OSPs

‘Contract agents collective’ petition: to sign or not to sign?  

Contract Agents, Newsletter - 2024-10-28, OSPs, Petition, Staff Categories, Surveys, Working conditions Print This Post

*Update 20.12.2024, Here’s our Note to HR on European Court of Auditors Special report.pdf.*

Original article: Many of you will have recently received a message from a ‘contract agents collective’ and lots are reaching out to us for more details on this initiative and to ask whether we recommend signing the petition. Despite some informal, last-minute communication, this petition has come a little out of the blue to us. 

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Promising and selling unicorns

Brussels, Elections, Geel, Ispra-Seville, Karlsruhe, Local Staff Committee, Luxembourg, Newsletter - 2021-12-02, OSPs, Outside the Union, Petition, Petten, Promotions, reclassification, Social Dialogue, Staff Categories, Working conditions Print This Post

*This article was published in November 2021 in response to promises made during Brussels, Karlsruhe and Ispra elections. Here are the Karlsruhe 2021 results.*

On allowances to cover the additional costs of teleworking and other promises

It is election time for many sites of the Commission and there are two unmistakable signs for this:

  • Your inbox is filling with largely indistinguishable e-mails asking to vote for union X or union Y, because they have done SO MUCH for you in the last year (although for some of them, you cannot remember ever having seen any action or results).
  • The e-mails contain a hodgepodge of measures that they are demanding, often defying any sense of reality: unicorns, rainbows, a guaranteed lottery win … 

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On career unionism and the fallacy of irreplaceability (long read)

Central Staff Committee, Elections, Local Staff Committee, Newsletter - 2021-06-16, OSPs, Social Dialogue Print This Post

To start with, lets clear the air and get this out in the open: the discussions between the administration and the staff (‘social dialogue (SD)’) via the elected representatives (‘staff representation (SR)’)  and the trade unions and professional staff associations (OSPs), are necessary. As DG Human Resources and Security (DG HR) puts it on the Staff Matters website, the social dialogue: Continue reading On career unionism and the fallacy of irreplaceability (long read) →