Tuesday marked the second walk out this month at the Rome-based organization, and on Wednesday, FAO employees held an assembly to discuss their concerns regarding these staff reductions by upper-level FAO management. 

 

Approximately 56 jobs posts have been eliminated and these cuts occurred without proper "consultation or consideration of staff welfare." Many of the staff whose positions were terminated had many years of dedicated service to the organization, and those left employed by the organization raised questions as to why this course of action was the most proper way of achieving financial savings. In the statement, the two groups called for the FAO to "abandon its efforts to abolish"  the long established rules and procedures "enshrined in the FAO manual," which were meant to safeguard the staff from these types of actions.

 

However, the statement's purpose was not just to serve as a critique of the FAO's decision. It also proposed that the FAO achieve the budgetary savings through other means until a "more humane and long-term strategy is developed." The FAO "has faced similar and even more severe finanical challenges in the past," the statement read, and it has been able to address these issues "without the need for involuntary staff dismissals." Perhaps an alternative solution to this problem may be addressed temporarily through "savings on existing vacant posts," the statement suggested.

 

For a humanitarian organization, the methods undertaken to save costs appear to be anything but humane. The FAO must ensure that it develops a long-term strategy in order to maintain "the spirit and mores of the United Nations system."

 

Until this is accomplished, the AP in FAO and the UGSS have decided to "initiate work stoppage," yet the date for such protest(s) is still to be determined.

 

 jp-ag