Activities Report 2021-2022

Former Officials’ Section
Executive Secretary: François Kientzler
Activities Report 2021-22 presented to the ILO Staff Union Annual General Meeting on 13 October 2022

Since April 2020, the Section’s Bureau members have continued to fulfil their responsibilities towards retired colleagues. The demand for information and communication has remained high since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and we have responded to all personal requests. Unfortunately, no social activities could be held.

Continuation of our activities

While working remotely from home for more than two and a half years now, the continuation of our activities has consisted in regularly updating our files: new members, changes of address and those who have passed away. This has been possible thanks to access to our ILO email and the files we were able to copy during our short stay at the ILO at the end of 2020. Information is sent to us by the HRD secretariat and also directly by members of the Section. We have managed to contact everyone entering retirement, send them information material about our activities and encourage them to join the Section. We have responded to individual enquiries, either by email, letter or telephone, concerning the SHIF and taxation in particular. A number of retired colleagues thanked us for sustaining our ongoing commitment to the membership.

We have continued to inform and communicate with retired staff by publishing our regularly updated List of Members as well as an issue of Message. Our Facebook page (Alumni ilo-bit) now has about 380 active and retired members. Our website, https://www.anciens-bit-ilo.org, where we post information relevant to retirees, receives between 600 and 1,000 visits per month.

Via videoconference, members of the Bureau attended AAFI-AFICS Committee meetings. We participated in the Pre-retirement Seminar in November 2021. We were also able to take part in the Pension Fund’s videoconferences.

ILO access

According to the note issued by the ILO Administration (INTSERV/SECURITY), in force since 1 August 2022, members of the Bureau of the Former Officials’ Section can now enter the ILO for planned meetings;  access for all retired staff has been possible since 15 September. The Section’s Bureau was able to meet on ILO premises on Tuesday 30 August, having met outside the ILO for the past year. We will continue to work to ensure that all retirees have such access, including in external offices, and we are hoping to resume social activities.

Our mode of operation has thus profoundly changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we have been able to maintain regular contact with the Staff Union’s secretariat and its respective Chairpersons, namely Catherine Comte-Tiberghien and currently Carlos Carrión-Crespo, in office since January 2022, as well as with the ILO’s HRD department.

Relations with ILO Management

The Bureau of the Former Officials’ Section sent a letter of congratulations to Gilbert F. Houngbo, Director-General elect. We have requested a meeting to inform him about the Section and share our concerns. We also sent a letter to Guy Ryder, outgoing Director-General, thanking him for the attention paid to retirees over his two terms of office, especially during the ILO Centenary celebration in 2019. We wrote to André Bogui, Director of Human Resources, to raise the situation of retiredstaff, as well as the activities of the Section’s officers quarantined outside the ILO.

FK, 31 August 2022