An exhausted local straff member Un employé local éreinté

Organizing a Regional Management Meeting is an exhausting task and we would like to pay tribute to the hard work of the Regional Support Team in Dakar. Linking with the hotels to organize the conference, reserving hotel rooms, food, drinks, technical support, a local secretariat, live translation, photographers, drivers, shuttles, evening events and dinners and all the ad hoc day to day requests … This is was a huge effort from the entire RST  during the past 4 days and once all of this is over they deserve a well-earned rest !

Thanks to the entire team !!

L’organisation d’une réunion régionale de management est une tache éreintante et nous devons faire hommage à la montagne de travail fait par l’équipe de support régionale à Dakar. Faire la liaison avec les hotels pour organiser la conférence, réserver les chambres, la nourriture, les boisons, le support technique, un secrétariat local, les traductions en direct, les photographes, chauffeurs, navettes, événements en soirée et toutes les demandes imprévues au jour le jour… C’est un énorme boulot de la part du bureau de Dakar pour que nous nous sentions à la maison pendant ces 4 jours et une fois que tout est fini ils méritent un bon repos bien mérité !

Merci à toute l’équipe !!

Your staff association presented this morning at the Dakar Regional Management Meeting.

The meeting takes place in Dakar, Sénégal and brings together UNAIDS Country Coordinators and some staff from West and Central Africa.

In an interactive session, the two staff representatives from the USSA (Manuel, Chair and Christophe) presented the 2008 achievements and the issues looming forward in 2009.

A group exercises prompted for input from the audience on 5 key points :

• Empowerment & Inclusiveness
• Training, Learning & Development
• Change, Decision making & Transparency
• Carbon-Neutral UNAIDS
• Leadership Change, Motivation & Leadership

Next, a Q&A session opened the floor to the audience. Questions revolved around actions that USSA can take to move things forward, Follow up on the Staff Opinion Survey and some very good suggestions on how to motivate staff, uncompensed travel time during weekends and an equitable sharing of human and financial ressources and the problematic of small field offices.

A more thorough summary of the session will be made available to staff later after the RMM.

Click here to view more photos from the USSA session in Dakar : USSA Photo Gallery

FICSA COUNCIL:

In February the Staff Association participated in the Annual Council of the Federation of International Civil Servants Associations (FICSA).

As you will have seen from the Annual Report, a large proportion of our expenditure goes to FICSA. We are sure you are asking yourself why this is the case and why we felt the need to go all the way to Paris for a week. Staff in general believe that their terms and conditions of service are largely decided locally. In fact, this is often not the case. Most of the terms and conditions of service that impact you individually are set at the UN common system level.  We are represented in these discussions by our membership and participation in FICSA. Giving them the tools they need to engage in evidence based intelligent discussion at the UN common systems level is the best approach for improving our work life.

The FICSA Council this year addressed many issues of importance to all staff and we were happy to be able to participate fully in all the sessions, which included:

• Training on the Legal Appeal Process
• Sessions on Staff Management Relations through which were happy to provide input into the Global Staff Satisfaction Survey as well as present our Agreement of Cooperation with UNAIDS administration which was acknowledged to be unique in the UN system. These sessions also addressed the issue of whistle-blowing within the UN system, which we followed with interest.
• Sessions on Professional Salaries and Allowances and the modernizing of the classification of GS posts
• Sessions on Social Security / Occupational Health and Safety: Our colleagues from UN+ and UN Cares presented a joint session to the Council and were happy to sign an MOU with FICSA.
• Sessions on Legal Questions where we brought up our particular issue regarding UNAIDS Secretariat Staff Association membership of staff with UNDP contracts. This issue was not resolved at FICSA, but we will continue to push this as a priority this year.
• Sessions on HRM issues

Following our full participation at this year’s Council we re-iterated our commitment to FICSA as the only body that represents all staff at the highest level in the UN common system. We are more than happy to provide the complete report of our participation to all those interested. In the meantime, all members of the Staff Association are welcome to visit FICSA’s website: http://ficsa.org/ (username: unaids, password: EL175man).

Regional Representation – USSA Elections:

The full list of candidates standing for election for the 2009 USSA Executive Committee along with their bios and pictures will be available on our website next week: www.ussa-unaids.org

With approximately 1,000 staff worldwide, we particularly want to ensure that we have representation from all of the UNAIDS regions if at all possible, so please take this into account when considering who to vote for this year.

The elections will take place from 7 to 21 April. All dues paying members of the can vote in the elections – if you are unsure if you can vote, just contact our office and Cinzia or Tanya will be more than happy to bring you up to date ( (UNAIDSStaffAssociation@unaids.org) UNAIDSStaffAssociation (at) unaids (dot) org). If you are not a dues paying member, please do fill out our membership form available on the website and send it to the Staff Association. You will be glad you did! Every new member increases our mandate and our solidarity!:

Your Staff Association is happy to present its Annual Report of Activities for 2008 and we invite you to browse through the full Report which is available on our website:

 http://www.ussa-unaids.org/cms/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=34&Itemid=85

So what exactly have we done for you lately? Of course, we would like you to read the report, it’s not very long, but here are some highlights:

• We were actively involved in developing the new Mobility and Rotation Policy and continue to serve our members by monitoring the implementation of the Policy
• We advocated for the development of a policy on Diversity – which was adopted by the SMT in early 2009. We hope that this is the first step in addressing the issues of rights and benefits for same sex and domestic partnerships which was also highlighted by staff in Latin America in their petition to the EXD last year.
• We continued to advocate for equity in contractual status for all staff serving UNAIDS – irrespective of whether their contract is administered by WHO or UNDP. We are aware that this continues to cause concern for our colleagues in the field and this issue will be a priority for us again in 2009.
• We advocated for and assisted in the development of the UNAIDS Work-Life Balance Policy. We will continue to work closely with the Administration on promoting awareness of the policy and ensuring consistent application for staff.

We strongly encourage your feedback on the report either via the blog or email. We are here to help you and can only continue to do this if you let us know if we are on track in addressing issues of concern to you.