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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
No comments :
Post a Comment