Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

In Ban's UN, Amid Nepotism & Threats of Firing, Mobility Memo Unveiled

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, April 5 -- Noticing as many in the UN have a decidedly anti-labor trend in Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's administration, Inner City Press on March 17 asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky, as an example, about threats being made against the elevator operators, to be replaced with non-union contractors.

  Nesirky said he would look into it, then in the hallway outside the briefing room berated Inner City Press that “you asked a question about elevators when the rest of the world is wondering about nuclear meltdown and wondering what's happening in Cote d'Ivoire to tens of thousands of people.”

  Now that the UN in Cote d'Ivoire has shooting missiles from attack helicopters contracted from Ukraine, we have these UN labor updates:

  The elevator operators began circulating a flier trying to save their jobs, asking people to call the person at Facilities Management who seemed to be making the decision. That person, named on the attached flier, then reportedly threatened that any elevator operator or other worker caught circulating the flier would be fired.

  The UN TV and other audio engineers in the UN continue to face a reduction in wages and benefits, combined with what many call inappropriate pressure to re-apply for their own jobs, in a unit said to be run by the wife of the official who has been in charge of the unit and outside contractor for some time. (Nepotism seems to many to be a trend in Ban's UN, see here.)

  The moves are not limited to elevator operators and sound engineers. In a confidential memo from Ban's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar to his chief of management Angela Kane and head of the UN Office of Human Resource Management Catherine Pollard, it is suggested that “40 percent of total recruitment in every Department every year be set aside for applicants external to the Department.”

  The memo, which Inner City Press is putting online here, also muses “from 30,000 feet” as one staff member to whom Inner City Press showed the memo put it, about lateral moves and changes in geographic location.

  Inner City Press first wrote about these policy changes, for which senior officials were summoned to Ban's third floor of the North Lawn building, and which some of those named have said they will not implement, announce or be responsible for until Ban himself returns to New York and associates himself with, on March 17, before Nesirky's above quoted outburst.

  Because since then Nesirky has not provided any substantive answers to questions Inner City Press has asked about the elevator operators or audio engineers -- or irregularities found by the UN's own Office of Internal Oversight Services in its delayed UNOJA technology project -- Inner City Press asked Ms. Kane herself of April 4 about the memo.

  We think about a lot of things, Ms. Kane said. But when you write about them it makes trouble.

  Well, yes. That is a purpose of journalism. These things should be known and debated by the people impacted by them. Even when OIOS found multiple irregularities in hiring and contracting in UNOJA, there has been no accountability.

   Rather than any action on the high level individual named as responsible for the irregularities -- doctoring resumes to hire his friends, for example -- a lower level employee has been scapegoated. We willl have more on this.

  So while Ban Ki-moon maneuvers, as with attack helicopters, to get a second terms as UN Secretary General, workers are threatened with firing for distributing fliers, lower level workers are scapegoated, and Press questions are either ignored or attacked or discouraged in the hallways.

So it is, at least for now, in Ban Ki-moon's UN. Watch this site.

From the UN's noon briefing transcript of March 17:

Inner City Press: this maybe seems under your radar, but there are the elevator operators here in the UN are saying… many of them are saying that they are going to be removed from their jobs or replaced at much lower wages on 28 March. Although this is maybe a certain outside contract, it sure is similar to the issues that arose in the cafeteria and now with UNTV and Radio. And I wonder, is the UN… supposedly, actually, Joan McDonald, who I believe has now left that position in [Facilities Management Services], is he aware of this, what’s the UN position on long-time workers in the UN having their wages either much reduced or being taken out of their jobs this month?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Well, I think you’ve actually hinted at part of the answer in your question, and that is that where external contractors are involved, the United Nations does not have any say on those contractual obligations between an employee and the external contractor. If I have anything further from our colleagues who deal with that relationship with the external contractor then I’d let you know.

But Nesirky never did provide any information. Rather, workers who distributed fliers about the situation were threatened with firing. After complaints including from outside the UN, the elevator operations have been given a one month reprieve. And now what? Watch this site.