EPSO Open Competitions training course

24/05/2011
R&D is happy to organise a training course for those who are participating in the EPSO Open Competitions.
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

13/05/2011
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

10/05/2011 ,
Some of you have asked us if it would make sense to participate in the new art.90, recently launched by US-I.
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

06/05/2011

- 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?

27/04/2011

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

22/04/2011
We are organising a training course aimed at the preparation of the Assessment Centre phase of EPSO Open Competions.
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

12/04/2011
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.
For these reasons the CLP is very sorry that we cannot give a positive response to your request and we leave it up to each staff member individually to decide to participate in the SSS or not.
Kind regards,
Chris van der Aat
CLP Ispra/Seville
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