UNRWA WEST BANK STRIKE: UNION LEADERS HOPE TO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 AMMAN 008809

SIPDIS

DEPT. FOR PRM

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/26/2014
TAGS: PREF EAID ELAB JO SY LE IS
SUBJECT: UNRWA WEST BANK STRIKE: UNION LEADERS HOPE TO
SPREAD ACTION TO OTHER FIELDS

Classified By: A/DCM CHRISTOPHER HENZEL FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D)


1. (C) SUMMARY. UNRWA's West Bank Field is entering a third
week of strike action by its locally-hired employees. UNRWA
staff report that militant union leaders demanding hazard pay
and other wage increases are enforcing the action through
threats of violence. The strike has severely impacted the
Agency's operations in its West Bank field: both its
emergency food aid and employment programs -- and its normal
health, education and sanitation services -- have been almost
completely halted. Union leaders are now appealing to UNRWA
staff associations in the Agency's four other fields (Gaza,
Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) to strike in solidarity. UNRWA HQ
hopes that an open letter ComGen Hansen published in the West
Bank's major dailies will pressure the strike leaders to
compromise by revealing how the union "misled" the employees
it represents by refusing to participate in a June 2004 wage
survey, and failing to reveal how UNRWA had already met the
majority of the strikers demands, resulting in median UNRWA
salaries that average 130% above their PA comparators.
However, the West Bank Field Director believes the tactic has
failed, and that a "face saving" financial incentive will be
required to break the current impasse. END SUMMARY.

--------------
UNRWA WEST BANK OPERATIONS SITREP
--------------


2. (SBU) Union leaders representing the 5,200 registered
Palestinian refugees that UNRWA employs in its West Bank
Field are carrying their strike action into a third week.
West Bank Field Director Anders Fange and Operations Support
Officer (OSO) Program Head Greta Zanbleek reported in October
25 telcons with Amman-based RefCoord that the strike has
brought both emergency and normal Agency operations to an
almost complete stop. The eight international staff
currently on the OSO team continue to carry out inspections
of UNRWA's 189 installations in the West Bank, but services
to the 665,246 registered Palestinian refugees (approximately
35% of the total West Bank population) have been severely
disrupted:

EMERGENCY FOOD AID: UNRWA currently provides emergency food
assistance to approximately 400,000 people in the West Bank.
A second distribution round that UNRWA had started delivering
on the eve of the strike has now been effectively halted,
with only half of the scheduled food deliveries completed.
Fange explained that while UNRWA emergency relief staff have
largely stayed on the job, warehouse and laborers have not,
resulting in shortages in food stockpiles in UNRWA's
warehouses, particularly in the north. Fange called the
prospects of replenishing UNRWA's warehouses without an end
to the strike "very low."

HEALTH SERVICES: UNRWA has managed to keep its 43-bed
hospital in Qalqilya open for emergency services only, but
access for refugees is severely limited by the barrier that
surrounds Qalqilya. UNRWA's 34 other primary health care
facilities in the West Bank are closed. Strike leaders are
refusing appeals from UNRWA's West Bank Field Headquarters to
allow UNRWA doctors to offer emergency health services. They
have similarly rejected appeals to allow UNRWA pharmacists to
dispense medication to refugees suffering from chronic health
conditions. UNRWA international staff say that no/no deaths
can be directly attributed to the strike. Refugees requiring
critical medical care appear to be coming up with the
necessary fees to pay for alternative PA hospital and private
health clinic services.

EDUCATION: UNRWA's 95 elementary and primary schools remain
shut. 60,145 registered students have lost 13 school days.
UNRWA staff have received reports that small number of
parents are starting to approach the PA for assistance. They
estimate that 150-200 students have been offered temporary
places in PA schools.

CAMP SANITATION: According to Fange and Zanbleek, some
Popular Committees (camp committees) in the 18 camps that
UNRWA administers are starting to break with strike leaders
in response to resident complaints about the sanitation
problems in the camp that has resulted from the work
stoppages. Camp committees are organizing some ad hoc
garbage collection, encouraging local UNRWA employees to man
trash compactor trucks.

The general strike is also having a secondary impact on the
local economy, as union leaders failed to establish a strike
fund for participating employees before voting for the total
work stoppage.


--------------
THE DEMANDS
--------------


3. (SBU) An UNRWA West Bank public relations officer who was
involved in informal discussions organized to try to head off
the strike, told us that that initial vote passed by a close
margin (16 of the 27 elected employee association members
voted for the action, 11 against) because a significant
number of board members opposed the idea of raising the
strike agitators central demands - wage increases and hazard
pay -- during the current emergency. Several of the
organizers' original demands, including the abolition of the
so-called "99 rules" (a lower salary scale that UNRWA
introduced for workers hired after 1999 during a period of
severe Agency underfunding),additional maternity and annual
leave for employees who work six-day weeks, and an expansion
of the number of employees who can qualify for the
"Jerusalem" cost of living allowance, have been dropped as
UNRWA's West Bank Field Director has informed local staff
that these demands had already been implemented, or were in
the process of being implemented. The strike leaders are now
focusing on a demand for a regular 25% hazard pay increase
and an across-the-board wage adjustment that would bring
UNRWA local staff salaries in line with the salaries of local
staff hired by other UN agencies operating in the West Bank.


--------------
PROSPECTS FOR RESOLUTION LOW
--------------


4. (SBU) UNRWA HQ hopes that an open letter ComGen Hansen
sent to UNRWA West Bank staff on October 21 (faxed to
PRM/ANE) will put pressure on strike leaders. This letter,
which UNRWA published in Al Quds and other major Arabic
dailies in the West Bank, reveals to local staff how their
union leaders "deliberately misled" them by failing to reveal
they refused to participate in a comprehensive salary survey
that UNRWA conducted in June that ended up determining that
median UNRWA salaries in the West Bank ($400-500 per month)
are, on average, 130% higher than their local comparator (the
PA, which runs similar services, as opposed to other UN
Agencies operating in the West Bank, which do have higher
salary scales for local hires). NOTE: UNRWA raised salaries
in its Syria field by five percent to partially match a 17%
government wage increase as a result of the June survey.
UNRWA local staff have also received automatic 2% annual step
increases since 1996, resulting in a 15-23 wage increase for
workers who joined the Agency before 1996. END NOTE.
Hansen's open letter also "informs" local staff that the
employee associations from UNRWA's five fields, who gather
four times a year in UNRWA or Damascus to discuss personnel
issues with UNRWA HQ officials, had voted against regular
hazard pay at one of their recent meetings, recognizing that
the only option open to UNRWA to finance hazard pay would be
to draw from the 2004 emergency appeal for Gaza and the West
Bank. NOTE: NY has repeatedly rejected UNRWA appeals to fund
hazard pay for local UNRWA staff out of the regular UN
budget, as it does for other UN agencies operating in the
West Bank. END NOTE. Hansen also reminds local staff in his
open letter that UNRWA established a separate, de facto
voluntary fund for hazard pay as part of its emergency appeal
in 2002, which has permitted the Agency to distribute 25%
monthly salary increases to local staff at various times over
the past three years, including four payments in 2004.
Finally, Hansen warns that threats of violence and other
tactics employed by strike leaders are in violation of
international labor law and that donors had expressed
disappointment that local UNRWA staff would choose to support
a strike during the current emergency at the October 13-14
Major Donors Meeting in Amman, and could pull funding.


GAZA AND JORDAN HOPEFUL THEY CAN LIMIT SOLIDARITY STRIKES
-------------- --------------



5. (C) Union leaders, however, are countering with their own
publicity campaign. After having organized marches and
workshops in support of the strike in Ramallah, Qalqilya and
several other West Bank cities that resulted in only muted
statements of support from elected local officials (Abu Ala,
for example, told UNRWA workers who marched on the PA's
Ramallah compound that the PA supported their action, "as
long as it was within UNRWA rules and regulations"),union
officials are changing direction, reaching out to their
counterparts in UNRWA's four other fields with appeals for
solidarity. Deputy ComGen Karen AbuZayd told PRM PDAS Rich
Greene in an October 25 telcon that local employees in all
four fields are putting considerable pressure on their
employee association leaders to respond to the West Bank
approach. After meeting for several hours with employee union
leaders in Gaza late October 25, Deputy Gaza Field Director
Christer Nordahl told RefCoord he was confident that Gaza's
union leaders -- who he said are "adamantly opposed to the
notion of holding a general strike during the current
emergency" -- had limited the demands for a show of support
to a one-hour solidarity stike to be held the morning of
October 27 that would clearly exempt all staff involved in
security and emergency operations. Directors and Deputy
Directors from the Jordan, Syria and Lebanon fields told
RefCoord that they are watching the West Bank situation
closely. The Jordanian employee association started issuing
calls in the local press for higher salaries on October 26,
arguing that they should have "parity" with the West Bank
strikers (i.e., salaries that are 130% higher than their
comparator). However, the Jordan, Syria and Lebanon fields
have received no/no indication to date that their staff
associations are prepared to start industrial actions of
their own.


6. (C) In the meantime, UNRWA international staff are
growing pessimistic that the current standoff in the West
Bank can be broken absent the sort of financial concession
that UNRWA offered the last time the West Bank staff went on
strike in 1996. They argue that the Palestinian refugees
themselves, having grown "used to" disruptions in services
after four years of intifada and IDF operations, will not
appeal to union leaders to stop the strike, and report that
threats of violence have effectively cowed local staff who
might oppose the action from crossing picket lines. UNRWA's
Deputy ComGen revealed to PRM PDAS Rich Greene that the West
Bank Field Director is now appealing to the ComGen to offer a
face-saving concession to break the impasse in the form of a
retroactive three-week pay raise for those strikers who agree
to come back to work immediately.


HALE