The Contractor

There are two types of people who work for the UN: Staff and everyone else. The first get paid a tax-free salary, receive excellent healthcare, are enrolled in a great pension plan, their children have the choice to go to the best schools because the fees are heavily subsidized by the UN, the banks give them special loans so they can buy the ridiculously overpriced apartments and houses in the area (100-year loans at less than a percent of interest?!).

The other type have very unstable contracts, have to pay tax on their salaries, pay out of pocket for all medical care, can’t afford to put their kids into a local private school (If they are lucky enough to be able to bring their family with them) where they would learn in their mother tongue, and many can’t even take a loan for a car let alone buy an apartment or house because of the temporary nature of their contracts and on top of it all, many of us have to take ‘contract breaks’, periods of having no work and receiving no pay between contracts.

I, and many others, fall into the latter category. We are the underrepresented, voiceless workforce at the UN. Yet we perform the same (if not more) duties than staff members in similar positions. The reason for this? To cut costs. The UN gets to pay us less and skimp on the benefits so that the work can get done. Most of us remain contractors for our entire tenure at the UN. We come in as contractors and as contractors we remain, just because they can get away with it. Some of us spend several years as contractors before we are offered temporary staff posts, which are just as tenuous as contract work. Exceedingly few of us find a long-term staff contract or a renewing contract at the UN. But day in and day out, we come in, performing our duties to the best of our abilities while our staff counterparts complain about a 7 percent paycut while they still receive all of their benefits.

Staff Surveys are sent out, all who receive them are requested to complete them. Are those sent to contractors or unpaid interns? No. The reason for this? They don’t want to hear from us or about us. They don’t want to allow us to air our grievances. They just want us to fall in line, do the work that we are assigned and keep our mouths shut.

What can be done about this? We can organize, all contractors and interns can band together and demand that we receive parity with the staff. We can demand that the Swiss authorities give us official status as UN employees, and thus be exempt from paying income taxes. And after a certain amount of qualifying time, we should be able to join the UN pension fund, and we should get 'vested' in it after five years of contributing which is now the case for 'staff'. We need support and we also need to support one another.

But whatever we do, we need to make sure that the status quo changes. We cannot go on like this!

The UN contractor