Update, Monday, December 30, 2019
Message on FCUNS Facebook page from Ian Richards, President, Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations of the United Nations System
"I brought your article to the SG’s attention. Following the intervention the Acting CEO will now be leaving on 31 December. Ms McClean will become the new chief on 1 January and will, as proposed, be able to appoint an OiC to deputise until she is fully on board (and we wish her a swift recovery). So a good start to 2020!"
Message on FCUNS Facebook page from Ian Richards, President, Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations of the United Nations System
"I brought your article to the SG’s attention. Following the intervention the Acting CEO will now be leaving on 31 December. Ms McClean will become the new chief on 1 January and will, as proposed, be able to appoint an OiC to deputise until she is fully on board (and we wish her a swift recovery). So a good start to 2020!"
December 29, 2019
In the latest twist of the strange saga of the Fund Secretariat’s leadership, the much-awaited incoming head, Rosemarie McClean of Canada, former Chief Operating Officer of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, was reportedly injured last Thursday by a speeding car that jumped the curb.
According to information received, she suffered a broken leg and collarbone and will not be able to take up her new functions this week, on 2 January 2020.
Now reportedly the Secretary-General is being urged to appoint for a fourth term the fund’s controversial interim head and former nuclear negotiator at the IAEA since retired, Janice Dunn Lee, while keeping the Board in the dark and despite the fact that there’s no provision for such a move in Fund rules and regulations.
Fund regulations provide for a five-year term for the CEO and DCEO, with a single reappointment. There’s no provision for temporary appointments to these positions.
Yet, Lee has so far had three temporary appointments as Acting CEO with reportedly, a fourth being contemplated, outside Fund rules and regulations. It would appear that she is in no rush to leave her job nor give up her ASG salary in exchange for her former pension.
For background, the Board was reportedly divided about Lee’s appointment to her first term as Acting CEO following her selection by the Board’s Succession Planning Committee, which noted that she had (quote) “rather limited technical and financial knowledge of pension funds.”
Lee was subsequently reappointed for second and third three-month terms, without the concurrence of the Board’s Standing Committee, and was reportedly never formally evaluated on her performance.
Nor, reportedly, was there any action taken after staff questioned the accuracy of the surprisingly positive benefit processing figures promulgated by the Fund under her leadership, and requested that they be the subject of a UN internal investigation
This past July, the Board’s Succession Planning Committee selected the apparently very qualified McClean, who applied for the falsely advertised post of “CEO/Pension Benefits Administrator”. The Assembly had decided in its resolution A/RES/73/274, para. 13, to split the position of CEO into two separate positions of Pension Benefits Administrator/Secretary to the Board, in other words, to discontinue the title of CEO.
McClean reportedly, and not surprisingly, balked at the title of Pension Benefits Administrator offered to her (having applied for a post of CEO/PBA) and only signed a contract when the title was changed to Chief Executive of Pension Administration – a title not among those stipulated in the Assembly’s resolution! The General Assembly then subsequently agreed the new title.
In addition, McClean was reportedly ready to begin work on 1 October 2019, but for reasons that are unclear, her start date was pushed back to 2 January 2020, and Lee was appointed for a third stint as Acting CEO, for three months.
Lee reportedly declared at her first meeting with staff representatives on arrival in the Fund last January that “rules are like guidelines”. Last June, in response to an article about retaliation against whistleblowers in the Fund, Lee posted a video of an iguana in a UN-related Facebook group.
http://unpension.blogspot.com/2019/06/un-pension-fund-janice-dunn-lee-on.html
http://unpension.blogspot.com/2019/06/un-pension-fund-janice-dunn-lee-on.html
Reports are that Lee walked out of a staff management meeting last month, declaring the meeting adjourned, despite a request by staff that it be reconvened. It’s also reported that because she has failed to address endemic harassment problems in the Fund the staff representatives are now running a survey on the issue with results due in January 2020.
The UN internal governance audit (A/73/341) had much to say about the deleterious effects on our Fund’s health of conflicts of interest between the Pension Board and the Fund Secretariat’s management. Yet so far there’s no indication by the Board of its readiness to address those issues.
Instead of this reported move to appoint Lee for a fourth term, the Secretary-General should respect the Fund’s rules and regulations by instead deputizing one of the several Fund Secretariat Directors to fill in until McClean arrives. We wish her a speedy recovery.
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