Ispra site.
Newsletter 2/2011
- European School of Varese
- New appraisal and promotion system
- Art.90 against the Correction Coefficient
- New reform
- Training courses
- Staff satisfaction survey
Staff reform about to start?
Before a single negotiation procedure between the Administration and the staff representation has been started or even announced, a Commissioner reveals to the press the existence of a plan to deeply revise the status and privileges of European civil servants to be disclosed in June 2011.
We can only hope that there is somehow a misunderstanding concerning the information provided by Commissioner Lewandowski to the press, but after having listened carefully to his presentation (from min. 21) we'll ask the Commission to clarify the situation.
Training for the preparation of EPSO Open Competitions
Most probably the training course will be on 10th June (whole day): do not book your holidays in that period if you are interested!
Further details will follow.
SSS
We got several questions concerning the participation in the Staff Satisfaction Survey (SSS).The administration asked the Local Staff Committee (CLP) to help in encouraging staff to fill in the JRC Staff Satisfaction Survey for 2011.
R&D thinks that everybody should decide for her/his own to participate or not and shares the position taken by the CLP (see below).
____________________________________________________________________
From: JRC CLP ISPRA
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: SSS
….
The Local Staff Committee (CLP) would like to thank the administration for asking us to invite staff to participate in the Staff Satisfaction Survey because of the low response rate until now.
The CLP has the opinion however that the administration didn't take well enough into consideration the arguments we made. Most already raised before the launch of the SSS. We still think that:
- Neither the CLP nor staff has been well informed on the follow-up of the previous SSS. We guess that that most colleagues wouldn't be able to mention 3 items which were improved by the administration after the last SSS.
- The questions are too specific and staff might feel the risk of being identified as an individual, even if the administration promised not to do so.
- There was no support from the administration at all to improve the attractiveness of the site, by helping us to change the unjustified Correction Coefficient applied for Ispra.
- We didn't see any willingness at all to solve the so urgent problem of mobility at the Ispra site.
- There is sometimes a lack of initiative and good willingness to help staff within a reasonable delay.
Kind regards,
Chris van der Aat
CLP Ispra/Seville
Art. 90 CC - Act now!
Why?
Because, according to our investigations, the new Correction Coefficient does not correspond to the purchasing parity between Ispra and Brussels
Why now?
Because an art. 90 must be presented within 3 months from the date of the publication of the decision against which the complaint is lodged. Even if most probably even the February payslip will be considered as the "official" application of the decision, the original decision was taken by the Council on 20th of December 2010 and published in the Official Journal on 22nd of December 2010. Furthermore, all staff received on 23rd of December 2010 an email from PMO notifying the introduction of the new Correction Coefficient, with a link to the detailed table.
Having worked hard on this art 90 dossier, we are now ready with our argumentations and we don’t want to take any risk of non admissibility of our complaint because of a missed deadline.
What are the fundamental arguments of our complaint?
We have based our arguments on a very strong technical analysis, contesting Eurostat data on Energy and Health costs. In addition to a detailed analysis carried out by us on gas and electricity bills, we have also purchased statistically relevant data for Italy and Belgium
We have then compared the parities set by the Commission for our sickness insurance reimbursements scheme with the “Health” heading of our CC, and also in this case we are able to demonstrate that a big contradiction exists between these two different sets of parities both provided by the same European Commission!
We are now no longer just asking for information or data, but WE ARE A STEP FURTHER as we contest tangible contradictory elements. We don't ask to sign a blank cheque but to ACT NOW, and JOIN OUR ART.90
We would have preferred a constructive and brotherly collaboration among all Trade Unions but, sadly enough, some people driven by other motivations abuse every single dossier for their quite aggressive propaganda campaign trying to bring others into discredit, rather than collaborating in a joint approach to defend staff. In the meantime the Ispra Site Trade Union Majority - in close collaboration with the Local Staff Committee (CLP) - will continue to be the real defender of the interests of all staff. We do understand that you are not interested in a useless war between Trade Unions, and we agree with you that this should stop.
Thank you all for your support and collaboration.
Your R&D Team
Formal complaint (art.90) against correction coefficient Varese
Our article 90 template will be available to all staff for individual use. This decision was taken by the R&D executive board and the Committee, based on an in-depth study carried out over a significant period. Since the CC is determined by the so called "method", the only way to make an impact is by a "technical" approach rather than a political one. On top of that, there is currently no political support in the member states for the level of our remunerations. The article 90 procedure is also a necessary step before we can go to court.
We have identified major discrepancies between the basis Eurostat used for calculating the CC on the one hand and the real-life situation on the other, and we are convinced that we can prove that the correction coefficient for Varese should be higher. Our lawyer will adapt our draft text to the proper legal wording in the coming days.
We expect to inform all staff at the beginning of next week about the possibility to launch an art.90. and the template will then be made available. We believe that everybody should join, in order to achieve the best possible result.
The deadline to lodge the art. 90 is 20 March 2011.
For further information please write to jrc-rd-cc@ec.europa.eu
Italian language training lessons
If you don't have enough time to attend a 4-hour-a-week Italian language course with the "institutional" training,
If you simply need a language course that fits your personal needs in order to improve your own skills,
R&D can help you with individual and personalised language lessons! The teacher is a native speaking language teacher, highly experienced in teaching Italian to foreigners.
Write an email to jrc-rd-training@ec.europa.eu: we will contact you for an appointment to determine your level and to agree on the next steps (length of the course/date and time, etc..).
EPSO CAST/27/07
Notwithstanding the court ruling T-205/07 of 3 February 2011, the list CAST/EU/27/07 remains valid. For futher information: http://europa.eu/epso/success/news/news17_en.htm
Newsletter 1/2011
Topics covered in this issue:
Correction Coefficient
Contractual Agents
Annulment of EPSO/CAST/27/07
R&D language training courses
Visit Sebastiani and Orlandi
Meeting Director General Ristori
Change conference
European School Varese
Feedback training course competitions
Contractual Agents
Annulment of EPSO/CAST/27/07
R&D language training courses
Visit Sebastiani and Orlandi
Meeting Director General Ristori
Change conference
European School Varese
Feedback training course competitions
Correction Coefficient and Contractual Agents
Correction Coefficient:
Finally a real step forward has been made on the issue of the Correction Coefficient (CC). As a follow up of the CLP (Local Staff Committee) meeting with Commissioner Mr. Šefčovič and Dir Gen Mrs. Souka in Ispra and the information meeting with DG HR and Eurostat on 13 December in Brussels, R&D Ispra has reached an agreement with EUROSTAT. We will get the possibility to have a view on how the method and certain raw data were applied to determine the CC for Ispra. This is crucial for the upcoming process to officially dispute the surprisingly low CC for Ispra (art.90). We arranged for an appointment with EUROSTAT to meet on February 9 in Luxembourg. In order to join all forces in this crucial initiative we have invited all trade unions to attend because we are convinced that only united we might be able to obtain an improvement of the situation. Unfortunately not all trade unions have confirmed their willingness to participate yet. We will keep you informed about the developments and the outcome of this important meeting.
Contractual Agents:
There is a new development to report on the future of Contractual Agents. R&D is still one of the promoters of the CA court case against the use of staff with limited duration contracts on permanent post. As you most likely know already the hearing of our appeal will take place the 18th February 10:00 in Luxembourg. If you would be interested to participate in the hearing, you are kindly invited to write an email to our secretariat
(jrc-rd-ispra@ec.europa.eu) before 29 January.
R&D feels obliged to warn all CA colleagues to be very careful with all kinds of information that have been spread and will be spread around even more in relation to CA contracts. Whenever Local Staff Committee (CLP) elections are about to take place, the propaganda machines of some trade unions work over-time. Too many promises made during the election campaigns are quite often without any restriction and foundation, and absolutely incompatible with the Staff Regulations in force. R&D refrains from these practises and we are always willing to help you if you feel the need for any clarification considering your contract. While it might not always be possible to tell you what you would like to hear, we will always do our very best to inform you correctly.
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