JOBS FOR 2500 WITH U.N.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 368, 12 July 1946, Page 31

JOBS FOR 2500 WITH U.N.

Duties will be Exacting, But Incomes T. ax-free

(By

MARY

HORNADAY

in "The Christian Science Monitor’)

OW would you like to work for 51 governments all at the same time? Approximately 2,500 carefully chosen men and women will be granted this opportunity or, if you will, challenge, when U.N.’s permanent secretariat gets into full swing at its New York-Connecticut capital in August. People who work for United Nations will be international civil servants. They specifically pledge themselves to work for the good of all the United Nations instead of any one. How effective they will be in carrying out the pledge and forwarding the U.N. cause depends to a large extent on their day-to-day ability to work in the same room with people of several nationalities in an atmosphere of calm and achievement.

Many U.N. staff members will have had the advantage of working in other international offices, such as the League of Nations and UNRRA, where they will have already acquired a certain technique in working side by side with people who think differently and speak differently. A question on the U.N. job application says, "Are you prepared to serve in any part of the world?" A special frame of mind is required for being an international civil servant. "You don’t let go with so many wisecracks or offhand remarks as in the average office," said one U.N. staff member. "Often as not the person at your side will not grasp what you've said. By the time you stop to explain the point is lost." "You don’t fly off the handle nearly so often," this from a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation worker. "If you do, you feel

you must hasten to explain why you did, or bad international relations will result. That takes too much time." "When you have acquired patience enough to get along with ‘foreigners’ then there is the problem of not getting too much resignation ‘to swamp initiative." An American UNRRA worker employed in London in the same room with a Frenchman, a Pole, a Brazilian, and an contributed that. "If you spend all your time being patient with each other," she said, "you soon find no one is furnishing the leadership necessary to get things accomplished." Applications Flood In

Though U.N. in full swing is destined to have the largest international secretariat yet gathered under one roof, men and women in other United Nations agencies are already working side by side in many parts of the globe in an atmosphere of friendliness and co-opera-tion.

That thousands more men and women the world over are confident they have the ability to achieve the supra-national thinking U.N. employment entails is seen in the number of job applications flooding in on Major P. T. V. Leith, U.N. personnel officer. The applications already total between 6,000 and 7,000. (In the United States inquiries are being sent to Basil Capella, Personnel Director, United Nations, Hunter College, the Bronx, New York.) The picture many outsiders have of the United States as a place flowing with milk and honey may have something to do with it. Though it may not prove to be as pleasant as they envision it, American living offers a certain lure

to well-educated but underfed and shivering Europeans or to Chinese intellectuals tired of battling mountainous inflation. Even if expensive, food and clothing is at least unrationed in the United States: What kind of a change in attitude is necessary to become an international public servant for the first time? The person who has never operated in international circles before will find in himself a surprising tendency to defend his own country’s actions the moment they are attacked. He will have to curb that if he intends to remain at peace with his fellow workers. EY "In Loyalty, Discretion and Conscience" If a U.N. employee wants to run for the American Congress or the Russian Supreme Soviet he must resign his job. While he is in U.N.’s service he must agree to receive no decorations or gifts from any nation, except for war service. Each U.N. worker in his ‘oath of office promises to "exercise in all loyalty, discretion, and conscience the functions entrusted to me as a member of the Inter. national Services of the United Nations, to discharge these functions and regulate my conduct with the welfare of the United Nations only in view and not to seek or accept instructions from any government or other authority external to the organisation."

Wisely enough, U.N. specifically assures him he will not be expected to give up "national sentiments or political and religious convictions." But he may soon find it to advantage to keep these locked within his own heart. U.N.’s civil service will be a model, drawing from the best personnel practices of national civil services all over the world. Employees will not only have 30 days’ annual leave with pay, sick leave, maternity leave, retirement and provident funds, but allowances’for their children’s education and travel funds to take them home on leave and back

again. The United States Congress has granted U.N. workers certain diplomatic privileges, though not as many as a minister or ambassador has. They will be able to get visas to get in and out of the country quickly. They will not be allowed to tear round over the Bear Mountain Highway or the Merritt Parkway and get away with: it. Like any citizen of New York or Connecticut, they may have to spend a night in jail if they offend the peace of the countryside, * * * (CONTRIBUTING to the peace of mind of U.N.-ites will be the relief of not having to make out an income tax return. Even though Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg told the U.N. Assembly long tradition would be broken in the exemption of any American citizen from income tax, it was decided it would be the only way to keep U.N. salaries uniform. UNRRA pays salaries according to national standards. U.N. will establish

one international standard, unaffected even by differences in income tax rates. UNRRA being a temporary organisation, operates on the theory that most of the money it pays out will be spent back in Poland, France, or whatever nation the staff member comes from. U.N., on’ the other hand, goes on the assumption salaries will be spent where they are earned-in New York City. The sliding scale has been the cause of considerable dissatisfaction within UNRRA. U.N. salaries will look high to civil servants from many nations. In Greece, with inflation rife, top government employees have only the equivalent of 25 dollars a week to spend. The top U.N. employee, Trygve Lie, of Norway, will receive 20,000 dollars a year, with 20,000 dollars more for expenses, but even this is not as high as sAlaries that. used to be paid leading officials at the League of Nations in Geneva. A salary classification plan is to be drawn up by U.N.’s civil service commission.

N. will draw its personnel from. all * parts of the world, though not on specific quota. It has decided to eliminate almost entirely written examinations such as are given by the United States Civil Service. Personal interviews will be the usual way of picking people. Otherwise, desirable applicants whose education has been hampered by noteworthy war or underground service might be passed up. Education in languages and technical subjects will go on continuously at U.N. headquarters. For the next few months all U.N. appointments, like its present site at Hunter College, will be temporary. Permanent appointments will begin in August when the staff will begin to expand to the 2,500 goal roughly mentioned but not specifically set at the London Assembly. The expansiveness of U.N., compared with its predecessor the League of Nations before it went under, can be seen from the size of U.N.’s initial bud-get-21,580,000 dollars. The League, even in its palmiest days, never had more than 8,000,000 dollars to spend. At one place in U.N.’s rules, it says that any worker who has spent 40 years with U.N. can live out his days on twothirds of his salary. Sceptical as the rest of the world may become, those who planned U.N.’s secretariat at least are expecting peace to last.