The Juncker team revealed
Although president-elect Jean-Claude Juncker is still interviewing candidates for Commissioners, EurActiv has seen a draft organigram prepared by his services and dated 2 September, in which every single commissioner is assigned a portfolio.
The document is clearly not a final version and subject to change.
Transport service from the European School to the JRC Crèche/Garderie
As some of you may already
know, the transport service for our children going from the European School to
the JRC Crèche/Garderie was in danger of being discontinued this year due to a
lack of budget resources of the Cooperativa Trasporti.
We consider this service as socially
useful and of great value to the JRC (see the note signed by all Ispra Unions) as it contributes to facilitating
the work-life balance of our colleagues and increases the attractiveness of the
JRC Ispra site.
We are happy to inform you
that, also with the contribution of our R&D representative in COPAS (*see
below), an agreement has been reached to use, exceptionally, social
credits normally allocated to social activities and sport clubs to support the
service and guarantee the transport of children to the JRC Ispra
Crèche/Garderie for the school year 2014/2015.
At the same time, we wish to
express our disappointment that the JRC Administration has not yet found
a sustainable means to ensure the continuity of this service for future
years.
We invite once again the JRC
Administration (*see below) to actively initiate discussions with all the
involved stakeholders in order to find a sustainable long-term solution.
* From the minutes of the 4th COPAS
Ispra/Seville meeting 2014 - 30th June 2014:
As requested by DC at the previous COPAS meeting, RK (Ed., Robert Kenny,
R&D) presented further information.
He informed the members that the Cooperative had added this extra bus
two years ago in order to provide a very important service to parents of
children attending the Garderie or otherwise being collected at the Clubhouse.
This service is also socially valuable to the JRC, since it allows parents of
young children to optimise their work-life balance.
RK reported that this service was added by the Cooperative in the
knowledge that it could only be funded from reserves for a short time. Furthermore,
the President of the Cooperative had stated that he had already contacted the
JRC at the end of 2013 to alert them that they would have to stop the service
in July 2014, if a source of financing was not found, but no solution had been
identified. It was noted that the Cooperative has never officially requested
funding from COPAS.
In case COPAS will finance the
service much information will have to be provided, i.e. the accounts of the
cooperative, the bank account and the reasons why the Cooperative cannot afford
to pay anymore. RK had also contacted the PMO in Brussels, which had explained
that as it stands the PMO cannot reimburse the further costs incurred by the
extra bus provided between the school and the Garderie.
The PMO made some unofficial suggestions for a solution which could possibly
allow coverage of this service, but RK did not report details to COPAS as it should
properly be discussed between the Cooperative, PMO and JRC.
RK regrets that it has become urgent and critical for the continuation
of the service that the only solution would seem to be that COPAS agree to
grant the funding with no time left to try to find alternative solutions.
Internal competitions: free consultation with our lawyers
AD10 (COM/1ADV10/13) - AD 12 (COM/2/ADV12/13)
AD7 (COM/1/AD7/13) - AD8 (COM/2/AD8/13) - AD9 (COM/3/AD9/13)
AST 3 (COM/1/AST3/13 - AST4 (COM/2/AST4/13)
Throughout the whole procees, R&D has assisted unsuccessful applicants by providing them with “request for review” templates and Article 90 templates drafted in close cooperation with specialised lawyers (R&D, its legal team and its lawyers).
Following the publication of the reserve lists, R&D is available to assist concerned colleagues and help them formulate an appeal where possible.
FREE CONSULTATION with the R&D lawyer and our experts
R&D has decided to provide to ALL UNSUCCESSFUL CANDIDATES of these internal competitions a FREE CONSULTATION with our lawyer and our internal experts.
If you wish to make an appointment do not hesitate to contact us by email at OSP-RD@ec.europa.eu
OUR POSITION
We share our colleagues’ deep disappointment regarding the results of these competitions:
Who could enthuse a system that, even if applied without blunders, would only combine the statistically insignificant likelihood of success with a pathetic approach that instead of increasing promotion opportunities by adding the laureates on the list of those promoted… would remove their job positions from the number of normal promotions, and this, despite a chronic shortage compared to the quotas of statutory means intended for the maintenance of a so-called career equivalence since… 2004?
We wish to remind you that as soon a the internal competitions were presented, R&D did not fail to point out all the limits and dangers of the chosen approach and its implementation (Renard déchaîné - juillet 2013 ; Internal competitions: the truth will be out! ; Internal competitions - R&D always at your side!) R&D underlined that these procedures were far from bringing even the start of a solution to the career problems suffered by our post-2004 colleagues.
R&D will not allow poor political decisions at the root of these internal competitions to become an excuse not to organise other ones in the future, thereby depriving the post-2004 and contractual agents colleagues of an ESSENTIAL tool to improve their situation!
NEXT STEPS
The Commission promised to carefully evaluate the results of the recently concluded competitions before organising any future ones. To this end:
1.R&D will make available a detailed technical and political analysis of these competition results to staff and the administration, once again pointing out the problems and limitations in both the conception and implementation of these procedures
2. Following the shameful manipulation of these internal competitions by the Barroso Commission, R&D will appeal to President Juncker in order to start a discussion with trade unions for agreement on effective measures, to be implemented in a transparent and fair manner, which could meet the legitimate expectations of our colleagues.
NGO backlash to Chief Scientific Advisor position grows
Read the full article
Coordinated Action against the 2014 Staff Regulations
To defend staff to the best of our ability, the trade unions and staff associations of all institutions have decided to join forces for the lodging of appeals. That will enable us to ensure that each appeal covers all the pleas in law and arguments used in the various complaints.
By acting together, we will also show the Court of Justice that it is not just a few isolated colleagues, but all staff of all institutions who are up in arms against the illegalities of the new Staff Regulations and the disdain that the co-legislator has shown for staff’s acquired rights.
For most appeals it will not be necessary for everybody who made a complaint to appeal. We will make an appeal in each case for a certain number of representative cases.
To allow us to choose those cases, we ask all those who made a complaint to send a message to the following email address set up for all trade unions and staff associations for the purpose of managing the appeals (OSP.Recours2014@gmail.com) indicating the complaints that you introduced and giving a short summary of your situation (for example, for travelling time and annual travel costs, indicate your place of origin, whether you return there often, your family situation, what you received previously and your function group, or contract type, and grade).
Warning: for the appeal for those who have lost their right to travelling time and to the annual payment of travel costs (a total loss, not a reduction in the amount paid), the timing is very tight: the appeals have to be lodged before the end of August.
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!
Action plan buildings 100&101
A series of remediative measure is going to be put into place at end of the year.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
