Will UN chief and senior management volunteer pay cuts in crisis-stricken body?
UNITED NATIONS: As a spiraling financial crisis threatens to undermine the United Nations’ day- to- day operations worldwide, a proposal being kicked around outside the empty corridors of the UN, has triggered the question: will senior officials, including the secretary general, the deputy secretary general and undersecretaries-general; 60 heads of UN agencies, funds and programs; and assistant secretariesgeneral volunteer to take salary cuts — even as a symbolic gesture?
Kul Gautam, a former UN assistant secretary-general and deputy executive director of the UN Children’s Fund, told IPS: “I think it would be an excellent gesture of solidarity for the UN’s seniormost officials, including heads of agencies, to agree to and announce a voluntary pay cut for themselves in response to the financial crisis resulting from Covid-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) that is impacting the UN system itself and the peoples of the world it serves.”
Asked about a gesture by UN staff in Cabo Verde to donate their salaries, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on May 19: “We have staff in New York who have donated goods and services to the pandemic, whether it’s to deliver food. So, I think it’s not uncommon for UN staff to either volunteer or to give back to the communities where they work.”
He also said in Cabo Verde, half of the UN country team members, around 50 staff from UN entities and the resident coordinator’s office, made donations to the government’s Covid-19 efforts.
This totaled slightly less than $ 5,000 and directly helped 46 families in need. The prime minister was very moved by the gesture and thanked the UN publicly, said Dujarric.
In an opinion piece published by IPS in April, Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, a former undersecretary-general and high representative of the UN (2002 to 2007) and permanent representative of Bangladesh to the UN (1996 to 2001), underscored the point that “if the liquidity crisis keeps on affecting the work of the UN and its mandate delivery, the UN staff as a privileged part of the humanity, should join in making creative efforts placing interests of the world body ahead of their sacrifice.
“One such measure could be for UN staff to allow the UN to withhold 20 percent of their monthly salaries to offset the impact of the current liquidity crisis in the coming months.
“When the liquidity situation gets better, say in six months’ time, that 20 percent would be paid back.”
The UN secretary-general and his senior management team, he said, should lead by example by announcing they would do so voluntarily.
This proposal should exclude all the general services staff of the UN, said Chowdhury, a former chairman of the UN General Assembly’s administrative and budgetary committee during the 52nd session of the UN General Assembly (1997 to 1998).
The UN, which remains closed till the end of June — and perhaps extended through August or September — due to the coronavirus pandemic is facing a growing cash crisis, due in large measure to late or non- payment of dues by an overwhelming majority of the 193 member-states.
The numbers are staggering: $1.63 billion is owed to the UN’s regular budget and $2.14 billion to the peacekeeping budget.
The United States apparently owes about $486.7 million in unpaid arrears, but has promised to deliver by the end of the year — depending largely on the fluctuating political mood swings of a volatile American president.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says “unpredictable cash inflows” have been exacerbated by the deadly Covid-19 pandemic while seriously threatening the UN’s ability to do its work — even as nearly 36,000 staffers worldwide are working from home.
As of January 2019, the gross salary of an undersecretary-general, the third high-ranking job in the UN hierarchy, was $198,315 and an assistant secretary-general pulled in about $179,948, excluding post adjustments, hospitality expenses and travel per diem.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres walking across the empty corridors of the locked-down UN Secretariat building in New York.
The proposal for voluntary pay cuts come at a time when some of the world’s political leaders, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and three presidents — Halimah Yacob of Singapore, Cyril Ramphosa of South Africa and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya — have all taken voluntary salary cuts, along with some of their deputies and senior staffers.
Which begs the question: Why aren’t other Western leaders following in her footsteps?
Ian Williams, author of
president of the New York Foreign Press Association and a former president of the UN Correspondents Association, told IPS comparisons are odious, as Shakespeare correctly said.
He pointed out that years of anti- UN propaganda by US conservatives has left the impression that UN staff in general, let alone senior management, are paid massive amounts.
But over the decades, emoluments for public servants have
been held down while those for corporate management have ballooned, he noted.
And while the UN staff are paid salaries, the private sector are “compensated” with stock grants and options and bonuses.
But, said Williams, while UN managers might be poor relatives to their private counterparts, odious comparison still applied. They are much better paid than junior staff, and immeasurably better off than most of “us, the peoples of the world.”
“So, while on one level they should not take a payout to reflect the crisis in the world economy and the effects on the UN budget, they should indeed “volunteer” to take a hefty drop in pay, for the sake of their collective reputation as public servants and for the image of the international organization as whole. Few will starve as a result,” declared Williams.
Martin Edwards, associate professor and chairman of the School of Diplomacy and Internationaal Relations at Seton Hall University,
became dull when I became a congressman).” The rest is history. The congress- man never allowed any of his immediate family to take over.
I strongly believe and nominate the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) as the next two inutile institutions in the Philippines. Why the DSWD? Different instances — from the first burst of the distribution of Social Amelioration Program benefits; to reports of the blind, persons in wheelchairs, cripples and senior citizens not getting any of the money — were reported in the news. The DSWD seems to not know the meaning of persons with disability and senior citizens. I will bet my life on this, that the list of beneficiaries of the DSWD will not match that of the lists of the local government units concerned. An honest to goodness audit by the Commission on Audit (CoA) will prove this.
For the DPWH, they could have helped their regions and districts if they moderated their greed as testified before by Chairman Neri? They could have donated 50 percent of their “grease money/SOP” and bought good rapid testing kits and distributed them to those in need. Or bought personal protective equipment for our frontliners. True, most of their hundreds of vehicles “produced” through the rent-to-own scheme were used in delivering relief goods, but I bet there is 100 percent corruption here in the purchase of fuel for the vehicles. Again, an honest to goodness audit by the CoA will prove this.
Juniper Dominguez #75-B, Upper Engineer Hill Baguio City
said: “I’d say there are two reasons this is not likely to catch on.”
The first is a simple collective action problem. It’s not easy to get people to agree to cut their pay voluntarily.
“These things normally take top-down leadership in firms, so Guterres would have to be the one to lead (and the one to ask his colleagues to also pony up).”
The second is political. While it’s a nice rhetorical move, it plays into the hands of the penny-pinching Trump White House and confirms their suspicions that UN officials make too much money, he said.
“I don’t think that would be enough of a move to unlock the US contribution. The bigger issue is that this is a drop in the bucket. The fiscal crisis facing the UN is in the billions, and no amount of voluntary staff reductions can make up this difference,” Edwards added.
Meanwhile, in the corporate sector, the voluntary pay cuts have been on the rise.
At Best Buy, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Corie Barry has taken
a 50-percent cut in her base salary while senior executives in the company have taken a reduction of 20 percent; John Lansing, chief executive of National Public Radio has taken a 25-percent cut, while other executives will have their salaries reduced by 10 to 15 percent.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has announced pay cuts upward of 20 percent system-wide.
According to leaders from some of the companies affected by the pandemic, particularly airlines, “are forfeiting their paychecks as the pandemic worsens.”
These leaders include the cofounders of Lyft, executives at Airbnb and the CEO of Marriott. And in the media and entertainment sector, Disney’s Executive Chairman Bob Iger is forgoing his salary for 2020, while the top five Comcast executives are donating theirs to charity. At Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said he would be giving up 100 per of his salary for the next six months.