7,000 U.N. Employees in Jordan Strike for Higher Wages

[Omaha Steve]

http://www2.nysun.com/article/74327

By BENNY AVNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 8, 2008

UNITED NATIONS — Recipients of U.N. salaries in refugee camps in Jordan went on strike yesterday, demanding a wage increase they say is needed to offset the rising cost of living.

The 7,000 strikers draw salaries from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which provides services for descendants of Arabs who fled or otherwise left British Mandate Palestine during Israel's 1948 war of independence. While UNRWA employees have gone on strike before, yesterday's walkout is "the first I can recall in Jordan," the director of the agency's liaison office in New York, Andrew Whitley, said.

The 177 schools UNRWA runs in Jordan, attended by 120,000 children under the age of 14, were forced to close yesterday because of the strike, the Associated Press reported, while the agency's 24 clinics operated with a skeleton staff. "We would like to think it won't take long" before the strike is settled, although the organization cannot raise salaries, Mr. Whitley said.

FULL story at link.