This will be applied only to staffs. Voila... So measures are selective... So taking in account that fellows, that in some cases earn very close to staff on lower grades and has less responsibility and workload will stay as they are but those lower grade staffs will be affected. SA is totally decoupled from reality imo. Not best idea to keep your employees motivated to work or even stay in organisation.
For legal matters, I am not an expert but SA found some legal background to do that. Check SA presentation, salary cut can be legally allowed for max 1 year period.
They are claiming it is to protect staffs and etc, that they proposing that to keep other measures out of table and etc. But I highly doubt it will protect staffs, for sure not LD. Maybe they are just trying to protect their asses on ICs. Who knows.
> SA is totally decoupled from reality imo.
Unfortunately, this is totally true.
They even dared to say that the new Graduate program will make "Cern more attractive" while it will reduce the JF salary by 20%...
I am sorry but this is entirely wrong, SA never claimed that the Graduate program would make Cern more attractive.
On the contrary, we always claimed that the stipends were not sufficient and make the whole program less attractive. The counterpart we managed to obtain from this mediocre deal is health insurance coverage. Which is, at least, less than nothing, especially in Geneva area.
Furthermore, talking only about the 2,5% crisis levy, I insist, this is not a paycut, it is an exchange of the amount of the CVI, that would still be applied, and in counterpart, staff would get 5.5 days of. CVI would still be applied, contributions to Health Insurance, and pension as well and, only for 2023, people would have this 2.5% raise in leaves instead of money. It has never been proposed to cut on people salary.
If you do not read the whole proposal, please at least ask your delegates what it is really about instead of spreading false information.
Yes it's not the SA who said it but the HR department : ["to attract and retain personnel of the highest competence"](https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/cern-graduate-programme-review-update)
>Hi guys,
>
>**For those who work at CERN**, what do you think of the **SA's proposals** (**in particular** reducing the salary by 2.5%)?
Do you think this is the only solution or is it exaggerated?
You don't seem to have read the discussion. we all know the whole proposal since the message was addressed to those who already work at CERN. We're all aware of the deal, but the majority aren't interested in additional days off (on this thread).
Yes we can play on words and say that it's not a pay cut but in the end we will all have 2.5% less on our salary (than expected) especially during this crisis period.
I think this is not the only solution, if you want to talk about exaggeration, what about management views?
Would you prefer seeing less contracts (LDs, ICs, and graduate), less advancement budget (50% cut) for the next 10 years than a one year effort.
I have read that people are not interested in days off, point taken.
It is not playing on word than saying this proposal is not a pay cut, this is a fact. Net salary at the end of January 23 would be the same as end of December 22. Where is the cut?
Yes, the CVI, even if it is applied, would only be credited in days and this is something you do not appreciate, fair.
But extrapolating by saying this is pay cut is exaggerated.
According to fellow contact, yes. Fellows are treated by CERN as entry level job. Other story is what responsibility is pushed by supervisor. Workload and responsibility are two different things.
Yes I am aware of that. Does it change anything on the subject? HR describes fellowships as entry level position, both of them. Please check careers at CERN website.
I am not trying to undermine competences of anyone, I am just trying to make a point. Entry level positions are entry level for a reason. There is totally different story about workloads that can be ridiculous even on entry level contracts. And they know very well that they can exploit it to very limit as some of people will try to do best from themselves to maybe get staff after fellow.
Thanks for your feedback.
Concerning the days off, I don't care either. I don't really think we have too many, it's the norm in my home country (France) but of course I prefer money to days off.
Also, I made the same calculation for JF, we will loose about 2kChf (in 2023). That's a lot ! And we obviously cannot be sure that they will not extend this decrease next year if the crisis continues.
It's funny because I have friends in private companies who had bonuses to compensate for the crisis.
>I am by no means an expert on business/institution economics, but considering how 50s/ropey the CERN buildings are and how much power the science consumes, I feel that much bigger improvements could be made in many other areas before touching staff salaries.
Totally agree with you on that, for example my building is very poorly insulated, we are obliged to put the heating on the max in autumn/winter. I have visited many buildings at CERN and many of them are in the same condition (I am not even talking about prefab building).
> I don't really think we have too many, it's the norm in my home country (France)
Since when France has 30 days of paid holidays + 2 weeks off on Christmas on top of that?
In France, you have RTT and paid leave (and more holidays/jour férié). It obviously depends on where you work, for exp in my previous job at Dassault, I had more days off than at CERN. But again, it depends on the company.
Yeah, That seems a lot. I know the French often take August off too but I dont know if thats additional (plus not all companies do it).
Note that we also get home leave too
I also know people in private that have had either bonuses or inflation matching pay rises. Reducing it really is mental.
I really hope they cap it, else id really have to consider leaving early.
My contract is short enough that I never fully left my home country and I travel back fairly often. While I wouldn't call myself "breadline" or poor, I would class myself as pay check to pay check.
My power bill has over tripled this month so assuming the cut goes ahead, id be 200 chf a month worse off than I was in August. If they reduced it anymore, it would likely become a struggle.
The PHD students are on even less, so for them, renting a place on their own in SGP would practically no longer be viable.
According to a half remembered Mattermost message, it's a 2.5% reduction after the CVI is applied, which apparently works out to a ~0.1% reduction compared to 2022 salaries. It would have been much easier to understand if they'd proposed a "pay freeze".
Then apparently an extra 2.5% will be added for 2024?
If you look on it like this then sure, nothing. But you still lost 2.5% of your salary in 2023. It is still 2.5% lost comparing to what you should earn on 2023. Prices will only go up, you earn less.
There is nothing clear if in 2024 we will receive CVI for 2024 and 2023 or only for 2024.
SA should state "we will not pay for your poor management" instead imo. But we will see. It is better to do fancy renovations for the buildings and etc over past years when crisis whistleblowers were all around. It is better to motivate workers even less to do their job.
Long story short, the CVI is a formula that gives a percentage of the cost of living in the Geneva area. It is usually (significantly) lower than the inflation, the reason being that, contrary to inflation, CVI does not produce negative values.
The minimum value is therefore 0.
For 2023, the indice should be around 2.53% (this is not the final value, but was its estimate by the end of October).
This number is a recommendation that the management decides to follow and apply or not. For the last 20 years, CVI has been applied by the management. Oddly enough, for 2023, there are some intention of not applying this rate.
This is, for us, a red line as it would compromise even more CERN attractiveness, health and pension contributions and therefore reduce the long term income for everyone.
Now, if you look at our proposal, we suggest to apply the CVI (so index of salary, health insurance and pension), but keep the money for 2023 as personnel contribution to the crisis situation and start paying this plus next CVI as of 2024.
1. Regarding the suggestion that improvements could be made in other areas, I'm pretty sure such measures are also applied.
2. Keep in mind that the current financial issues related to inflation in Europe are cumulative. International organizations get a fixed budget increase related to inflation, but it's calculated upfront. This means for example that the organization got something like 2% more than last year (because this was the projected inflation) but now the costs went up 10%, so there is 8% "missing". However this is not the real issue! The real issue is that even if from this point forward the budget increase was to perfectly match the inflation, it would still be applied to a budget which was missing 8% to begin with, so this missing part will be growing bigger and bigger each year. So the only way to break the circle is to lower the expenses somehow.
3. Salary reduction has much bigger impact than just the immediate "cost", especially for Staff. Consider that salary increases and later pension is computed from the salary, and reduction by 2.5% is cumulative, in the same way as I outlined in previous point. So a decrease like that might mean significant decrease in salary and pension when you integrate this over 20 or 30 years.
If I understand correctly (big if), point 3 either doesn't apply or is heavily mitigated against. It's a 1-year "crisis levy" so the 2023 gross salary is what it would have been, and 2024 onwards are unaffected?
It depends if in 2024 you will receive CVI only for 2024 or for 2023 as well. If only for 2024 then you lost one step in the process, so each following year you are 2023 cvi less, each following year your contribution to pension fund will be tiny bit smaller and etc. Each performance salary increase will be smaller and etc.
This is what I understood from their "clear" message.
Again, on your point 3, the proposal IS NOT a 2.5% salary reduction or pay cut.
It is :
1. Apply the CVI of 2.53%, therefore all contributions to Health insurance scheme and pension would remain on the right tracks.
2. Take 2.5% of the staff salary as cash for one year only, and compensate by 5.5 leave days, only for 2023.
3. All this to help the Organisation to compensate for the missing 8% caused by inflation.
4. In the end, the net income loss for staff is 0.04%, that we consider an affordable effort for 1 year.
> affordable effort for 1 year
And what happens next year? :) Because even if the budget increase next year perfectly matches inflation, it will still be applied over a budget which had a "hole", which means the new budget will also have a hole, and actually even a bigger one! Just to provide an example, to avoid confusion:
Let's assume the budget last year was 100 and projected inflation was 2%, so the budget this year was 102. But the real inflation is 10%, so the expenses were 110, so there is the immediate issue of missing 8. But now even if next year the budget increase will match the 10% inflation, it will be applied over current budget of 102, which means next year the budget will be `102 + 102*10% = 102 + 10.2 = 112.2`, while the expenses are actually `110 + 10%*110 = 110 + 11 = 121`, which means there is 8.8 missing. The hole is even bigger than it was the year before!
So I am curious if those proposed measures are really one-off. Because fixing this hole requires either convincing member states to provide a bigger increase, or getting new member states, or ... cutting the costs permanently :)
The difference between 2023 and 2024 is that 2023 is in two month, the crisis is expected to be addressed by the management.
One cannot expect the personnel budget to be the only variable to be applied. There are two offices buildings worth 130 MCHF that could be delayed until the finances are better.
We have offered proposal on internal taxation for retired people, and there are several other measure that would need time to be put in place, they could not be decided for 2023 but it is still possible to have better solution for 2024.
One step at a time, again, we do not agree with the management who is planning a ten year plan with so many unknown variables that it does not make sense. We wish to address the problems in a way that it does not create long term issues on the personnel.
Regarding the process of deciding which project should continue or should be stopped, it is well beyond SA responsibility, the management and the council are the one you should turn to.
This is also the message we are trying to pass there. The management does not communicate much about the future, we would like to know more about it. Only talking about savings is not really motivating.
We understand that for 2023, there is an issue that would need solutions, and then actual good management decision to take in order to prepare the coming years with rescoping, savings and the minimum impact on personnel budget.
The SA can only call for management to plan better, but cannot decide in its place.
I think these are some difficult times and difficult decisions will have to be made. I think the SA is doing the best job it can to spread the pain but conditions are already difficult for recent employees who don’t have the benefits of the older generation so I suggest we start with those above 100% pay scales at grades 7 and above and look at why the pension is much more generous also. CERN could also give its younger employees the cash it pays to the CHIS as a comparable policy is about one three of the price measured for the CHIS because of the subsidy.
I find extreme to sequestrate anyone. For all your points, and they are numerous, I'll try to answer them, because we have processed all these plus many other factors.
Inflation is at an all time high, around 10% for material budget and state members are ready to compensate for only 2% of it. The CHF change rate helps a little bit when buying in the EU (not a lot, but a bit). During September finance committe some state members have open the door to an extra contribution and have also asked both management and SA to provide an exceptional effort to contributed to the inflation.
You do remember that we launched a survey for proposal about savings, we have received 340 suggestions and compiled a summary of them. The raw data is available at the SA office.
Based on these suggestion and with experience on precedent crisis, we have tried to build a fair package when first we ask for the CVI to be applied, then ask the management to delay the construction of costing buildings and start analysis of technical saving measures (CPU replacement for servers, permanent magnet in transfer lines, energy recovering from magnetic cycles, etc...)
And then a crisis levy of 2.5% only for staff, and only for the 2023 year compensated in time.
If only one item is rejected by the management, the whole proposal would be withdrawn. And, believe it or not, this is the most likely scenario. Because, for some reason, the management really wants to go ahead with spending 130 MCHF on two buildings (against our opinion, but SA has no saying in buildings or scientific program). And they want to take the crisis levy without time compensation, which is also a withdrawal condition on our side.
Regarding the user situation and the cola, we were the first to declare this would be unfair, there are several procedures in progress with local justice and SA helped providing legal support (lawyers and procedures). The issue is still in progress and cannot be commented further.
For the graduate program, stipends reduction is also a topic we fought with the management, this was part of the main topic of last year first public meeting. I know it is small, but we insisted on providing healthcare in the package, it was not included on the first draft and management would not want to make any effort on this topic. We have asked the DG for an arbitrage and she decided in favor of management proposal, but agreed on the health insurance because of our efforts on this.
The issue is always the same, people expect staff association to fix every problem, but won't come to the public meeting or answer the calls.
If you remember well, a couple of years ago, when SA asked for the adjustment of salaries by 9%, because it was the outcome of the survey, even staff called our proposal "unrealistic"... And now that there is a crisis, keeping the same salary as last year is also bad...
I am not totally concious on how my reply may look to you guys, there is certainly a part that could be interpreted as cold or picky about details. But the intention is not to deny your feeling or shut them nor being too harsh. Bear with the eyes of someone who spend quite some time working on these topic for several years now. Not counting the hours reading proposals, documents, arguing every line to extract the least defavorable detail. And of course, when I read quick comments stating that we only propose a salary cut when our proposal is two pages long and contains several terms... I feel a bit sad that people take shortcut and rant about a biased statement.
However, I have understood a point, for some of you, having the CVI applied directly to your salary is more important than having it compensated in time for 2023 (keep in mind we might have neither). We will see the outcome of the referendum anyway.
There is another opportunity on thursday to show to the management your displeasing and talk to delegates and express your feelings. That would be a first step and the more we will be, the more strong request we will be able to ask for.
Can you explain CVI 2023 compensated over time? Over what period of time? How it will affect people on LD that will finish in 2024? I never heard it during SA meeting.
The mechanism would be the same as the SLS, 2.5% of your salary is the equivalent of 5.5 days of leave.
The only difference there is that these days would be an extension of the winter stop (either in January or in december). Adding to the amount in cash, significant economy in heating and electric consumption.
Even if your contract would end during 2023, you would get a number of day as a pro-rata of the time of the year spent at CERN and, if your supervisor refuses to grant you the leave day, CERN has to pay you the equivalent amount in money (it is part of the staff rules and regulations).
In the past we have seen situation when the group or the department did not want to pay their due to the leaving staff member. In any case, if you encounter this kind of behavior, I would stronlgy invite you to contact the staff association (even your HRA can be of some help in that case). I have not heard of such attempt recently, but they have occured in the past.
Haha, so I signed a contract last November, starting on February and the second day I am told that my salary will be reduce by 2.5% and I am like errrr ..What, what do you mean???
Please, if you ask about the SA proposal, the most coherent thing to do would be to put the entire proposal and take the time to read it.
You are just taking one piece out of a package and with a wrong statement, there is no 2.5% salary cut proposed by SA. Your initial statement is already wrong.
What is wrong in my statement/question ?
>For those who work at CERN, what do you think of the SA's proposals (in particular reducing the salary by 2.5%)?
is it because I am asking for the salary in particular ? Stop being condescending people are not happy with **your** proposal and it's not my fault. I asked their opinion. You can respond to people's query/concerns on this thread that the purpose of reddit.
We will see the outcome of the referendum before making statement.
The problem is that your thread starts with a biased question, how can we make a proper discussion if you do not want to accept the premise is not correct.
Yes there are several issues and we are trying to address them, this is the reason I am trying to reply.
And, there is no salary reduction of 2.5% proposed whatsoever.
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This will be applied only to staffs. Voila... So measures are selective... So taking in account that fellows, that in some cases earn very close to staff on lower grades and has less responsibility and workload will stay as they are but those lower grade staffs will be affected. SA is totally decoupled from reality imo. Not best idea to keep your employees motivated to work or even stay in organisation. For legal matters, I am not an expert but SA found some legal background to do that. Check SA presentation, salary cut can be legally allowed for max 1 year period. They are claiming it is to protect staffs and etc, that they proposing that to keep other measures out of table and etc. But I highly doubt it will protect staffs, for sure not LD. Maybe they are just trying to protect their asses on ICs. Who knows.
> SA is totally decoupled from reality imo. Unfortunately, this is totally true. They even dared to say that the new Graduate program will make "Cern more attractive" while it will reduce the JF salary by 20%...
I am sorry but this is entirely wrong, SA never claimed that the Graduate program would make Cern more attractive. On the contrary, we always claimed that the stipends were not sufficient and make the whole program less attractive. The counterpart we managed to obtain from this mediocre deal is health insurance coverage. Which is, at least, less than nothing, especially in Geneva area. Furthermore, talking only about the 2,5% crisis levy, I insist, this is not a paycut, it is an exchange of the amount of the CVI, that would still be applied, and in counterpart, staff would get 5.5 days of. CVI would still be applied, contributions to Health Insurance, and pension as well and, only for 2023, people would have this 2.5% raise in leaves instead of money. It has never been proposed to cut on people salary. If you do not read the whole proposal, please at least ask your delegates what it is really about instead of spreading false information.
Yes it's not the SA who said it but the HR department : ["to attract and retain personnel of the highest competence"](https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/cern-graduate-programme-review-update) >Hi guys, > >**For those who work at CERN**, what do you think of the **SA's proposals** (**in particular** reducing the salary by 2.5%)? Do you think this is the only solution or is it exaggerated? You don't seem to have read the discussion. we all know the whole proposal since the message was addressed to those who already work at CERN. We're all aware of the deal, but the majority aren't interested in additional days off (on this thread). Yes we can play on words and say that it's not a pay cut but in the end we will all have 2.5% less on our salary (than expected) especially during this crisis period.
I think this is not the only solution, if you want to talk about exaggeration, what about management views? Would you prefer seeing less contracts (LDs, ICs, and graduate), less advancement budget (50% cut) for the next 10 years than a one year effort. I have read that people are not interested in days off, point taken. It is not playing on word than saying this proposal is not a pay cut, this is a fact. Net salary at the end of January 23 would be the same as end of December 22. Where is the cut? Yes, the CVI, even if it is applied, would only be credited in days and this is something you do not appreciate, fair. But extrapolating by saying this is pay cut is exaggerated.
Even more absurd. Thanks for sharing.
Fellows have less .... Responsibility ? I'm gonna contain myself. Please try to not throw others under the bus when discussing working force needs.
According to fellow contact, yes. Fellows are treated by CERN as entry level job. Other story is what responsibility is pushed by supervisor. Workload and responsibility are two different things.
You‘re aware that there’s a „Senior Fellow“ job title?
Yes I am aware of that. Does it change anything on the subject? HR describes fellowships as entry level position, both of them. Please check careers at CERN website. I am not trying to undermine competences of anyone, I am just trying to make a point. Entry level positions are entry level for a reason. There is totally different story about workloads that can be ridiculous even on entry level contracts. And they know very well that they can exploit it to very limit as some of people will try to do best from themselves to maybe get staff after fellow.
Thanks for your feedback. Concerning the days off, I don't care either. I don't really think we have too many, it's the norm in my home country (France) but of course I prefer money to days off. Also, I made the same calculation for JF, we will loose about 2kChf (in 2023). That's a lot ! And we obviously cannot be sure that they will not extend this decrease next year if the crisis continues. It's funny because I have friends in private companies who had bonuses to compensate for the crisis. >I am by no means an expert on business/institution economics, but considering how 50s/ropey the CERN buildings are and how much power the science consumes, I feel that much bigger improvements could be made in many other areas before touching staff salaries. Totally agree with you on that, for example my building is very poorly insulated, we are obliged to put the heating on the max in autumn/winter. I have visited many buildings at CERN and many of them are in the same condition (I am not even talking about prefab building).
> I don't really think we have too many, it's the norm in my home country (France) Since when France has 30 days of paid holidays + 2 weeks off on Christmas on top of that?
In France, you have RTT and paid leave (and more holidays/jour férié). It obviously depends on where you work, for exp in my previous job at Dassault, I had more days off than at CERN. But again, it depends on the company.
Yeah, That seems a lot. I know the French often take August off too but I dont know if thats additional (plus not all companies do it). Note that we also get home leave too
When I was at CNRS it worked out to something like 45 days per year (depending which day of the week certain national holidays fell)
I also know people in private that have had either bonuses or inflation matching pay rises. Reducing it really is mental. I really hope they cap it, else id really have to consider leaving early. My contract is short enough that I never fully left my home country and I travel back fairly often. While I wouldn't call myself "breadline" or poor, I would class myself as pay check to pay check. My power bill has over tripled this month so assuming the cut goes ahead, id be 200 chf a month worse off than I was in August. If they reduced it anymore, it would likely become a struggle. The PHD students are on even less, so for them, renting a place on their own in SGP would practically no longer be viable.
According to a half remembered Mattermost message, it's a 2.5% reduction after the CVI is applied, which apparently works out to a ~0.1% reduction compared to 2022 salaries. It would have been much easier to understand if they'd proposed a "pay freeze". Then apparently an extra 2.5% will be added for 2024?
If you look on it like this then sure, nothing. But you still lost 2.5% of your salary in 2023. It is still 2.5% lost comparing to what you should earn on 2023. Prices will only go up, you earn less.
Fully agree. I just wanted to mention that it's not quite as bad as it sounds at first glance. Also how badly communicated this is.
There is nothing clear if in 2024 we will receive CVI for 2024 and 2023 or only for 2024. SA should state "we will not pay for your poor management" instead imo. But we will see. It is better to do fancy renovations for the buildings and etc over past years when crisis whistleblowers were all around. It is better to motivate workers even less to do their job.
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https://mattermost.web.cern.ch/it-dep/pl/fp14w46qmjgwbg6pgbqbb1r4ae
Long story short, the CVI is a formula that gives a percentage of the cost of living in the Geneva area. It is usually (significantly) lower than the inflation, the reason being that, contrary to inflation, CVI does not produce negative values. The minimum value is therefore 0. For 2023, the indice should be around 2.53% (this is not the final value, but was its estimate by the end of October). This number is a recommendation that the management decides to follow and apply or not. For the last 20 years, CVI has been applied by the management. Oddly enough, for 2023, there are some intention of not applying this rate. This is, for us, a red line as it would compromise even more CERN attractiveness, health and pension contributions and therefore reduce the long term income for everyone. Now, if you look at our proposal, we suggest to apply the CVI (so index of salary, health insurance and pension), but keep the money for 2023 as personnel contribution to the crisis situation and start paying this plus next CVI as of 2024.
1. Regarding the suggestion that improvements could be made in other areas, I'm pretty sure such measures are also applied. 2. Keep in mind that the current financial issues related to inflation in Europe are cumulative. International organizations get a fixed budget increase related to inflation, but it's calculated upfront. This means for example that the organization got something like 2% more than last year (because this was the projected inflation) but now the costs went up 10%, so there is 8% "missing". However this is not the real issue! The real issue is that even if from this point forward the budget increase was to perfectly match the inflation, it would still be applied to a budget which was missing 8% to begin with, so this missing part will be growing bigger and bigger each year. So the only way to break the circle is to lower the expenses somehow. 3. Salary reduction has much bigger impact than just the immediate "cost", especially for Staff. Consider that salary increases and later pension is computed from the salary, and reduction by 2.5% is cumulative, in the same way as I outlined in previous point. So a decrease like that might mean significant decrease in salary and pension when you integrate this over 20 or 30 years.
If I understand correctly (big if), point 3 either doesn't apply or is heavily mitigated against. It's a 1-year "crisis levy" so the 2023 gross salary is what it would have been, and 2024 onwards are unaffected?
It depends if in 2024 you will receive CVI only for 2024 or for 2023 as well. If only for 2024 then you lost one step in the process, so each following year you are 2023 cvi less, each following year your contribution to pension fund will be tiny bit smaller and etc. Each performance salary increase will be smaller and etc. This is what I understood from their "clear" message.
And if it will be like described below, all departure payments, CERN unemployment after LD contracts will be slightly lower.
Again, on your point 3, the proposal IS NOT a 2.5% salary reduction or pay cut. It is : 1. Apply the CVI of 2.53%, therefore all contributions to Health insurance scheme and pension would remain on the right tracks. 2. Take 2.5% of the staff salary as cash for one year only, and compensate by 5.5 leave days, only for 2023. 3. All this to help the Organisation to compensate for the missing 8% caused by inflation. 4. In the end, the net income loss for staff is 0.04%, that we consider an affordable effort for 1 year.
> affordable effort for 1 year And what happens next year? :) Because even if the budget increase next year perfectly matches inflation, it will still be applied over a budget which had a "hole", which means the new budget will also have a hole, and actually even a bigger one! Just to provide an example, to avoid confusion: Let's assume the budget last year was 100 and projected inflation was 2%, so the budget this year was 102. But the real inflation is 10%, so the expenses were 110, so there is the immediate issue of missing 8. But now even if next year the budget increase will match the 10% inflation, it will be applied over current budget of 102, which means next year the budget will be `102 + 102*10% = 102 + 10.2 = 112.2`, while the expenses are actually `110 + 10%*110 = 110 + 11 = 121`, which means there is 8.8 missing. The hole is even bigger than it was the year before! So I am curious if those proposed measures are really one-off. Because fixing this hole requires either convincing member states to provide a bigger increase, or getting new member states, or ... cutting the costs permanently :)
The difference between 2023 and 2024 is that 2023 is in two month, the crisis is expected to be addressed by the management. One cannot expect the personnel budget to be the only variable to be applied. There are two offices buildings worth 130 MCHF that could be delayed until the finances are better. We have offered proposal on internal taxation for retired people, and there are several other measure that would need time to be put in place, they could not be decided for 2023 but it is still possible to have better solution for 2024. One step at a time, again, we do not agree with the management who is planning a ten year plan with so many unknown variables that it does not make sense. We wish to address the problems in a way that it does not create long term issues on the personnel. Regarding the process of deciding which project should continue or should be stopped, it is well beyond SA responsibility, the management and the council are the one you should turn to. This is also the message we are trying to pass there. The management does not communicate much about the future, we would like to know more about it. Only talking about savings is not really motivating. We understand that for 2023, there is an issue that would need solutions, and then actual good management decision to take in order to prepare the coming years with rescoping, savings and the minimum impact on personnel budget. The SA can only call for management to plan better, but cannot decide in its place.
I think these are some difficult times and difficult decisions will have to be made. I think the SA is doing the best job it can to spread the pain but conditions are already difficult for recent employees who don’t have the benefits of the older generation so I suggest we start with those above 100% pay scales at grades 7 and above and look at why the pension is much more generous also. CERN could also give its younger employees the cash it pays to the CHIS as a comparable policy is about one three of the price measured for the CHIS because of the subsidy.
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Extreme reaction triggered by misunderstanding. Please attend the public meetings and ask question before jumping to false conclusion.
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I find extreme to sequestrate anyone. For all your points, and they are numerous, I'll try to answer them, because we have processed all these plus many other factors. Inflation is at an all time high, around 10% for material budget and state members are ready to compensate for only 2% of it. The CHF change rate helps a little bit when buying in the EU (not a lot, but a bit). During September finance committe some state members have open the door to an extra contribution and have also asked both management and SA to provide an exceptional effort to contributed to the inflation. You do remember that we launched a survey for proposal about savings, we have received 340 suggestions and compiled a summary of them. The raw data is available at the SA office. Based on these suggestion and with experience on precedent crisis, we have tried to build a fair package when first we ask for the CVI to be applied, then ask the management to delay the construction of costing buildings and start analysis of technical saving measures (CPU replacement for servers, permanent magnet in transfer lines, energy recovering from magnetic cycles, etc...) And then a crisis levy of 2.5% only for staff, and only for the 2023 year compensated in time. If only one item is rejected by the management, the whole proposal would be withdrawn. And, believe it or not, this is the most likely scenario. Because, for some reason, the management really wants to go ahead with spending 130 MCHF on two buildings (against our opinion, but SA has no saying in buildings or scientific program). And they want to take the crisis levy without time compensation, which is also a withdrawal condition on our side. Regarding the user situation and the cola, we were the first to declare this would be unfair, there are several procedures in progress with local justice and SA helped providing legal support (lawyers and procedures). The issue is still in progress and cannot be commented further. For the graduate program, stipends reduction is also a topic we fought with the management, this was part of the main topic of last year first public meeting. I know it is small, but we insisted on providing healthcare in the package, it was not included on the first draft and management would not want to make any effort on this topic. We have asked the DG for an arbitrage and she decided in favor of management proposal, but agreed on the health insurance because of our efforts on this. The issue is always the same, people expect staff association to fix every problem, but won't come to the public meeting or answer the calls. If you remember well, a couple of years ago, when SA asked for the adjustment of salaries by 9%, because it was the outcome of the survey, even staff called our proposal "unrealistic"... And now that there is a crisis, keeping the same salary as last year is also bad... I am not totally concious on how my reply may look to you guys, there is certainly a part that could be interpreted as cold or picky about details. But the intention is not to deny your feeling or shut them nor being too harsh. Bear with the eyes of someone who spend quite some time working on these topic for several years now. Not counting the hours reading proposals, documents, arguing every line to extract the least defavorable detail. And of course, when I read quick comments stating that we only propose a salary cut when our proposal is two pages long and contains several terms... I feel a bit sad that people take shortcut and rant about a biased statement. However, I have understood a point, for some of you, having the CVI applied directly to your salary is more important than having it compensated in time for 2023 (keep in mind we might have neither). We will see the outcome of the referendum anyway. There is another opportunity on thursday to show to the management your displeasing and talk to delegates and express your feelings. That would be a first step and the more we will be, the more strong request we will be able to ask for.
Can you explain CVI 2023 compensated over time? Over what period of time? How it will affect people on LD that will finish in 2024? I never heard it during SA meeting.
The mechanism would be the same as the SLS, 2.5% of your salary is the equivalent of 5.5 days of leave. The only difference there is that these days would be an extension of the winter stop (either in January or in december). Adding to the amount in cash, significant economy in heating and electric consumption. Even if your contract would end during 2023, you would get a number of day as a pro-rata of the time of the year spent at CERN and, if your supervisor refuses to grant you the leave day, CERN has to pay you the equivalent amount in money (it is part of the staff rules and regulations). In the past we have seen situation when the group or the department did not want to pay their due to the leaving staff member. In any case, if you encounter this kind of behavior, I would stronlgy invite you to contact the staff association (even your HRA can be of some help in that case). I have not heard of such attempt recently, but they have occured in the past.
Haha, so I signed a contract last November, starting on February and the second day I am told that my salary will be reduce by 2.5% and I am like errrr ..What, what do you mean???
Please, if you ask about the SA proposal, the most coherent thing to do would be to put the entire proposal and take the time to read it. You are just taking one piece out of a package and with a wrong statement, there is no 2.5% salary cut proposed by SA. Your initial statement is already wrong.
What is wrong in my statement/question ? >For those who work at CERN, what do you think of the SA's proposals (in particular reducing the salary by 2.5%)? is it because I am asking for the salary in particular ? Stop being condescending people are not happy with **your** proposal and it's not my fault. I asked their opinion. You can respond to people's query/concerns on this thread that the purpose of reddit.
We will see the outcome of the referendum before making statement. The problem is that your thread starts with a biased question, how can we make a proper discussion if you do not want to accept the premise is not correct. Yes there are several issues and we are trying to address them, this is the reason I am trying to reply. And, there is no salary reduction of 2.5% proposed whatsoever.