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Mauro Pace, President of the Federation of International Civil Servants’ Associations (FICSA), addressed the Fifth Committee on 26 October, stressing the need for effective staff-management relations in the UN system organizations.  “We are convinced that a constant, substantive and open communication among staff, management and the Member States is of crucial importance,” he stated.  To that end, FICSA offered training workshops on staff-management relations, but many of its members, he said, now questioned the usefulness of participating in those workshops as their views and concerns had been “utterly dismissed by some and barely taken into consideration by others”.  That failure to value staff participation represented “a great loss” for management and organizations as a whole.  “What better source of direct information could there be than the staff and the representatives they elect to communicate their concerns?” he asked.  “We hope that our message is clear and trust that this Committee will recommend measures to strengthen staff-management relations,” he added.

Turning to the “contentious issue” of harmonization of the conditions of service of staff serving in non-family duty stations, he stated that the need to maintain a home base outside of the non-family duty station had been “clearly recognized” by United Nations organizations and ICSC alike, citing the latter’s approval of the use of the “special operations approach” in its 2005 annual report.  Despite that fact, he noted that, in 2007, the General Assembly — acting on the recommendation of the Fifth Committee — had decided that the special operations approach should not be applied to the staff of the UN Secretariat.  The elimination of the special operations approach would come at a “high cost”, he stressed, as it still served as the most effective tool to recruit and retain staff in posts typically difficult to fill.  “There will most certainly be legal challenges to any decision to diminish or do away with this benefit,” he asserted.  Staff considered the level of the benefit as an acquired right, he explained, adding that a breach of an acquired right was generally found when the right at issue was of decisive importance to a staff member upon the acceptance of an appointment.  “FISCA would plead with this Committee not to endorse the ICSC recommendation,” he stressed, requesting instead that the Commission gather missing data and develop a new proposal acceptable to all stakeholders.

 Another issue of concern related to the total compensation comparison under the Noblemaire principle to determine the highest paid civil service — “an exercise essential to secure the competitiveness of conditions of employment for staff in the Professional and higher categories”.  In a past review, ICSC studies showed that Germany was the highest paid national civil service, he noted, but “there was no political will to move away from the current comparator”.  Further, current methodology compared United Nations staff with national civil services working at home, instead of to foreign services.  Noting that both the United Nations and foreign services were expatriate civil services, he stated that it would make more sense if the best remunerated foreign services were factored into the comparison. In that context, an updated interpretation of the Noblemaire principle was needed, if the desire was to keep the United Nations competitive with the best paid national civil service.  “This is a political choice,” he said.  The alternative was the perpetuation of a frustrating exercise that excluded essential comparators.   A similar situation existed with a major review of ICSC methodologies related to the remuneration of General Service and other locally recruited categories.  The review offered an opportunity to achieve the required level of transparency and fairness.  He hoped he could report a year from now that the opportunity was not lost.