Pension contribution rates: some good news
PMO announced yesterday some good news concerning our pension rate contribution.
“On 10 December, the Council adopted a decision on the amendment to the 2012 pension contribution rate. According to this decision, the rate will be amended from 11.6% to 10.6% of the basic salary, with retroactive effect from the 1st July 2012.
In January, you will receive via Sysper 2 a specific pay slip (pay slip 13/2013) which will show the calculation of the retroactivity.
For the year 2013, following the decision adopted by the Council on December 17, the pension contribution rate to the pension will be amended from 10.6% to 10.3% of the basic salary with retroactive effect from the 1st July 2013.
As a result, the calculation of this retroactivity as well as its payment will be included in the February 2014 pay slip.
These new parameters will be introduced in January 2014 (for the 2012 amendment) and February 2014 (for the 2013 amendment) in your monthly pay slip and your contribution will be adapted accordingly.”
Position about COPAS topics
Following the outcome of the COPAS meeting of
25/11/2013, the COPAS Vice-President (VP) has asked Mr Chirondojan to
immediately organize an extraordinary COPAS meeting.
By doing so, the VP expresses concern
on how the latest COPAS meeting was conducted, and astonishment for the alleged
superficiality of the discussion. She also complains about Mr Chirondojan’s
decision to avoid explicit voting procedures for each relevant issue discussed
(crèche fees, canteen prices, grants, WiFi @ lodgings, etc.), and declares it as
being very inappropriate.
Finally, while
asking Mr Chirondojan to call an extraordinary COPAS meeting, she also explicitly
requests the adoption of a voting procedure.We recall the COPAS VP that voting procedures are not the normal way decisions are taken in COPAS, as clearly emerging from the COPAS rules: “En règle générale, le COPAS œuvre en vue d'un avis consensuel. En cas de points de vue divergents persistants le COPAS se prononce à la majorité des voix. Le Président et le Vice-président ne participent pas au vote.”
Therefore, when the President concludes the discussion on each funding decision and asks if everyone is in agreement, in the absence of any objections he must conclude that a consensual agreement has been reached.
According to our information, no staff representative asked for a vote during the COPAS meeting, and all decisions were consequently adopted by the usual consensual agreement.
Since it was well known that important issues like the crèche and the canteen price increase were to be discussed, we wonder if the COPAS VP and the other COPAS staff representatives couldn’t have arrived better prepared to the meeting.
If a staff representative takes a position during an official meeting chaired by a Director and a diametrically opposed position the day after, their credibility is severely undermined in front of the management. And when such staff representative is the President of the CLP, the credibility of the CLP as a whole is at stake.
The above considerations would already be sufficient in themselves to make the request for an extraordinary COPAS meeting - aimed to discuss the same topics again – quite inappropriate. But there is even more.
The COPAS VP doesn’t seem to be aware that all decisions taken during a COPAS meeting are immediately effective (c.f. the COPAS rules: “Les décisions et les avis rendus par le COPAS sont immédiatement exécutoires...”).
It seems also evident that the request for a new meeting with a voting procedure is not put forward to confirm the position taken during the previous COPAS meeting – as this wouldn't make any sense. It means that the COPAS VP, after having approved all these proposals, wishes to:
-
put the mensa and our OIB colleagues who
work there at risk of being externalized;
-
put at risk the 30.000€ grant already allocated to the Cultural
Committee which is highly important for its work;
-
put at risk the implementation of an
essential social facility that makes the Ispra site more attractive to newcomers.
Luckily, the decision of the COPAS President to
hold an extraordinary COPAS meeting during the second half of January 2014
confirms that this new meeting will have no effect on budgetary decisions
already taken.
Canteen pricesWe wish to point out that the price increase for the mensa is backed both by political and economic reasons. Firstly, prices are blocked since 2010, causing an unbalance. Secondly, the externalization of the Ispra canteen is always presented as a possible option to make savings, both from a budget and from a staff point of view. Thirdly, the price increase should serve to finance the internalization of the Clubhouse and to rebalance other social services impairment. According to us, the CLP priority should be to keep our canteen internally managed, thus continuing to guarantee its current high quality, at a still affordable price. We believe that staff interests are protected not only by looking at one single component (the price), but by looking at the overall picture covering all social services and keeping in mind the particularly difficult economic and political context.
Cultural Committee
The Cultural Committee is an association registered under Italian national law; it acts independently and autonomously from COPAS and the CLP. Issues dealt by the Cultural Committee cannot be directly transferred to COPAS or CLP authority and responsibility.
COPAS is responsible for auditing grant use – making it, de facto, a super partes entity with no direct commitment or role in clubs and associations management.
The Cultural Committee is entitled, as any other club, to receive grants by COPAS. These grants are subject to a series of conditions laid down in the rules for clubs ("Règlement pour la reconnaissance et le fonctionnement des Clubs et autres associations du personnel").
These rules are the same for all clubs and associations – including the Cultural Committee. All clubs and associations must undergo the same rigorous verification process before being granted credits from COPAS.
The verification process is an indispensable requirement to safeguard credibility and transparency of the process and is not especially arduous.
Therefore, we believe that any attempt to set the Cultural Committee apart from the rules applied by COPAS to all other clubs and associations would be inadmissible for the Administration, and would be detrimental to the image of the Cultural Committee itself.
Concerning this year’s Cultural Committee grant, we are surprised by the superficiality of the Cultural Committee President who, on 11.11.2013, sent a note to COPAS containing several factual errors:
1. he refers to a grant request of 38.000€ for 2013, although it was for
35.000€
2. he states that COPAS didn’t provide any grant along the year, while
14.750€ were transferred by COPAS on 26.02.2013
3.
he states that the 29.500€ grant for 2012
entails a reduction over 2011, while in reality it is 10.000€ higher
Even more surprisingly, the COPAS VP not only
asks for a revision of the allocated grant before realizing she was misled, but
insists on such a revision even after these mistakes have been brought to its
attention!We recall that the analysis of the Cultural Committee request was carried out, as common practice within COPAS, by a representative of the Administration together with a staff representative, who agreed on the adequacy of the proposed 30.000€ grant. Questioning the amount of the grant is disrespectful of the work done by these two colleagues.
WiFi @
Lodgings
At the COPAS meeting on 25/11/2013, 70.000€
were allocated to the socially essential installation of Wi-Fi in the lodgings.
The LSC Executive Bureau decided to intervene
on this decision, via the COPAS VP, by means of a note addressed to Mr
Chirondojan (President of COPAS). In this note, the porte-parole of the LSC
Executive Bureau states that “the Bureau is very concerned on [sic] the
decision you [President of COPAS] are going to take”, and she asks the
President of COPAS “to suspend any relevant financial decision until an
exhaustive explanation will be provided”. The COPAS VP incorrectly indicates the
President as the sole responsible for decisions that have already been taken -
and NOT that are “going to be taken” - by all COPAS members. Moreover, according to COPAS rules, no ex-post external interference can
change its decisions. All procedural questions aside, we believe the
decision to invest in the socially important Wi-Fi in the lodgings represents
an extremely valuable, and too long-awaited, social service for newcomers, and
we are concerned at any attempt to delay its earliest possible implementation. We also remind that any unspent budget still available
at the end of year - also because of a lack of strategy chargeable to the COPAS
VP - is lost if not committed, possibly leading to a cut to the following
year’s social budget. Using this leftover budget for socially sustainable
initiatives should be supported, and not obstructed. Since Wi-Fi for newcomers has been one of the
most requested facilities for many years, we do not understand why the CLP
wishes to question it as not being a priority in the interest of staff.
In conclusion, we
invite the CLP to respect equal treatment for all clubs and associations, and
to demand them the highest standard of sound management to help maximizing
grant recognition for social activities and services by COPAS.We also ask the CLP to support Wi-Fi @ the lodgings by rectifying its unfortunate request to the COPAS President to put it on hold.
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