Parking for senior management: there is no right way to do a wrong thing...
It seems that this provision was established following a disputable addition to regulations proposed by the Road Safety Committee, after their submission to the Ispra site Director last year. This proposal, initially, excluded explicitly any special car parking place other than those for people with reduced mobility, for service cars and for loading/unloading purposes.
R&D has received some interesting and ironic reactions from colleagues, expressing all their disbelief and also frustration about the sudden appearance of these notices without any explanation. R&D would like to share some of these comments, because they show the extent of the gap between JRC Staff and its hierarchy:
• Some colleagues asked ironically to establish a hierarchy of parking privileges reflecting functions - by differentiating parking for Senior, Middle and even Lower management (Project Leaders) - or even banning “external staff vehicles” from the site.
• Another leitmotif was the suggestion of establishing further Senior Management privileges, which communicate effectively the (auto referential) importance of our senior hierarchy. The lengthy list includes dedicated restrooms, priority site entrance, reserved buttons for better coffee at the vending machines etc. One colleague was even concerned about the apparent lack of parking places for Senior Management Service Bicycles (gold-plated of course) - we love this one!
• There was also some creativity in inventing possible sanctions for anyone who dares to occupy a “SM-Parking place”, most of them being copied from medieval books on torture…
Hey, Senior Managers, just to make sure that you understand, this was meant to be light-hearted fun!!! But let’s stop with irony here.
R&D (see our message of November 2013) is seriously concerned about this trend, that demonstrates the incapacity of our Senior Management to keep staff motivation high, especially when staff has been negatively affected by the new Staff Regulations.
In our opinion, this behavior is contrasting with the encouraging signals received from our new Director General, and it undermines his "One JRC, One Team" declared approach.
Moreover it appears that the aforementioned rules have been established behind closed doors, without a clear and transparent communication to staff (the Road regulations published on Ispranet make no reference): shyness or symptom of embarrassment?
We believe that this decision, even if procedurally correct, represents an unfortunate lapse of style. In fact, the subliminal message sent to staff is that Senior Management is taking its privileges too seriously (apparently by giving a higher priority to their parking needs than to those of colleagues with reduced mobility, for example). Not to mention the recently announced "action plan" for bdgs. 100 & 101 (c.f. "For car parking the buildings policy (decided in consultation with the directors of the institutes) is to use existing spaces also not in the immediate vicinity of the buildings…") – it’s a pity that this action plan has now been "carjacked".
We invite Senior Managers to set an example and renounce their reserved car parking place. We will be pleased to inform staff of any individual decision in this sense.
R&D will continue to monitor and expose any indiscriminate proliferation of privileges. One JRC, one Team… hopefully!
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