Saluting the Staff Association.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: OAS - Brief Article

THE OAS STAFF Association, which is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, was created in 1928 as the Welfare Committee of the Pan American Union (PAU) at the instigation of its director general, Leo S. Rowe, in order to give the staff a voice in matters affecting their individual and collective interests. Until after the Second World War, the Welfare Committee remained small. However, greater inter-American cooperation during the war years demanded a larger staff to support those activities. The ideas about the nature and purpose of an international intergovernmental organization for the Americas changed considerably during those years, invigorated the PAU, and led to the adoption of the OAS Charter in 1948.

Since that date, every major initiative affecting the staff that was eventually adopted by the OAS administration and the political bodies governing the Organization was first proposed, and negotiated bit...