Remember our petition in support of Contract Agents [1] from last year? The one that closed 27 November with 1 415 signatures? (Thanks very much for your support!) It’s now with the European Parliament and still moving [2]! Here [3] are details on the next steps[1].
The petitioner criticises the 2004 and 2014 reforms of the EU staff regulations, which created a system in which the date of recruitment is more important for career development than merit, qualification, and professional expertise. The Commission has continuously replaced permanent officials with contract agents (CAs), with CAs currently representing over 22 % of the Commission’s workforce. Although contractual staff is only supposed to perform “non-core tasks”, they do the work of permanent officials without being recognised accordingly. Moreover, there is an increase in harassment cases associated to tensions between permanent officials and CAs. The petitioner therefore demands the elimination of structural unfairness and the implementation of the principle of “equal pay for equal work”. To this end, she proposes a series of measures to improve the working conditions of CAs, including permanent contracts for those working on permanent tasks, fair reclassification rates, better access to the EU institutions internal job market and preferential recruitment over external applicants.
We will keep you posted on this action and related events. In the meantime we have another petition [4], this time on the working conditions of our AST/SC colleagues, let’s show our solidarity with all colleagues disproportionately affected by the 2004 and 2014 staff reforms!
If you have any comments or questions, or you wish to share your experience, please do contact us [5] or add a comment below!
[1] Here’s the European Parliament Committee on Petitions [6]
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Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union (\'Staff Regulations [7] (SR)\') are rules stating:
• fundamental conditions of service
• basic rights, duties and obligations of staff.
The SR have been reformed x 2 (so far):
• 2004 (Kinnock White paper)
• 2014 (Regulation 1023/2013 [8])
For a summary of stated intentions and real outcomes of those two reforms check out: European Court of Auditors, 2019, Special report no 15/2019 [9]: Implementation of the 2014 staff reform package at the Commission – Big savings but not without consequences for staff
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Contract Agents (CAs) were created by the 2004 Staff Regulations Reform. There are two types of CA: those with unlimited contracts, 3A [10] (‘indefinite’) and those with time-limited contracts [11], 3B [12]. CAs can belong to 4 different function groups (\'GF\') with different responsibilities and salaries [13].
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 [9]: 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 [14] (here is the cover e-mail [15]).
As a background you can see the report of the Commission to the Council regarding the recruitment of the contract agents in 2010 [16] (in French, COM(2011)802 final 23.11.2011).
Our articles on Contract Agents [17]
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