STU/66th Council/15/010
19 March 2015

The Medical Benefit Fund (MBF)

What is happening to it?

Who is managing it?

Why we are not being informed?

STU asked these questions on 29 September 2014, and gave the following short answer:

NOTHING is happening and NOBODY is sure who is managing it and that is a matter of major concern for ALL participants, the co-owners of this Fund.

Six months on, and nothing very much has changed:

• there has not been a meeting of the joint staff-administration Board of Management since October 2013;
• there has not been an annual General Assembly of Participants, due in the first quarter of the year, since May 2013; no financial statements have been made available to participants;
• the Extraordinary General Assembly of Participants of 4 September 2013, convened to review and approve the proposed new Rules, is still adjourned.

WE ARE SLEEP-WALKING INTO A DISASTER!

Yes, Administrative Circular AC/HR/43: Changes to the Medical Benefits Fund Rules was published on 21 October 2014. This announces changes to Sections V, VI and VII of the Rules, concerning the management of the Fund, which should have been approved by the General Assembly of Participants, but were decided upon by the General Conference at its 37th session in November 2013. These changes disenfranchise the participants, giving only an advisory role to the new Board, and no authority whatsoever to the replacement meeting of participants.

The circular notes that changes have also been made to other sections of the Rules, and the full 2014 MBF Rules are available in the online UNESCO HR Manual (HR Appendix 7A) – available with some difficulty to active staff, but not at all to retired staff who do not have access to the UNESCO intranet.

And yes, Information Circular IC/HR/73: Call for nominations for the election of members to the (new) Advisory Board was published on 3 November 2014. The deadline for nominations of 1 December 2014 had to be extended, on 4 December 2014, until 31 December 2014, since most retired staff only received the circular in late November.

The election was scheduled for 2 February 2015. DID YOU VOTE? Of course not! There was no election. And there has been no information about this non-event or when, if ever, the election will now be held.

Could it be that HRM is suffering, as the rest of UNESCO is suffering (except of course the Executive Board and the General Conference) from the severe cuts in funding due to the current financial situation and reorganization which have resulted in posts being frozen or abolished and staff struggling with the burden of trying to cope with double their previous responsibilities?

Be that as it may, there is little excuse for the situation that has been going on since August 2014, whereby hospitals in Paris (AP-HP) have been refusing to accept the guarantee of payment from VanBreda – our Claims Administrator. This means that for scheduled operations and even emergencies, the hospitals demand pre-payment (usually a substantial sum) directly from the participant. This is particularly unhelpful at times of considerable stress. And this is not what we pay our contributions for, and it is simply not acceptable.

We therefore call on the Director General to properly staff the MBF unit (and/or transfer it back to BFM), to exert maximum pressure on VanBreda and AP-HP to resolve their differences asap, and to re-instate the previous management structure that has served UNESCO and its staff well over the past 65 years, which at least could have informed participants of what they could and could not do about a guarantee of payment to Paris hospitals. The present management vacuum is legally untenable. We are sleep-walking into a disaster.

For the moment, the only advice the STU can offer is: STAY HEALTHY as the MBF is not in good hands.

Let's join forces, join STU now!