Statement by the ITU Staff Council to the 2017 Session of the Council
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Madam Chairman,
[Secretary-General,]
Councillors,
Dear Colleagues,
I have the honour of delivering the address by the ITU Staff Council, whose membership was renewed by the elections held in December last year.
The Staff Council's first five months of activity augur well as regards constructive future collaboration with management. The same spirit of collaboration also prevailed when the Chairman of the 2017 session of the ITU Council, Dr Eva Spina, met with the Staff Council representatives on 27 April, for which we thank her.
The Staff Council intends to strengthen and further extend this dialogue, to ensure that consultation of the staff on matters of direct concern to them becomes an integral part of the decision-making processes.
Only under these conditions will it be possible to re-establish and consolidate the bond of trust that must exist between staff and management. And only under these conditions will the staff be reassured that its concerns will be heard and taken into account.
We must acknowledge that those concerns are numerous.
We thank you for giving us the opportunity today to share these concerns with you, and also to share with you our proposed solutions.
Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,
We are aware of the budgetary constraints affecting the finances of many of the Union's Member States, and of the efforts which public service staff in those countries are being asked to make. The staff of ITU is not out of touch with those realities, far from it, and that is why they endeavour to serve the goals of the Union to the best of their ability, despite the increasingly limited resources.
This capacity to provide Member States with a high-quality service is nevertheless liable to be compromised if this approach of "forever doing more with less" continues to be applied at the expense of ITU staff.
You are preparing to adopt the budget of the Union for the 2018‑19 biennium, which provides for renewed economies.
This budgetary austerity offers little hope that there will be any relaxation of the severe pressure already brought to bear on the staff. It is legitimate to wonder how far this frenetic optimization of resources can be taken before breaking point is reached.
Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,
Budgetary choices have significant consequences for the staff. The workload is constantly increasing. The suppression of certain posts or their downgrading following retirements is leading to serious problems of understaffing in some units, where staff find themselves doing the work of two posts, to the detriment of their health and family lives. Absenteeism is on the rise, creating delays in the performance of certain tasks that inevitably create additional costs for ITU.
At the same time, staff members are seeing their conditions of service and remuneration deteriorate alarmingly. The General Services category has already suffered a loss in earnings of 1.8 per cent. As for staff in the professional and higher categories, the entry into force of the new set of United Nations common system benefits will reduce their entitlements significantly, even before we consider the announcement by the International Civil Service Commission of a brutal reduction of 7.5 per cent in their net pay in Geneva. The Staff Council wishes to make it clear that it strongly disagrees with the implementation of this reduction.
Management thus intends to accommodate these imbalances by making ever more use of non-staff members from outside ITU under special service agreements (SSAs). As you are aware, such contracts are intended to allow the implementation of one-off projects or activities, or for specific events and meetings.
The staff representatives note that these contracts have been hijacked from their initial purpose in order to make it possible to hire subcontractors less expensively to carry out administrative or support tasks that pertain to the regular work of the organization and its staff and should be covered by fixed-term contracts. This contractual practice creates de facto a category of precarious staff, which runs counter to the principle of "equal pay for equal work". For example, the IS Department – which moreover manages the security service – makes regular use of these SSA contracts rather than taking on regular staff. Just like the permanent staff, colleagues hired under SSA contracts are privy to confidential information that is essential to the security of our IS system, of our buildings, and of individuals. As a result of their precarious employment, they acquire confidential information, despite the fact that they will leave the organization after two or four years. So what commitments can management make regarding our digital and physical security – your security?
You must agree, Ladies and Gentlemen, that these budget constraints not only tend to unsettle the staff but also to undermine ITU's presentation of itself and thus make it less effective.
In order to improve conditions of work for staff now in post, and to comply with the provisions of Resolution 48 (Rev. Busan, 2014), the representatives of the Staff Council would like these restructuring initiatives and redeployments to be studied for each Sector and explained to the staff using ITU's intranet, in order to ensure that these changes are more willingly accepted rather than just grudgingly suffered. Transmission of knowledge is essential and must be a key factor in staff management. The Staff Council wants to see steps taken to ensure that the welfare of staff is more effectively and fairly taken into account, and in the same way in all the Sectors, when major events take place at ITU, by granting rest days for hours worked beyond a certain threshold by professional staff.
The Staff Council wishes to see more consistent application of Rule 3.8 of the Staff Regulations and Staff Rules concerning special post allowances for General Services staff.
The Staff Council has a mandate to defend the interests of all current staff, as well as retirees and future staff. The image of the United Nations overall has been damaged by demonstrations and newspaper articles reporting on the abusive employment of interns within our family. With regard to these internship contracts, staff representatives want to ensure that all beneficiaries of such contracts are enrolled in higher education, and wish to see the rapid establishment of a remuneration policy based on the practices of the host country or of certain other organizations such as WIPO or ILO. A budget line will need to be created for this purpose, with a quota of interns for each Sector.
The Staff Council is answerable to ITU staff as regards your proposals and your concern to ensure that they are put into practice. In its Judgements 3736 and 3671, the Administrative Tribunal of the ILO affirmed the obligation of ITU's administration to respect the rules providing for consultation of the Staff Council, as set out in the Staff Regulations and Staff Rules. This is what has enabled staff representatives to submit their proposals to the administration. We count on you to ensure that these proposals, which we have available for you, are implemented.
The Staff Council also wishes to draw your attention to the issue of the representation of active members and retired members on our health insurance fund management committee. Our colleagues in the field have had to rely on themselves to make their problems known, and in our view the absence of any representation of the regional offices is a failing that needs to be rectified. The staff representatives count on your support for holding additional elections to enable two staff representatives from the regional offices to sit on the committee.
As you will know, a new building should become operational in 2024. The Staff Council is involved in this project as a member of the relevant working group and as a member of the jury. The Staff Council wishes to thank the administration for this consultation. It would appear that the new building will have open-plan offices. A survey among the staff has highlighted a widespread reluctance to accept arrangements of this kind. Concerns have been expressed regarding issues of concentration, confidentiality and noise. In the interests of the wellbeing of staff, it would be desirable for the Member States to reconsider instructs the Secretary General 7 of Council Decision 588 in 2016 ("to consider the future introduction of flexible working in addition to the open space working principle which is essential for the implementation of the project"), and to ensure that remote working and flexible working hours are introduced quickly as an essential element of moving to the new building.
Your Staff Council representatives have many demands on their time and are very much focused on the mandate entrusted to them. In order to ensure that staff representation is effective and respects your decisions, the Staff Council requests that the post of administrative secretary be re‑established as being essential to the smooth working of the Staff Council and the process of consultation among the various stakeholders. The staff representatives call on you to include a budget line for this full-time G5 post in the budget for 2017‑2018 and in future budgets, as was done in the past. Such a request has been made more than once in the course of a number of Staff Council mandates.
In conclusion, there is no shortage of concerns for the staff, as you will have observed. We are confident that the dialogue established between the Staff Council, management and elected officials will be maintained, and we hope that it will in time bear fruit.
The Staff Council emphasizes that this address is no more than an excerpt from various documents that have long been available and could usefully be brought to your attention to provide more detail. The staff representatives are at your disposal should you want copies of these reports.
On behalf of the staff of ITU, the Staff Council wishes to thank the Chairman, all the councillors, the Secretary-General and all the elected officials for giving us this opportunity to take the floor.
Thank you for your attention.
