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Excerpt from Américas Magazine, December 2003 edition
SALUTING THE STAFF
ASSOCIATION
The OAS Staff Association,
which is celebrating its 75 anniversary, was created in 1928 as the Welfare
Committee of the Pan American Union (PAU) at the instigation of its
Director General, Dr. Leo S. Rowe, in order to give the staff a voice in
matters affecting their individual and collective interests. Until after
the Second World War, the Welfare Committee remained small. However,
greater inter-American cooperation during the war years demanded a larger
staff to support those activities. The ideas about the nature and purpose
of an international intergovernmental organization for the Americas changed
considerably during those years, invigorated the PAU and led to the
adoption of the OAS Charter in 1948.
Since that date, it is
possible to see the growth and development of the General Secretariat of
the OAS as the history of the Staff Association. Every major initiative
affecting the staff that was eventually adopted by the OAS administration
and the political bodies governing the Organization was first proposed,
negotiated for and acquired bit by bit by the Staff Association: a
five-day, 40-hour workweek; health and hospitalization insurance; salary
equity; grievance policies and procedures; classification of posts; job
descriptions and qualifications as the basic elements of employment; and
basic salary schedules. The Staff Association, after a long and sometimes
bitterly fought process, finally achieved parity with the United Nations in
terms of conditions of work and salaries.
What the Staff Association
has also done over the past 75 years is nourish and maintain a strong sense
of community among those who worked at and for the OAS. It was the sense of
commitment and purpose of the staff that a succession of secretaries
general and the representatives of the member states have been able to draw
upon to turn into reality the mandates of the Organization, from the
Alliance for Progress to the current efforts to defend human rights and
promote representative democracy in the member states.
-James Patrick Kiernan
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