In the recent elections, Generation 2004 won four seats (out of 21) on the Ispra/Seville Local Staff Committee (LSC), which means a doubling of the number of seats, compared to the last elections. The list votes cast for Generation 2004 increased from 8.5 % to 12.3 % and the preferential votes from 9.2 % to 22.5 %. This is, overall, an excellent result considering that we faced a number of obstacles during the electoral process, including a sudden re-interpretation of the rules on supplementary candidate nominations, leading to the rejection of seven Generation 2004 candidates by the Electoral Bureau (EB), even though those candidates were nominated following the EB’s initial instructions. A particular difficulty of these elections was the timing.
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Just because DG HR demanded to have the LSC elections still in May, bluntly neglecting the well-reasoned decisions of the General Assembly of Ispra/Seville staff to have it at a later time, the polling period fell during the Pentecost holidays. This led to the electoral campaign being rather short and the quorum (two thirds of staff) being met only on the very last day of the extended (!) electoral period.
In addition, two main issues made the Ispra/Seville LSC elections specific: Firstly, the (entirely reasonable) wish of the Seville staff to get their own LSC, which triggered the absorption of a substantial part of the votes by one list (Sevilla Voice) that lobbied specifically for a separate Seville LSC, even though this request was fully supported by Generation 2004 and other unions. Notably, Generation 2004 is now the only list with elected LSC members from both sites, Ispra and Seville. Secondly, it needs to be kept in mind that the Ispra and Seville sites are almost exclusively staffed by DG JRC, which employs a very high number (about 45 %) of Contract Agents (CA) overall, and with CAs comprising over 65% of staff in Seville. This situation may explain the substantial number of votes cast (15.5 % list votes and 16.0 % preferential votes) for the joint list of Save Europe and ISCA (Ispra Seville Contract Agents) which had an exclusive focus on CA-specific topics. As a result, in total, seven seats of the Ispra/Seville LSC were won by lists focusing fully or partially on very specific topics.
The distribution of seats can be seen in the chart and election results in more detail can be seen here.[1] [2]
Many thanks to all candidates for their contributions to the electoral campaign!
Congratulations to the elected colleagues!
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[1] [5] https://connected.cnect.cec.eu.int/docs/DOC-163708 [6]
toolTips('.classtoolTips23','Contract Agents (CAs) were created by the 2004 staff regulations Reform. There are two types of CA: those with unlimited contracts, 3A [7] (‘indefinite’) and those with time-limited contracts [8], 3B [9]. CAs can belong to 4 different function groups (\'GF\') with different responsibilities and salaries [10].
As the use of contract staff becomes increasingly common, there has been a corresponding increase in the diversity of status and pay of the Commission’s workforce. For example, GFIV contract staff meeting the same minimum recruitment requirements (education and experience) as junior administrators may earn 28 % less. (European Court of Auditors, 2019, Special report no 15/2019 [11]: Implementation of the 2014 staff reform package at the Commission – Big savings but not without consequences for staff, point 61, page 34)
We have a working group dedicated to the dossier, and in December 2012 we addressed the first of many letters (\'notes\') about Contract Agents to Human Resources of all Institutions and agencies [12] (here is the cover e-mail [13]).
As a background you can see the report of the Commission to the Council regarding the recruitment of the contract agents in 2010 [14] (in French, COM(2011)802 final 23.11.2011).
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