At UN, Dark Talk of Hot Desks, “Ban Ki-moon's Sweatshop," Staff Allege

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 3 -- With the UN of Ban Ki-moon having effectively broken its Staff Union, now things take a turn toward the surreal, or toward the “sweatshop,” sources tell Inner City Press.

  When the 38 story UN Secretariat building was renovated, many floors were left with the “open plan” in which staff members no longer had walls or privacy. Instead there are so-called “focus booths” the size of closets in which one could make a phone call.

(On the press floor, the UN said it would maintain UN landline telephones in the booths, as requested by Inner City Press and now the Free UN Coalition for Access, to allow direct dialing of UN Peacekeeping missions like the one in Mali where nine peacekeepers from Niger were killed today. But there are no phones, the old UN Correspondents Association never followed through, maintaining a large mostly unused room while media left without offices have been given the focus booths.)

  But upstairs it is crazier. Now the proposal is for “hot desks.” As described to Inner City Press by staff members, it involves a “first come, first served” system for desk space. If a staff member is not among the earliest, he or she might be left with no desk to work from.

  He or she is also an issue raised. As one staff member put it, she as a woman does not necessarily want to be dealt out at random each day with “male staff members I don't want to be next to” a mere two feet away.

“Why not just let us work from home, if this is how little they value us?” another staffer asked, demanding to know if Ban Ki-moon and “his insiders” will also work on hot desks.

  Inner City Press has, of course, sought up the Ban Administration's defense of the "hot desks," and offers these links: http://undocs.org/A/RES/68/247B andhttp://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2013/gaab4088.doc.htm

We'll have more on this.

Footnote: on the controversy of the new head of investments of the UN Pension Fund, the old union raised the issue but says it has been rebuffed, despite the Maryland litigation Inner City Press reported on last month. Retaliation continues, and still the UN has no Freedom of Information Act applying to it. The Free UN Coalition for Access will continue to press on this issue and others. Watch this site.

   

UN Blacks Out Security Council, With Broken Wi-Fi, No Table, No Phones So UNCA Intern With Press Pass

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 24 -- Not only does the UN refuse to answer or now often even take questions: it is making it harder for the press to cover the Security Council and General Assembly.

  Complaints have been mounting for weeks, of UN Television being unintelligible, playing "English Only" though this is the UN, even blacking out speakers, from Palestine's Saeb Erekat and the UN's Hilde Johnson. 

  Wednesday after these complaints, Inner City Press on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's outgoing Deputy Spokesman Eduardo Del Buey what FUNCA has raised for day to the UN, video here from Minute 11:35.

 The UN wireless Internet in front of the Security Council often does not work. Inner City Press including this in a story (on Burundi) on July 22, and FUNCA has been following up ever since.

  Journalists cannot hear what happens in open meeting while also waiting to ask questions. That seems to some to be the goal. While the Security Council stakeout before and during the relocation had a media work table in front of it, now by decision of the Department of Public Information it does not.

  Ironically DPI's new UNTV contractor TeamPeople does have a table, and even plugs in to their electrical outlet in such a way that reporters cannot go to the other end of the stakeout to speak to diplomats. The lack of a table was justified on aesthetic grounds, misplaced; but these do not seem to apply to DPI's own contractors.

After FUNCA advocated on these issues and turned in a petition with signatures from resident correspondents on several continents, DPI's response was to threaten to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' accreditation, forhanging a sign of the Free UN Coalition for Access on the door of its shared office, photo here.
 
  This comes as Inner City Press and FUNCA have shown that the United Nations Correspondents Association's first vice president Lou Charbonneau immediately leaked to DPI an internal UNCA anti Press document. Click here for story,here for document. Neither the UN nor its UNCA have taken any action on this.

  Meanwhile DPI allows its partner UNCA, increasingly the UN Censorship Alliance, to have two signs, a big meeting room, a locked pantry for its wine glasses and its own office. But there's more -- DPI has also given UNCA intern(s) "P" (Press) entry passes, and allowed them into the UN briefing room and stakeout.

  DPI tells even diplomats, at least those from some countries, they can't come into the briefing room. But a non-journalist intern of UNCA (the UN Censorship Alliance) is allowed in, repeatedly. Why? See e.g., video here, at Minute 0:44.

  But there's more! DPI promised correspondents that they would be UN telephones, to for example call people in the UN Missions in the Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Haiti, in the so-called focus booths. Then FUNCA was told this is not possible, the focus booth are being given to journalists.

  Well, the focus booth closest to Inner City Press' (and FUNCA's) shared office has had the UNCA intern in it. Long time journalists weren't allowed to use this space, had their passes changed due to lack of a space.

  But the non journalist, introduced to Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson by UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS as "one of our interns," was working in there with a "P" Press pass.  That's why there's no phone service to the UN Peacekeeping missions?  Watch this site.

   

UN of Ban Ki-moon Tries to Impose One Party System, Banning the Press & Dissent with its UN Censorship Alliance: Other Signs Outlawed

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 14 -- In the midst of reducing media access to the Security Council and General Assembly, the UN outlawed fliers which questioned the changes in policy, posted  by the new Free UN Coalition for Access. 

  Now the UN seeks to ban FUNCA's name from any journalist's office door, while allowing at least two signs of its UN Censorship Alliance, UNCA.

  Before putting this into a Kafka-esque rule about fliers and where journalists can and cannot work, staff of the UN Department of Public Information and scribes from Agence France Presse and Reuters simply tore FUNCA's fliers down, and in some cases defaced and even counterfeited them.

   The rules were agreed to by the old UN Correspondents Association, and now comes the punchline: while UNCA is given a large office at the top of the escalator on which two separate UNCA signs are posted, on June 14 DPI, contrary to previous communication, told Inner City Press which co-founded FUNCA that it cannot display a Free UN Coalition for Access sign on its door.

UNCA and DPI, together the UN's Censorship Alliance, are essentially trying to create a one party system. Despite the fact that UNCA does not represent all UN resident correspondents, and that in 2012 the UNCA Executive Committee devoted most of its meetings to trying to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN for articles it wrote, the UN now tries through rules to outlaw any other organization.

DPI on March 18, 2013 conducted a non-consensual raid of Inner City Press' office, during which UNCA president Pamela Falk took photographs. Later Falk issued a legal threat through her CBSNews.com e-mail address demanding the Press "cease and desist" from even questioning for what purpose she took the photos.

On March 21, right after BuzzFeed called Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky, photos taken during the raid, including of Inner City Press' desk and bookshelf, were leaked to BuzzFeed via an anonymous "Concerned UN Reporter" e-mail account. These photographs are identical to ones e-mailed around by DPI.

Now, after close of business on Friday, June 14 comes this, from the UN: "the posting of notices policy does apply to the FUNCA sign... I am afraid you will have to take the sign down."

While the UN Department of "Public" Information is on a witch hunt about dissent, it is not doing its job. Long ago DPI said that there would be intra-UN telephones to call the peacekeeping missions in the "focus booths." But there are no phones -- and no chairs. An African photographer constantly at the UN is being told he should go through the metal detector on each entrance, while a photograph with AFP, who rarely comes to the UN, is considered a resident correspondent, no metal detector.

There is still no table or surface to type on at the Security Council, as existed before and during the relocation. All space for the public and press to view the General Assembly has been eliminated. And DPI is focused on... banning fliers and even the sign of an alternative organization which dissents. Watch this site.