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

Art. 90 CC - Act now!

17/03/2011 ,
As promised, we have prepared a complaint based on art. 90.2 of the Staff Regulations against the unjustified decrease of our Correction Coefficient to 92,3%.

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 from a highly specialised company. These statistics confirm exactly our findings and the wrong balance set by Eurostat for the heading “Energy”.
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

09/03/2011 ,
R&D is about to finalise a complaint to the appointing authority, according to art. 90 of the staff regulations, in the context of its decision to lower the correction coefficient (CC) for Varese to an unacceptable value of 92,3%.
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

22/02/2011
If you are a newcomer and would like to learn Italian,
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

08/02/2011
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
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