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UN Labor Strife Puts Privacy and Safety at Risk, Online ID Card Numbers and Signatures Published

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, October 15 -- Labor strife intensified Wednesday at the UN, as management put online the signatures and identification card numbers of staff members who signed a petition asking Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to block the current President of the UN Staff Union from speaking before the UN General Assembly's budget committee. The Staff Union has written a report on its views, and last week Inner City Press asked Ban's Under Secretary General for Management Angela Kane if that report would be distributed to the public. Ms. Kane said the decision would be made by the head of the UN's Office of Human Resources Management Catherine Pollard in 24 or 48 hours. Video here.

  The next day, Ms. Pollard met with the Staff Union and said that the report would be distributed, "otherwise I'll have Inner City Press asking me why not."  By the end of last week, a petition was circulating, which some say has the support of management, to block the Staff Union from addressing or reporting to the Budget Committee. Amazingly, the petition and all of the signatures were put online, by UN management's "iSeek team," on Wednesday, as the Staff Union took to distributing their report by hand in the UN's lobby.

Ban Ki-moon speaks to staff in Geneva, while in NY signatures put online

  This takes place against a backdrop in which the UN Staff Unions in New York and Geneva have declined to participate in what they call a management-dominated systemwide mechanism for staff-management communications, the SMCC. While Ms. Kane and her predecessor Alicia Barcena, who was in UN Headquarters in Wednesday, have both publicly said they want to bring the New York Staff Union leadership back into the fold, the publication of the petition seems to further raise the stakes. More immediately, it puts at risk people's privacy and even safety.

  Inner City Press has spoken with a number of people who signed the petition. Some make the valid point that elections must be held. Some, it seems, didn't understand the petition they were asked to sign. That is beyond the scope of this article, written less than an hour after Inner City Press saw the online petition complete with signatures and ID card numbers. While some have suggested that Inner City Press republish the petition, since UN management for some reason felt comfortable putting it online, that will not be done at this time, in order to protect personal privacy and, it should be noted, UN safety. To have the unique pass ID number of this many staff in the public domain, according to security sources, is a terrible idea.

  For UN management to want to oppose Staff Union officials who criticize them is one thing. To put hundreds of staff members' privacy, and UN safety, at risk is something else. We'll see what happens.

Note: Catch this reporter on Icelandic television, www.ruv.is

Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on UN, bailout, MDGs.

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Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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