Changing Attitudes to Staff Representation in UNOG

Who Calls the Tune ?

Nigel Lindup, UNOG.

After two or three years of service as a staff representative, I remain totally convinced that staff representation is a vital function in any organisation and one that can make a powerful contribution to the organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness. I am also more convinced than ever that international civil servants need true union representation just as much as any other group of working people: we all know of colleagues who are on the edge of despair in their isolation and loneliness, with nowhere to turn for support. It is a union’s job to provide support and leadership. Indeed, I believe that, in a workplace with UNOG’s problems, a union’s primary function would be to assist individuals in difficult situations.

Unfortunately, in this regard, UNOG’s staff representation system does not serve staff well. Some say that what is lacking is the right to negotiate with the UNOG administration. While this is an important factor, as I hope to show, there is a more fundamental problem: our attitude to staff representation in UNOG.

In reality, the UNOG staff representation system requires a thorough overhaul in three areas:

1. Its rules and regulations need tightening up and making less susceptible to conflicting interpretations;
2. The electoral system needs rethinking so as to involve staff more; and
3. Staff members and staff representatives need to change their attitude to each other.

Reforms in areas (1) and (2) will take time, because they require consensus among sometimes conflicting political views. To be effective, such reforms also need to be underpinned by the introduction of international labour standards in accordance with the relevant international instruments, especially as regards the full negotiating rights. On the other hand, area (3) is something we staff members can start working on immediately. We cannot make the current system of staff representation perfect, but let us try to make it more effective simply by changing our own attitude to our representatives and requiring our representatives to change their attitude to us.

Basically, we should remember that we elect our representatives to perform a service for us.

So what, specifically, should we expect from our staff representatives?

In a civilised workplace in the real world, we would expect them first to listen when we go to them with a problem, and to find out what the problem is. If it is a policy issue that affects a whole group, we would wish them to put the problem to the Coordinating Council, which should take the matter up at a higher level. In the case of an individual problem, we would expect them to take the matter up directly with the other party concerned and mediate to reach a solution before it is too late and the problem degenerates irrevocably.

Unfortunately, in the current state of staff-management relations in the United Nations, this is not a realistic expectation. The reason for this is that staff and administration have become trapped in a vicious circle of mistrust. Despite its rhetoric, the administration refuses to recognise staff as stakeholders in the Organisation and therefore will not enterinto bona fide discussion of its decisions and actions. Staff members in turn are accustomed to this lack of recognition and therefore do not expect to achieve anything through the staff representation system. We do not demand recognition, so we do not obtain recognition, and so it goes on.

What follows is a more detailed analysis of how this vicious circle works and suggestions on how staff representatives and staff members can break the cycle.

Non-recognition: the administration’s role

According to Staff Regulation 8.1
(a), “The Secretary-General shall establish and maintain continuous contact and communication with the staff in order to ensure the effective participation of the staff in identifying, examining and resolving issues relating to staff welfare, including conditions of work, general conditions of life and other personnel policies”.

The administration of the United Nations Secretariat interprets this regulation as meaning that management needs to consult staff representatives only on global issues that concern staff as a whole. Its policy is not to discuss any problem involving particular individuals or sections of the Secretariat. It consistently refers individual cases to the joint staff-management mechanisms, e.g. the Joint Appeals Board (JAB), the Joint Health and Safety at Work Committee, or the discrimination or PAS rebuttal panels. The JAB frequently makes strong recommendations to the administration, but, in the absence of any enforcement mechanism, those recommendations are usually ignored. The other joint bodies do not work well, partly because they are ad hoc bodies, but largely because they do not publicise their work and staff representatives on those bodies have no power to negotiate. In addition, it is now clear that there is a very serious gap in the joint bodies system – there is nowhere to take complaints of sexual harassment or workplace bullying (“mobbing”).

Non-recognition: staff representatives’ role

Under Staff Rule 108.1(e), the 25member UNOG Coordinating Council, through its Executive Bureau, is the only staff body officially recognised by the administration as representative of UNOG staff members’ interests. However, because of the administration’s position on individual cases, the colleagues we elect to the Council never get any experience of representing staff in anything other than a very general way. As a result, they simply do not know how to go about defending specific group or individual interests.

As every good manager or union representative knows, the problems of small groups or individuals are best resolved at the lowest possible level, i.e. in that part of the workplace where they arise. In UNOG, however, when Executive Bureau members, or even the Executive Secretary (who, incidentally, is our only full-time elected representative for 2,500+ staff members), try to intervene or mediate in a dispute, they are often refused access. Even if they are allowed to discuss the problem, their function is a purely advisory one and they have no real power to officially recommend any measures.

In such frustrating circumstances, it is not surprising that most of our representatives on the Council learn very little about genuine staff representation.

However, this would be a point at which our staff representatives could break the vicious circle for us. For the administration policy of nonintervention in specific disputes is a matter of mere interpretation of the Staff Regulations. We must demonstrate that this interpretation is counter-productive and that staff, through their representatives, have constructive solutions to offer, which can benefit both staff and administration, as stakeholders in the Organisation. The only way our representatives can build this trust is by directly approaching managers in good faith and offering help in resolving disputes.

The administration’s approach notwithstanding, managers and supervisors have the authority to solve problems in their sections asthey wish. Not all managers and supervisors see the administration’s approach as healthy. Good managers understand that it is impossible to resolve conflicts without some kind of open confrontation. The confrontation does not have to be violent, but it must be absolutely honest, and that means it will certainly be unpleasant. But that is the only way to clear the air and restore a healthy atmosphere in the workplace.

In such cases, courage is required from both parties: from managers, because they have little experience of handling confrontation, since this constructive approach is so alien to United Nations management practice; and from staff representatives, because they are not accustomed to approaching managers directly, yet it is they who must take that first step of asking the manager to enter into a mediation procedure. Both sides must learn by doing.

But first, a change of attitude is required from staff representatives of all political persuasions, and it is up to us staff to show that we expect it. At present, in the absence of any right to negotiate and win improvements in staff working conditions, our most prominent representatives generally end up fighting other battles: quite simply, they fight each other. Most would never dream of having a coffee with an “ordinary” staff member in order to get some idea of what they would really like their representatives to fight for. We must compel our representatives to get back in touch with the real issues facing staff in their everyday working lives in the workplace, whether practical problems such as parking space and the provision of public telephone facilities, or more complex issues such as harassment or health and safety at work.

For despite election rhetoric, UNOG staff representatives of all political persuasions have failed to implement consistent, policy-based approaches to defend their individual constituents. I have noticed a tendency to adopt a classic “United Nations” approach, which is personal rather than political or rules-based – à la tête du client. Much seems to depend on whether they like the complainant, and then they tend to rely on personal contacts to deal with case, almost as a favour to the staff member.

This is particularly serious when the staff member is alleging harassment, a problem that is spreading in UNOG. It requires sensitive handling and staff members must be able to trust their representatives to put their case.

As it is, staff members in discussion with their representatives frequently have a feeling that they are dealing, not with colleagues they have elected to provide them with a vital service, but with a branch of the Personnel Service or of the administration in general. In one case, a staff representative, who happened also to be a supervisor in a particular unit, promised to resolve a staff member’s contractual problem. The solution? To offer the staff member a transfer to that unit! In another case, a “long-term short-term” staff member, who was close to retirement age but under threat of termination, was advised by a “representative” to start looking for work elsewhere. Not to mention staff representatives’ tendency to tell staff members they will call them back and then failing to do so.

Non-recognition: staff members’ role

It is not surprising, then, that staff are reluctant to approach Council members for help or advice and that, when they do, they become frustrated and disappointed by their representatives’ ignorance and by the lack of consistency, compassion or humility many of them display.

In short, with no culture of genuine staff representation in general and little experience of unionised workplaces in particular, we have no sense that we are entitled to expect anything from those we elect to represent us. The majority of us (around two thirds at the last two Coordinating Council elections) do not even believe it is worth the effort of voting.

Yet here again, we can break this vicious circle, by changing our own attitude to our staff representatives and to their role. There are three elements to this change.

1. We must regard our representatives as public servants, accountable to us for the way they perform the task we have entrusted to them. Once we begin to see our representatives in that way, we will begin to make reasonable demands on them and we will expect those demands to be met.
2. We must change our attitude to our own problems and needs. Any problem I have is, in the end, my problem. I cannot reasonably expect my representatives to simply take my problems on their own shoulders and solve them. I must be prepared to invest my own time and energy in solving them. However, I must have confidence that my representatives have the intelligence and resourcefulness to help me to make informed decisions by providing information and advice, and that they have the courage to represent or accompany me in mediation or negotiation procedures. I should not be made to feel that I am wasting their time when I am merely asking them to do what they said they would do when they stood for election. Listening to staff members and finding ways of solving their problems is exactly how I expect my staff representatives to spend their time.
3. Lastly, we must make the effort to understand our staff representation system. You no doubt agree that it is not an ideal system. Nevertheless, pending the practical reforms I mentioned above, and the implementation of international labour standards in the United Nations Secretariat, it is our only channel of staff-management communications. If we are to make the best use of it, we need to know how it works and what mechanisms are available. In doing so, we will also demonstrate our belief in the need for effective staff representation and thus the need for reform.

In next month’s UN Special, therefore, I hope to present a description of the UNOG staff representation system.

The author is Vice-Chair of the UNOG Staff Coordinating Council, 2000/2001.

The UNOG Coordinating Staff Council has made it its policy not to enter into polemics.

Mr. Lindup has been staff representative and as such has participated in the Coordinating Council's activities.