THE ORIGINAL LETTER IS BELOW. THE NEWER FOLLOW-UP NOW APPEARS FIRST: Dear friends, It has now been 10 days since I asked our Director to provide a few answers to a few legitimate questions. I consider those questions legitimate because they relate to reasons behind massive loss of jobs in the European Division. These RIFs occur at a time when there is, apparently, enough money to avoid such drastic measures, and, oddly enough, they target a very narrow and specific group of VOA employees. Mr. Director promised to respond in a few days, to explain his stance. No answer has come, except for two personal objections. Objection 'A' pertained to my generic use of the term 'you', meant to denote the 'other side' during a crucial hearing in Congress, not Mr. Director explicitly. As far as I can see, Mr. Director works WITH the BBG, not AGAINST it, and thus, in an abstract sense, forms a united front with them. I have not registered any vocal protest on the part of our Director against any of the absurd and contradictory assertions and demands of the BBG (such as the BBG's claims that there is no longer any need for extensive VOA broadcasting in Central Europe, since Czechia, Poland, and Hungary have their own free media, when, at the same time, the Board continues to fund Radio Free Europe broadcasts in the aforementioned languages). Since Mr. Director does not protest against these absurd claims, one has to assume that he accepted them. Objection 'B' concerns my apparently wrong assumption that Mr. Director would leave us in September. Here, I must apologize. It is not true that Mr. Director is going to leave VOA in September. It seems that he is going to leave us in January instead. Although Mr. Director has not responded, many of you have. I have been surprised and moved by the flood of verbal and written assurances of support from colleagues from all services and divisions. A few people were angered by the letter. Interestingly though, almost without exception, these are people not losing THEIR jobs, colleagues happy with the status quo. Fortunately, they are very few. I want to stress: it was absolutely not my intention to slander, insult, or berate ANYBODY. I just feel that we are entitled to a satisfactory explanation of a process, whose logic seems flawed and whose motives have not been clarified. I still believe that we deserve some answers from our Director. We see a fifty-year old tradition being dismantled in front of our eyes within a span of a few months. We see it done on the basis of invalid arguments [that can be empirically proved] and ill-conceived research. We see high quality and widely respected broadcasts being replaced by expensive, unwanted and inaccessible (at least in our target region) TV slots and web sites. We see the rapid growth of offices with secondary functions, such as the Office of Affiliate relations, accompanied by brutal reduction of the primary function of this agency: broadcasting. All around we witness absurdities. We see Audience Research Department staffed by half a dozen people (and good luck to them), while the staff of the Polish Service, a section targeting a major European power of tremendous strategic importance and home to almost forty milion people, will be reduced to 3. The BBC's Polish Section has at least 30. This Agency, boasting 'Family Friendly Policy' is firing - in the most unfriendly fashion - 52 people, with families. ALL OF THEM are foreign broadcasters. VOICE OF AMERICA is getting rid of its voice, and is being developed into a really nice museum. Of all the staffers from the various departments of the VOICE OF AMERICA, these broadcasters -- the true voice of America -- are the ONLY ONES who the BBG and Mr. Ungar found dispensable. We are still waiting for some answers, Mr, Director. 'A few days' have definitely gone by. Stephen Tomsu, Czech Service. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear Mr. Director, With my measly eleven years on the job, I am but a greenhorn among some of the grizzled old hands of this embattled old ship called VOA. However, even during those insignificant eleven years, I have witnessed a number of Directors come and go. Some stayed for a few years, some - like yourself - honored us with their presence only briefly, [I have been told that you intend to leave us in September?] barely getting to know the unpredictable nature of VOA elevators. During all those years, this old ship rarely changed course significantly. Even though most of its 'captains' arrived with dramatic new visions and revolutionary concepts, such as the notion that wearing suits and ties should be made compulsory for everybody, the initial outbursts of reformist passion usually soon evaporated. I like to believe that the reason for that was the fundamental fact that VOA has always worked rather well. While it would be arrogant to claim that that there have not been areas in need of dramatic improvement, the truth remains that the basic mission of our Agency -- disseminating cultural and political information about the USA worldwide -- HAS ALWAYS BEEN RELIABLY FULLFILLED, regardless of who has been at the top. The reason is that most IRB's and Producers in the language services, the GRASSROOTS OF VOA, really like and really believe in their jobs. These people came from all over the world to help defeat totalitarianism in their home countries and assist in building new political systems in their place. Some were brought from abroad on false promises [such as myself], into a situation they could not have imagined in their worst dreams [most were kept for years on a basically illegal type of a visa /J-1/ which put them, in the eyes of authorities and all financial institutions, only one notch above pesky tourists], but they remained because they believed that VOA WAS and FOREVER WILL BE the most powerfull instrument in the fight against injustice, the perennial voice of Truth. They stayed, settled down, and many had kids who are, of course, completely American. All of those Directors who came and went in the end realised that this old, embattled International Radio works pretty well, and that it might not be, after all, such a good idea to undermine a fifty-year old tradition. Now you, Mr. Unger, after a few months on the job, have decided to take a hatchet and cut down this old ship into a racing yacht and throw some of the crew aboard. It is not my right or place to criticize your plan, despite the fact that, if my information is correct, Congress mandated the creation of an International Radio: not Web Site,and definitely not television. I personally suspect that -- in spite of your assurances to the contrary -- the realisation of your plan means the end of VOA in my country. Very few Czechs have computers, almost nobody can afford accesss to the net, nobody is interested in our shoddy television shots. But this has been said too many times and it has always fallen on deaf ears. The rationality of the current streamlining is not the reason why I have decided to write to you in this fashion. My concern is the fate of those 52 people that will be RIFed. The fact that I am one of them is totally insignificant in the larger scale of things. I can my put my hand on the Bible and repeat the same thing. I am concerned because there are some people whose life you have - through your grandiose plans - transformed into tragedy. A genuine, human tragedies... Very much in line with the previous practices of US government, you have decided to cut where there is likely to be least resistance. Whilst all of us know that there are areas which cry for reductions, we also know that these are 'untouchables' and that it is not 'proper' to even raise this issue. So, like you put it in your Congressional testimony, it is a 'regrettable situation', but you will try to provide the affected employees with placement or counceling. What a disgusting hypocrisy... You know as well as I do that some of these people cannot be placed SIMPLY BACAUSE THEY SPENT THEIR LIVES SERVING VOA. And counseling? As for that, let me keep dignified silence. The hatchet will, once again, studiously avoid the 'blue bloded Americans', people on rudiculously high grades, whose only calling seems to be hovering around the corridors, patting people on their backs. To even mention their possible removal would equal to blasphemy. Quite obviously, it is a different story with employees who, in some cases are very shy and not very articulate in English, some of whom are not yet citizens of this country, on account of the shameful VOA visa scam, although they have lived here for decades....So, why not throw overboard the 'ethnics', why not discard them the same way the US Army, towards the close of the last century, discarded the hundreds of Amerinidan scouts after they made the Western frontier safe for white habitation. I do not quite believe your compassionate rhetoric, Mr. Director. You have come here to shed blood. If you were truly compassionate, you could not have let my seriously ill Hungarian colleagues tremble in the knowledge that in a few months they will be without medical insurance, without a job. You could not so easily kick out of people who will be forced -- after many years in the US -- forced to leave because their chances of finding a job in this country with only a green card, at the age of 55, are basically zero.. Some of these people spent their lives fighting for America and her ideals... Mr. Director, what you are prepatring to do is shameful. Please, pause and think. You can still turn around. You still have a chance to prove to us that your compassion is real. Along these lines, I suggest to you a perfectly reasonable solution. You yourself stated that this so-called reorganization is not a result of budgetary pressures.. If there is enough money to find placements for most of the RIFed people, then, by pure logic, there is enough money to avert RIFs completely. All of the people slated to be RIFed would be willing, I am sure, to accept pay-freeze or even a pay-cut, in orded to preserve their employment and theit health insurance. Lot of money could be saved that way. Why not put this option to discussion? If all of the 52 agreed to accept a lower grade, [the people on 12 would go down to 11, for example] the savings would be such that you could personally and publicly guarantee that nobody will lose his or her job. All of us would be willing and able to help in carrying your plan. You could put in practice everything that you have outlined, but at a slower rate, with less haste. We would have time try and test new methods. There are many people in the Central European Services who are close to retirement age and and you can thus reduce the size of those services by gradual attrition... You can also put a freeze on recruitment of new IRB's.. Broadcasting into the region could continue on a limited scale, while IRB' s would be intensely trained in the techniques of TV and Web deyigning. ONLY THREE PEOPLE IN EACH SERVICE CANNOT PROVIDE HIGH QUALITY OUTPUT... With less haste, VOA Europe could switch to Internet only after verifying that people really visit the new Web sites. [VOA could also introduce new concepts, such as our own monitoring service, and, like the BBC, publish a daily review of the central European press, maybe even for sale to other govermnent agencies..] Mr. Ungar, there is no need for bloodshed. You CAN achieve your goals and yet remain in our memory forever as a reasonable and compassionate man. In fact, with us on board, you have a greater chance to succeed in realising your vision. And if you feel that what I have just written to you is unreasonable, without justification, I CHALLENGE YOU TO REPLY TO ME IN WRITING, and prove me wrong. Pleas, answer me the same way I have approached you, so that all of my brothers and sisters in the language services can read with their own eyes the reasons why they have to go, while the real parasites will stay, at a time when there is apparently enough money for everybody. All those 52 deserve a coherent, truthful answer. Yours sincerely. Stephen TOMSU, Editor, Czech Service