Each year thousands of colleagues end the year with many unused holidays. The regulations allow the transfer of holidays rights to the next year of up to 12 days. The rest is lost unless a clear justification is provided. ‘Use your holiday or lose it‘ is very much in evidence at the Commission. However, do you know how many holidays in total are lost each year?
Some 7.664 days of annual leave days were lost and not carried-over from 2020 to 2021: this is far from ideal [1]. Has the situation improved any? We have led the Central Staff Committee (CSC) push for HR to automate the procedure of holidays carry-over since 2021. The goal was to avoid the burden for both managers and regular staff to undergo a request & approval procedure where the carry over is a right and Sysper already has the necessary information (i.e. where colleagues have been sick for one period of at least 20 working days). The CSC also asked for figures to understand how many such cases exist.
HR have been unable to implement the automation agreed 10.01.2022 and state that the responsibility is on line managers to do this manually in anticipation of a future edition being able to do this transfer without human intervention. We look forward to seeing this done. We plan a follow-up note asking why, if this transfer is being done manually, so many colleagues can be seen to be missing out.
HR provided the following amazing figures:
The figures for the carry-over exercise of 2022 to 2023 better then worse?
Carry-over period | colleagues eligible for a carry-over of more than 12 annual days | Colleagues who requested the days | Colleagues who did not requested the days | Days carried over | Days not carried over (days lost) |
2020 to 2021 | 7664 | ||||
2021 to 2022 | |||||
2022 to 2023 | 6626 | 3908 | 2718 | 32308.52 | 7878.97 |
2023 to 2024 | 6473 | 3982 | 2491 | 31882.39 | 7579.39 |
This makes a continuous number of around 7700 leave days unused and lost every year, approximately 35 full-time equivalents (FTEs). That is, the equivalent of 35 colleagues working full time without a salary.
The constant reduction of staff every year in the Commission while increasing the workload can only be solved with overtime or a collapse of the institution, maybe both in the long term.
Generation 2004 believes that this ever-constant increase of efficiency is unrealistic and that the Commission has to be honest to the Member States and explain that it is not possible to constantly do more with less.
Burnout: ‘A work-related condition of emotional exhaustion in which interest in work, personal achievement, and efficiency decline sharply and the sufferer is no longer capable of making decisions. The condition is brought on by the unrelenting stress of pressure at work and is frequently experienced by individuals in jobs involving considerable involvement with people, who derive a major part of their self-esteem from their work, and have few interests outside it.’ (Oxford Reference dictionary)
Are you working extra hours to the point of not only not recuperating your overtime but also not using your deserved holidays? We’d like to hear from you. The Commission cannot simultaneously lament increasing cases of burnout while expecting colleagues to be available whenever called. It is inconsistent for employers anywhere to talk about a disconnection period/digital detox and work-life balance on the one hand and then to insist on staff belonging to work groups on private devices on the other. You have no obligation to join these groups!
Here’s a reworked text, based on an email our colleague sent to hierarchy for a similar situation:
Please share the detailed DG standby (‘business continuity’) rules (required by staff regulations, Article 55(3)) to answer the example questions below and so manage everyone’s expectations.
How quickly are staff expected to react to the advisory phone and what follow-up is expected of them?
What provision is made for those who have no access to a computer when phoned? (e.g. on annual leave, in the cinema or in a hospital waiting room)
Would those working until 23.00 be excused from availability-time start the following day of 09.30? (Working Time Directive: ‘in every 24 hours a worker is entitled to a minimum of 11 consecutive hours of rest’.)
Have staff to comply with availability time and then do the additional hours?
How do the rules apply to those who do not work full time?
What financial, time credit or other compensation is provided to staff having the obligation to make themselves available in this way? (Council Regulations on standby duty (No 495/77))
Thanks for your help,
As always, we appreciate your feedback.
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[1] Ms Ingestad note to the CSC 10.01.2022 (response to 30/11/2021(2021)7365504) provided this figure.