Countering the propaganda
Management is alleging that some of its senior members received threats, inside and outside of the Office. A spokesperson for the EPO told WIPR that “EPO officials (senior managers but also colleagues at working level) are increasingly subject to personal attacks and undue exposure through blogs, flyers, and calls for violence”.
If there have been individual threats, surely the Office will have acted directly against the culprit (and rightly so). But we have never seen a flier or a blog calling for violence. We wonder if such allegations are not fabricated to harness sympathy among staff and outsiders, at a time when senior management has (finally) landed under intense public scrutiny for their actions. No matter how much they try to portray themselves differently, (senior) managers are not the victims: they are the perpetrators of institutional violence, particularly violence directed against those who dare to express disagreement with certain policies.
Such cheap allegations discredit EPO staff. They call into question our integrity and are an insult to our dignity of honest employee. We do not deserve that. We are committed to seeking change through peaceful protest, negotiation, transparency, and the application of checks and balances - not through threats and intimidation.
Management should commit to the same.