Like looking at life through bifocals, there are two ways to look at almost everything. For example, many people think that Federal bureaucrats, by comparison with the wages the rest of us earn, are overpaid and underworked.
However, to Federal Government employees, the grass is still greener on the other side of the street when they look at the salaries paid to those who work for various world organizations. Even though those world organizations are largely financed by the American taxpayers, their pay scales far exceed those of our own Government.
A U.S. Federal employee with a GS-18 rank, after this year’s pay raise, receives $47,500 a year. But at the World Bank, the same type of job pays $74,100, and at the United Nations it pays $85,500.
That isn’t all. In addition to the usual generous paid vacations and paid sick leave given to Federal employees, world organization salaries are often enriched by other fringe benefits such as free first-class trips around the world, country club privileges, education allowances, subsidized cafeterias, and tax-free liquor.
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported this year that, in international banks, “extraordinarily high salaries are commonplace and the pursuit of fringe benefits has been raised to a form of art.” The General Accounting Office found that the average World Bank salary is 57 percent higher than in the U.S. Civil Service.
The United States pays about 25 percent of the United Nations bill, even though we have only one vote in the 147-member General Assembly. The U.S. taxpayers support high-paying jobs in 48 UN agencies.
Expensive first-class air travel is virtually the rule at the World Bank, headed by Robert S. McNamara, who left the Presidency of the Ford Motor Company shortly after the failure of the Edsel car and moved to Washington as Secretary of Defense.
When a World Bank official flew to London this year, he used the most expensive travel available, the Concord Supersonic jet. His round-trip fare cost the Bank $1683, compared with $678 for a regular jet coach fare.
The World Bank receives very large sums from American taxpayers, supposedly to provide programs for impoverished countries. The administrators of this international poverty program hardly need to travel like royalty in order to impress the recipients of their handouts.
A four-week investigation by the United Press disclosed recently that many Washington officials routinely travel first class, even though Federal rules prohibit first-class travel except for medical disability or when “deemed necessary for the conduct of the mission.”
One wonders exactly what was “deemed necessary” when Secretary of Labor F. Ray Marshall and his assistants flew first class to Geneva, Switzerland, and Bonn, West Germany, last June.
In the first place, why was it necessary for an American Secretary of Labor to go to Switzerland and Germany at all? His jurisdiction is American, not European, labor. In these days of instant communication, he could have obtained anything he needed to know by letter, cablegram, teletype, telephone, or diplomatic pouch.
Secondly, why was it “necessary” that the Secretary and his assistants all travel first class at an air-flight cost to the taxpayers of $5,453? I’ve been wonder ing for a long time who it is who can afford to travel in those first class seats. Now we know. It’s the officials who are paid with the taxpayers’ money.
