Welcome to the 5 May 2020 Generation 2004 Newsletter. COVID-19 is still capturing our near full attention! However, while many report on progress of the pandemic and its related crisis, at Generation 2004 we are busy trying to improve conditions of staff during these difficult times: read here a summary of what we have been doing. In more detail among other things we asked DG HR and DIGIT to review the rules on what equipment can be taken home from the office during the mandatory teleworking and also asked for refund of privately bought IT equipment acquired by staff to be able to fulfil their duties during this stressful period. We also took a close look at the Commission plan to return to the office (aka “Operation Return”) and launched a petition to request immediate and effective help for parents in distress. Even if you do not have children, please sign it in solidarity with the many colleagues nearing a breaking point.

In more specific, but still somewhat COVID-19 related news we sent a note to DG COMM to ask for the yearly rotation exercise to be suspended during the COVID-19 crisis. We also too the chance to ask for a review of the whole rotation exercise, which, 12 years after its introduction, has apparently not aged too well.

Finally, in COVID-19 free news, we took a close look at the Local Agents social dialogue which is currently going on at the EEAS, and we are hiring a Secretary for our team in Brussels.

If this is not enough, please rest assured that there is more great content on our website for you to explore!!!

Meanwhile, stay safe and stay home!

Welcome to the latest Generation 2004 newsletter. In this issue, we will keep covering the working conditions changes related to the COVID-19 crisis. Alongside this we will complete our series of articles on JSIS complementary health insurance, give you some insight into the transfer of pension rights, remind you why Generation 2004 must exist and finally ‘retract’ our recent article on positive change at the Local Staff Committee Brussels. We are also looking for a new secretary for our Brussels headquarters.

On a different note, as you may have noticed, the number of articles in this issue is lower than usual and the time since the previous issue is also shorter than usual; this is not an accident and is part of a new format we are introducing to our newsletter and communication strategy.

In general, especially when compared with other Commission staff organisations, Generation 2004 has always taken a frugal approach to emailing colleagues. Apart from announcing some events and actions here and there, throughout our near 8 years of existence, we have refrained from spamming colleagues with individual union tract mass emails and we have ‘stubbornly’ stuck to our policy of publishing and producing a newsletter, which sees, on average, 6 to 8 issues per year, and prides itself on the quality of its content. We have however come to realise that this policy has led us to publish issues of the newsletter which are too long, and where some of the articles are already a bit aged.

Today we introduce a reduction in the length of the list of articles per issue and an increase in frequency to one or two issues per month. We believe this will allow us to serve you better without reducing the quality of our articles: something we have always striven for!