Peace Corps needs a union

By Joel Thurtell

The Peace Corps does not need a cascade of new laws designed to force its administrative caste to treat the flunky class — volunteers — like human beings.

What Peace Corps volunteers need is a union.

Recent news reports about prejudicial treatment of Peace Corps volunteers who were raped, and the callous treatment of the family of a volunteer who was murdered in West Africa, are current manifestations of institutional attitudes that have typified Peace Corps management for a long time and maybe from the beginning of the program 50 years ago.

Laws that are focused on one or the other part of this problem will fail, because the target is much bigger than it appears from these news reports.

The problem in the Peace Corps is not just with bad behavior involving crimes against volunteers.

The bad behavior stems from the “tale of two cities” structure of the organization. The Peace Corps is a top-down institution whose public face is the thousands of mostly young, idealistic volunteers engaged in what  they think at the outset of their Peace Corps experience will be personal contributions to “saving the world,” as a volunteer who was raped in Bangladesh described her early aspirations.

What we have with the Peace Corps is an institution with supposed liberal ideals that is modeled on the organization of a factory. We have the managers who make policies, and we have the grunts who carry out those policies. The bosses are paid well and get lots of perks. If they happen to staff overseas offices, they live in urban areas with modern houses, servants, even chauffeur-driven cars. But they are removed from the often-isolated communities where volunteers live and work, and in my own experience, often are unwilling to spend time at volunteer sites, mainly for reasons of personal comfort. If they happen to work in Washington, D.C., they are so far removed from volunteer reality that their ability to understand volunteer needs is at a level that deserves little respect.

But respect is what this whole flap is about.

It starts with compensation. Volunteers are paid by American standards at a subsistence scale with the promise of a “readjustment allowance” to be paid after they leave the corps. However, that readjustment allowance itself can be “readjusted” downward, as I learned after I ended my Peace Corps service in Togo, West Africa back in 1974.

Compensation for volunteers is a joke. Now, I know many volunteers will protest that they didn’t join up for money. Well and good. But you do deserve respect. In any case, the financial rewards for being a volunteer are poor, while the rewards for being a Peace Corps boss are paid at government career scale. The pay disparity is a root cause of the problem.

There’s an old saying: “If you’re paid shit, you’ll be treated like shit.”

Well, compared to the compensation of Peace Corps bosses, volunteers are paid shit.

Being poorly paid, they are not respected.

In fact, they have no power within the organization.

As far as I can see, volunteers are treated worse today than they were when I served in the early 1970s. At least I had my Yamaha 80 motorcycle. If things got ugly, I could — and did — escape.

Recently, I was talking to some prospective volunteers and mentioned the motorcycle. They looked aghast.

“You could have been kicked out of the Peace Corps!”

“What for?” I asked.

For riding on a motorcycle.

Seems that in today’s Peace Corps, if you are caught driving a motorcycle or car, you are subject to instant dismissal.

Well, I told my young listeners, in my day, volunteers were issued motorcycles and even pickup trucks and Jeeps from the Peace Corps motor pool.

Appears that the rationale for banning volunteer use of motorized vehicles is the alleged high incidence of injuries from car and motorbike accidents.

It is a stupid policy based on desk-bound logic. Anyone who’s lived in the boondocks of an alien country like Togo, or Benin or Ghana, or you name the Peace Corps host country, is aware that personal safety may well depend on being able to get away from bad people and events.

Being able to jump on a motorcycle and speed away from violent behavior is a big deal if you’re living isolated from any semblance of rule of law, which is pretty much the way it is in many volunteer locales.

The ban on motorized travel is the brainchild of some functionary working in an air-conditioned office in Washington, D.C., sipping his or her Starbucks and issuing edicts with profound implications for the grunts on the line.

So here is my proposal. Forget these proposed laws that would legislate good behavior by Peace Corps factotums. Instead, enact a law creating a strong union for Peace Corps volunteers. Such a law is needed, because it would be difficult to organize volunteers all over the world into a union in the classic way, with cards and organizing meetings and so forth.

Instead, create a union for volunteers with the power to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with the Peace Corps.

Peace Corps labor contracts would cover the entire range of bargaining, including wages, health benefits, pensions, readjustment allowance, professional integrity and health and safety.

A model Peace Corps contract would include a procedure for lodging a grievance with mandatory unappealable arbitration. That way, if a volunteer is a crime victim and doesn’t receive appropriate support from staff, there is a way to complain. Better, there should be sanctions against managers in cases of bad staff behavior.

Transportation would be another part of the contract. Frankly, I think each volunteer should be issued at least a motorcycle. Effective transportation is a personal health and safety issue. Not only does motorized transport allow a volunteer to escape from violent situations, but it allows a sick volunteer in a remote place a way to get to medical help.

(I’m remembering the friend who skipped his chloroquine pills and got malaria, then managed to drive his Peace Corps-issue Toyota pickup to our place, where we got him some help.)

What I’m arguing for is basic respect for volunteers from the staff who supposedly are paid to serve them, but all too often abuse them.

One way to gain that respect would be to give volunteers the power to bargain for better pay and better working conditions, and provide them with a means of punishing those mandarins who mistreat them.

The descriptions of Peace Corps administrators’ treatment of crime victims sound like the kind of behavior we’d expect from functionaries in a police state, which many host Peace Corps countries are. The union structure I’m proposing would force reform on the Peace Corps in an organic rather than a legislative way. Ultimately, the improved behavior and better respect for the lives and work of the volunteer class would improve the entire Peace Corps.

In many countries like Togo where I served, local people are accustomed to being mistreated by authorities. Sadly, the history of Peace Corps administrators’ behavior conforms to that pattern. Right now, volunteers are members of a subject class who are treated with disrespect. But a reformed Peace Corps that shows true respect for its volunteer class, upheld by a union contract, could serve as a positive model for people in poor countries — and for the people who govern them.

“Look at what how the Peace Corps operates,” a Togolese person could say to his own government officials. “The Peace Corps treats its workers fairly and with great respect. Why don’t you treat us like that?”

Such a positive comparison is impossible now. Peace Corps administrators’ attitudes could be transformed through a good old American labor contract.