Our recent leaflets about promotions made many of you to ask also for an analysis of career perspectives for younger permanent staff and newcomers in general.
\nWe are happy to oblige by providing a general state of the play for these colleagues:<\/p>\n
Heavily discriminated against when they started to work for the Commission, the first generation of newly recruited staff after the Kinnock reform, suitably nicknamed \u2026 the Naufrag\u00e9s (or the Shipwrecked), realized very soon that being taken on at much lower salary and grade levels than provided by the general competitions they had succeeded before the reform, was just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
R&D have done everything in our power to help this first generation of post reform victims\u2026and we went even as far as to assign with them even the Commission to justice so as to defend their rights (for more about the misadventure of the Naufrag\u00e9s <\/strong>read more…<\/strong><\/a> )<\/strong><\/p>\n But if this starter was difficult to stomach, the main course proved even stickier to swallow. The new adverse statutory framework confronted the Naufrag\u00e9s as well as all new coming staff thereafter, with much lighter and regressing salary steps, offering\u2026 less revenue advancement in every grade for periods much\u2026 shorter than before while obliging them to fight perpetually and year after year their\u2026 CDR to complete somehow timely a full career requiring\u2026 twice as many promotions than in the past [doubling, thus, the \u201cexcluded from promotion\u201d years ] and with half of them to empty grades!<\/p>\n This situation has been having perverse consequences not only for the recently recruited staff but also for the Institution\u2019s attractiveness in the labor market. R&D realized these dangers for both staff and the Commission in time. This is why we have fought hard against the Kinnock reform back in 2003\/2004 and asked staff to mobilize and even to go on strike in order to avoid, among other things, the victimization and downgrading of future colleagues and the weakening of the European civil service as a whole. <\/strong><\/p>\n The brave ones who, nevertheless, became permanent staff recently, probably also in the name of a European ideal that admittedly doesn\u2019t pay an expatriate\u2019s rent well enough any longer, were reserved more unpleasant surprises. R&D submitted our own proposals for a much leaner and transparent staff appraisal and promotion system on the base of rewards proportional to short and long term performance and merit, along the lines of the particularly successful system used in European Parliament (for our proposals see also CDR: end of a nightmare<\/a> and The fox: CDR abolished<\/a>) bearing also in mind the critical situation this new reform was about to create for newly recruited colleagues<\/strong><\/p>\n Actually for the recently recruited AST and AD staff who usually land in Commission\u2019s services at the age of 35, the way the Kallas reform complemented This frustrates further young and no so young permanent staff and makes it impossible for them to accomplish a full career by the age of retirement. And necessary promotion points, when considered in conjunction with real age data, lead to the same preoccupying conclusions even for newcomers starting at higher initial grades.<\/p>\n If you are curious enough to do the math for yourself, let\u2019s play the game together:<\/p>\n – Add thresholds of remaining promotions in your case.
\nThe Commission as employer has been unable to woo a great many potential high quality candidates because it offers worse than before salary and career perspectives, easily matched nowadays for most eligible candidates nearer to home.<\/p>\n
\nActually the new Kallas reform of the appraisal, promotion and appeal system managed to change things for the \u2026worse since it introduced a completely opaque staff appraisal procedure providing for enormous differences in promotion rewards [points] for minimal differences in real performance in conjunction to inadequate appeal treatment mechanisms.<\/p>\n
\nthe Kinnock method means that, in order to get a full pension covering all steps of respective final grades, at the age of normal retirement [65 years], they need to collect more or less \u2026220\/22 points every year.<\/p>\nYes, believe it or not,
\nRIGHT NOW MORE OR LESS 10 PROMOTION POINTS A YEAR are necessary for a complete\u2026 career if, for instance, you are recruited as AD5 at the age of 35!<\/h3>\n
\nIn other words, due to the Kinnock career structure, at least the last 2-3 promotions have become practically inaccessible for normal hard working and high performing \u00ab\u00a0young\u00a0\u00bb and not so young recently recruited colleagues.<\/p>\nTake for example YOUR OWN CASE:<\/h3>\n
\n– Subtract your rucksack today. You see already how many points you need to get you to the summit of your career.
\n– Divide this number by the years you still have to go before retirement minus 8 [8 being the number of years corresponding to the 4 \u201creal\u201d salary steps for career\u2019s final grades].
\n– The number you have just found represents the promotion points you are required to collect on average per year for a complete career.<\/p>\nToo busy to spend time like this? Then have a look at our own, indicative but revealing, calculations for AD staff. (No password needed on the excel sheet)<\/h3>\n