Virginija Langbakk, Why Is There an Exploited Elephant in the EIGE Room?

To the Director of the European Institute for Gender Equality Virginija Langbakk:
You open your response to my previous open letter with “Dear Giedrius” and not with the “Dear Mr Mickevicius” you used in your last direct e-mail communication with me. Is this indicative of a warming trend in our relations? Are you finally paying attention to me and the issues at hand in a genuine and caring way?
I wish. I am much more inclined to believe that it is just you paying attention to subtle details like this and using my first name in an attempt to appear more relatable and likeable as a director when you know your response is going to be published on the EuroGender platform of the EIGE for the world to see.
What sort of legacy do you want to leave behind?
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
You have been EIGE’s director since 2009. Did you just spend a decade or so exploiting EIGE’s interim employees and pretending that they are not being exploited (and that everything is fine), or are you simply unable to see the colossal figurative elephant at the EIGE and comprehend what is wrong with exploiting interim employees the way the institute (an EU agency committed to equality, of all places) does? Both scenarios are terrifying.
When you say that you have addressed the matter both in writing and orally, you cannot possibly have in mind the deficit of equality at the European Institute for Gender Equality — which is what I have been inviting you to have a discussion about for some time now — because the discussion never happened.
Can you prove that the European Institute for Gender Equality is not an epicentre of hypocrisy? You cannot.
Alternatively, can you convince people that the exploitation of interim employees at the European Institute for Gender Equality is not taking place? You cannot, either.
You are thinking only of yourself when you proclaim that you have already amply addressed something, or that there is not much more that you can say at this point.
You were and are not demonstrating willingness to listen — to me. I just spent more than 30 consecutive days waiting for you outside the EIGE, patiently and calmly, with two chairs, a table, and a tablecloth that said “The European Institute for Gender Equality is the European epicentre of astounding hypocrisy, change my mind”. Your cowardly decision to not join me for a conversation in person and confront uncomfortable facts and my arguments despite having many opportunities to do so speaks for itself. The day the Alfa.lt article on my protest and the EIGE came out, you made eye contact with me from afar, and the face I saw was not a particularly happy or friendly one. Great leaders are willing to listen, but you are not.
European Ombudsman
You keep bringing up the European Ombudsman and finding false refuge in the ombudsman’s decision in the joint cases 897/2019/JAP and 1360/2019/JAP — this almost makes me wish I never even submitted those complaints to the European Ombudsman.
‘The Ombudsman finds no maladministration by EIGE in this case’ merely means that, allegedly, the EIGE did not have to break any rules to exploit me. That is all this ombudsman’s conclusion conveys to me.
Do you think the EIGE should receive an award from the European Ombudsman for good administration?
My first complaint related to the fact that I have not been remunerated adequately for my work at the EIGE. I was advised by the ombudsman to seek compensation from the temporary staffing agencies (Manpower Lit UAB and Demolit UAB) with which I had employment contracts. I am willing to say that the ombudsman’s advice makes perfect sense, because it does.
The second complaint that I made was aimed at proving that the EIGE is making false, deceiving and misleading statements, which it absolutely, undeniably is. However, this is where it gets complex.
Firstly, a kernel of truth will typically be embedded in anything the EIGE claims to be true. The disgraceful combination and sequence of words ‘EIGE is committed to the professional development and well-being of its interim staff’ is a prime example. In reality, to this specific end, the institute is hardly doing anything at all — if anything, the EIGE is effectively proactively engaged in making its interim staff members’ lives in both a professional and general sense worse, not better. I know people who have been traumatised by what they experienced at the EIGE. For the uninformed outside onlooker, especially for one who is personally invested in the European project or who holds the European Union and its bodies in high regard (or both), successfully discerning between essentially hollow and solid, actual truths can be a real challenge.
Secondly, my complaint was connected to financial matters. It could be that I just chose the wrong basis for this complaint, and also that there simply was nothing within this subject that I could have ever presented to the ombudsman that would have proved what I was seeking to prove.
Finally, the response the EIGE provided to the European Ombudsman was tailor-made to tick all of the boxes for no maladministration. While I hastily wrote my complaint in two hours in a public library while bicycle touring in Europe, the EIGE took 56 days to craft a response. In it, the EIGE said exactly the words the ombudsman wanted to hear.
Legality
Why is the European Institute for Gender Equality showing complete disregard for the Directive on Temporary Agency Work (2008/104/EC), which unambiguously states that the basic working conditions, including pay, must be equal for both permanent staff and temporary agency staff?
The Supreme Court of Lithuania is due to announce its decision in the case of five former interim employees of the EIGE that were employed by Manpower Lit UAB. Had I still been working at the EIGE when these five individuals were making the initial steps in their fight for equal treatment and justice, currently pending before the Lithuanian Supreme Court would be a case of six former employees.
How much money will the institute have pointlessly spent in trying to save face and in attempting to crush the (former) interim employees? In the ongoing court proceedings, Manpower Lit UAB is joined by the EIGE (as a third party), and lawyers and expenses are involved. Talk about the EU taxpayers’ money being completely wasted if the EIGE is using any taxpayers’ money here (that would be outright madness).
You talk about a difference in legal status between the EIGE’s statutory and interim employees, which is now your go-to argument when attempting to justify the discriminatory inadequate salary the latter are paid.
Perhaps the difference in legal status is precisely where the problem lies.
What kind of fundamentally broken and backward laws do we have in place if allegedly neither the institute nor its contractor has to break the law to discriminate against and exploit the interim employees at the EIGE?
Is a difference in legal status enough to justify what is taking place?
Now, put legality aside for a moment. We might as well just end the European Union if we collectively are going to tolerate an EU agency undermining the justice and the non-discrimination that the values of the EU are tied to — the laws are not even that important.
You Are Telling Anything but the (Whole) Truth of My Story
What you offer in your explanations in relation to my story and what I did at the EIGE is only an excessively limited, one-dimensional take — not the whole story.
Why are you excluding so much?
It is so blatantly obvious that, by using words like contribution and limited time and time again, you are desperately trying to downplay the important role that an interim employee fulfils at the EIGE.
My salary was €650 after taxes (and even less in my final months after a sudden insulting 20% pay cut, which sped up my departure from the EIGE), but it should have been €4,921.28 before deductions (the salary of the Editing and Publications Officer at the time).
The question of who is going to compensate me for the discrimination I experienced remains unanswered.
When you say that I “did not have a financial role and responsibility” and that I was “not held accountable for sound financial management”, you almost make it sound like I had nothing to do with financial matters at all, whereas in fact I was co-managing the budget with the Editing and Publications Officer, carrying out calculations and preparing financial documents for her to sign.
There was one time when she did not communicate something clearly to me and, because of that, I subsequently did something (in relation to a project) that amounted to a loss of somewhere between €500 and €3000 — the reason for this loss got recorded in a financial spreadsheet as ‘EIGE’s miscalculation’. Does it make much sense to you that someone without a financial responsibility would impact the budget in this way?
There were certain things that I could not do (signing the documents I prepared for the Editing and Publications Officer was one of them), but the line between me and her was otherwise a blurry or nonexistent one.
The things that were the exactly same or substantially similar between us vastly outnumber the very few differences you keep bringing up and overemphasising, again and again.
At times it felt as if the Editing and Publications Officer was passing every single responsibility and task that she could on to me.
A statement like the one you make in relation to how things are done at the institute — “EIGE is fully committed to following the rules and regulations governing our work and operations” — is really just a mere smokescreen. What else would you say?
Is morality given any consideration at the EIGE?
As far as I can tell, the European Institute for Gender Equality is fully committed to keeping the status quo (and going as far as joining its troubled contractor Manpower Lit UAB in court proceedings as well as using false narratives to deceive and mislead people) and shamelessly discriminating against and exploiting its interim employees in aeternum.
Justice
Before writing out your name in full at the end of your response-letter, you have the audacity to pick the “Best regards” closing.
How much you care about me and how well you regard me is crystal clear to me.
You may be sending me your “Best regards”, but I do not accept them.
Even your sign-off is a lie.
Giedrius Mickevičius
#justicefortempworkers
