TEETERING on the brink of bankruptcy and under intense pressure to reinvent itself, the UN yesterday took the wraps off plans to trim its staff levels by as much as 10 per cent and curtail programmes world wide.
The job cutting campaign will come as a hammer blow to a UN workforce that is already afflicted by bitterness and rock bottom morale. But it is likely to be welcomed by many member states as an overdue attempt at pruning a bureaucracy often labelled as hopelessly bloated and inefficient.
The redundancies will not directly affect the various semi independent UN agencies, such as the World Health Organisation, but is focused on the roughly 10,000 employees of the UN's core secretariat, located primarily in New York, but also in Geneva and Vienna and field offices around the world.
Briefing national ambassadors yesterday, Mr Joseph Con nor, the Under Secretary General in charge of finances, detailed a three pronged plan to trim staffing that would result in a vacancy rate inside the UN of 6.4 per cent. At least 800 posts will be emptied while retirement age rules will be strictly enforced and recruitment frozen.
Affected employees will face one of three possible fates: a transfer to another post inside the UN; an offer of a buy out equal to year or more of their regular salary depending on their length of service; or involuntary redundancy. The measures are to be completed over the next four months.
Mr Connor, who used to be a director of the accounting firm Price Waterhouse, conceded that life for UN employees is already hard. "This isn't a particularly good place to work any more", he commented. "Compensation for civil servants is falling behind, pressures are on and people work 70 hours a week here at the upper levels."
The last phase of the plan to be enacted will be the involuntary firings when the opportunities for "buy outs and transfers have been exhausted. Officials said these were not likely before July and the final number involved is still uncertain.
The staffing reductions have been forced on the UN by a $154 million (£102 million) shortfall in the 1996-1997 biennial budget recently approved by the General Assembly compared with the draft proposed by the Secretary General, Dr Boutros BoutrosGhali.
In addition to shedding people, the UN will cut back what it offers in almost every sphere of its activities.
The administration and management divisions of the UN will see their budget cut by as much as $48 million. The impact of the cuts will be widespread and will be felt by almost all those, including charities and governments, whose activities overlap with those of the UN.
The atmosphere in the corridors of the UN's headquarters in New York, meanwhile, is, at best, morose even among those whose jobs may be secure. "There is despondency, because everyone is aware that everything that they are working on is going to be less effective," one senior official noted.