Going Gray -- and Making it Pay -- on Turtle Bay

FOXNews.com - Going Gray -- and Making it Pay -- on Turtle Bay? - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News: "Double-dipping, anyone?

The United Nations, with a headquarters staff of approximately 15,500, is apparently relying on a battalion of retirees to fill important vacancies. The cost of keeping codgers on its payroll to do jobs that full-time employees apparently cannot handle has soared from $33 million in 2004-2005 to $50 million in 2006-2007.

In the process, the world organization appears to have been violating its own limits on how much retirees are allowed to earn after they take a U.N. pension, and how long they can be kept on the job. Those rules were seemingly designed to prevent double-dipping by former workers, or the filling of jobs that might otherwise go to full-time staff.

But one small group of pensioners — 135 people in all — appear to have done far, far better than anyone else in breaking through the post-retirement salary ceiling. That group, consisting of higher-level professional and administrative employees, and representing little more than 10 percent of the total number surveyed, pulled in $11.4 million, or more than 20 percent of the amount spent on the growing post-retirement work force, according to an internal U.N. study on the group."