U.N. Union's Vote Signals Opposition to Ban's Reorganization Plans
By Benny Avni
January 30, 2007
The New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/47654
UNITED NATIONS — Turtle Bay's staff union voted to express its lack of confidence in a mid-level executive, but the move was seen as a further expression of dissatisfaction with Secretary-General Ban's pace of changing U.N. culture.
It followed widely shared displeasure with Mr. Ban's early appointments, which many have seen as maintaining the status quo, specifically that of a loyalist of the old powers under Secretary-General Annan, Alicia Barcena of Mexico, who was named by Mr. Ban to head the management department.
The union's no-confidence vote late last week added a formidable constituency to the growing opposition to Mr. Ban's plans to reorganize the bureaucratic behemoth, including key General Assembly members.
Late last week, leaders of the union, which represents New York workers of the U.N. system, adopted a resolution that stated that the staff has no confidence in the assistant secretary-general heading the Office of Human Resource Management, Jan Beagle. While Ms. Beagle was targeted, her rebuke was also seen as a warning shot for her direct superior, Ms. Barcena.
We are giving Barcena the benefit of the doubt because we want her to succeed, the staff union's vice president, Eman Hassanin, told The New York Sun yesterday. But Beagle has to go.
At the core of the union's complaints is a resolution passed by the General Assembly last summer, proposing to create an independent tribunal with binding authority to arbitrate workers' disputes. Staffers say Ms. Beagle last year refused to publish a document in which union representatives expressed their opposition to a proposed tribunal whose arbitration could be overruled by management.
Ms. Beagle and Ms. Barcena were in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday, where they met with up to eight union leaders representing U.N. staffers outside New York. The meeting raised the ire of the Turtle Bay union, which is considered more militant than the other eight.
New York union leaders argue that since they work at headquarters, they are best suited to deal with top management issues and that the Nairobi trip was a bad-faith attempt by management to bypass them.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ban yesterday presented to the General Assembly's president, Sheikha Haya Rashed al-Khalifa, a reorganization plan that included a proposal to split the Department of Peacekeeping Operation in two, adding a department of field support.
The split will not result in any net increase to the regular budget, Mr. Ban wrote. Nor will there be any net increase in the number of senior position. Nevertheless, his plan, which also includes a proposal to downgrade the existing Department of Disarmament Affairs, needs to be approved by the assembly, where it has already attracted a lot of resistance.
Opposition by member states, especially to the DPKO split, is gaining momentum, India's ambassador to the United Nations, Nirupam Sen, told the Sun yesterday.