US embassy cable - 04AMMAN8809

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