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Topic: Working for the USPTO (Read 398992 times) |
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Isaac
Senior Member
Posts: 3472
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #260 on: Mar 5th, 2006, 4:12pm » |
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It appears to me that management wants to terminate the current agreement with POPA rather that POPA itself.
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Isaac
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patent.b
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Posts: 24
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #261 on: Mar 8th, 2006, 6:58pm » |
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Anyone living/lived at ****n at Carlyle? Please post your opinions here or on apartmentratings.com.
TIA
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johnadams
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #262 on: Mar 10th, 2006, 9:47pm » |
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on Mar 5th, 2006, 2:23pm, concerned future examiner wrote:For everyone who has been hired or is planning on working as a patent examiner, I came across some disturbing news.
To give a brief background of the current situation at the USPTO, it seems to me that there are two sides at the USPTO: POPA (basically a union), and management. If you're going to be working as a patent examiner, many of the benefits that are being promised at this time were negotiated by POPA. Management, on the other hand seems to be the antagonist that has no interest in keeping up the benefits that the patent examiners enjoy.
Anyways, the whole idea of POPA is to collectively bargain on behalf of patent examiners. This is now being threatened by management, who hopes to terminate POPA.
http://www.popa.org/
I'm not currently a patent examiner, but I might be working as one soon, so this may affect me quite a bit. It seems like there are some USPTO 'lifers' on this board, as well normal patent examiners who are not yet SPE's(management). I'd like to hear some feedback about this new development since it seems like it has the ability to directly affect the patent examiner's quality of life at work. |
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There seems to be another explanation for the benefit obtained by patent examiners--the demand for competent examiners. There is no reason for a union boss to take credit for such a coincidence. Lets not forget what the unions have done to GM, Ford and the entire american manufacturing sector.
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guest
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #263 on: Mar 11th, 2006, 9:54am » |
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I'm an examiner at the PTO, and i just wanted to throw my hat into the ring on the POPA issue.
First off, to new hires, join POPA. I've spent quite a bit of time time talking to various POPA delegates and they are good people dealing with important issues here. Right now there are some rule changes being pushed through which will make examiners jobs harder than they already are. Seems like nobody likes the changes except management, and POPA is really fighting them on this issue.
Anyone who hasn't examined at the office for a period of time doesn't really know what its like and some of the comments i've read here are naive. The current and prior examiners who post here - listen to them, their comments are great.
On working here: if you are thinking of coming into this office then realize that the longer you stay the further you are going to be from the "building things" type of engineer. Don't come here if you want to be a true engineer and do hands-on stuff. Forget it - you're going into the legal side of things and get ready to push paperwork. That's it. The turnover is huge here for a reason.
Good luck!
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Isaac
Senior Member
Posts: 3472
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #264 on: Mar 11th, 2006, 12:57pm » |
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When comparing POPA to unions in the private sector, it is important to note that POPAs tools for influencing management are advocacy, arbitration to enforce agreements and statutes for the benefit of examiners, and lobbying of Congress. POPA cannot engage in workstopages, slowdowns and other techniques available to unions in the private sector. There is absolutely no chance of POPA having the kinds of negative effects on the PTO that we've seen unions have on the auto industry.
Yes ultimately is true that POPAs effectiveness is based on the management needing the competence and dedication of the examining corp, but history has shown that management does a fairly poor job of coming up with and maintaining effective retention policies. Management has also made any number of attempts to bail on negotiated agreements, some of which have been stopped only through arbitration. IMO, giving POPA no credit for positive things they've negotiated for examiners would be quite unfair. In some situations, management counts on POPA to provide the input on the needs of the examining corp, or for analysis of how policy changes might effect the corp.
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Isaac
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