*Update 24.01.2025: You have until Friday 31 January to request the transfer of >12 days of annual leave from 2024 to 2025. Even if your circumstances make this a right, please still request it: don’t miss out!*
Original article: Please use your time for yourself and your own wellbeing! Look below at just how much time colleagues already donate (voluntarily or otherwise) to the Commission and yet it’s still not enough, it’s never enough: there is always more work to be done. Please don’t give your valuable time away for free: there are no rewards and it will become expected of you.
The Court of Auditors (ECA) has published figures on the amount of uncompensated extra time worked at the Commission. The figure substantially surpasses our (now rather conservative) estimate of it being the equivalent of 35 colleagues working all year for free. By how much were our figures out? Are you willing to take a guess?
The real figure is closer to 740 colleagues working for free, and remember that this covers only the time declared, all of those minutes that were never declared remain invisible, as though that valuable time was never even gifted to the Commission in the first place. We add this to the estimated 7579 days lost and not transferred from one year to the next[1]. Please use your time for you!
Temporary mobility of staff can similarly help at times of peak workload. However, this does not address the systemic issue of managing an increased workload with capped resources – a deteriorating work-life balance has been reported in staff surveys, and the reliance on unpaid overtime has become commonplace in some departments. The ways in which working patterns are registered and flexitime is implemented in most institutions means that staff do not always have to formally record overtime worked when they are ineligible for financial compensation. However, all Commission staff record their working hours. The Commission’s records show that, on average between 2019 and 2023, the total volume of uncompensated extra hours worked every year corresponded to the equivalent of around 740 full-time staff (2.75 % of its workforce). Special report 24/2024: EU Civil service – A flexible employment framework, insufficiently used to improve workforce management. Paragraph 28
Generation 2004 believes that this ever-constant increase of efficiency is unrealistic and that a reliance on uncompensated overtime and ‘voluntary’ standby to provide a service is unsustainable. The Commission has to be honest to the Member States and explain that it is not possible to constantly do more with less. The ECA also traces the current situation to their previous special report.
In our 2019 report on the EU staff regulations, we identified certain structural challenges that affect the EU civil service: an ageing workforce, increased imbalances in the staff (geographical, types of contract), and the difficulties in managing an increased workload with a reduced number of staff. Special report 24/2024: Paragraph 09
The Commission cannot simultaneously lament increasing cases of burnout and sickness while expecting colleagues to be available whenever called (even during holiday periods!). 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!
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)
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))
Feel free to add to these questions or to tell us what worked for you!
As always, we appreciate your feedback.
If you appreciate our work, please consider becoming a member of Generation 2004.
[1] To say nothing of those with the right to transfer all of their leave from one year to the next (e.g. those who have been off sick for 20 or more consecutive working days) who miss out because they do not ask for it within the window of availability. Thanks to our work at the Central Staff Committee, this responsibility should now be on the line manager. If you’re having any difficulties, get in touch.
