As this landmark legislation marks its anniversary, the Foreign Service faces challenges no one could have imagined in the last century.

BY STEVEN ALAN HONLEY AND LISA HELLER

The Foreign Service Act of 1980 (FSA) turns 45 this year. The successor to the Rogers Act of 1924 and Foreign Service Act of 1946, which established the foundations of the modern Foreign Service, the FS Act of 1980 authorized labor organizations and collective bargaining in the Foreign Service, among other things.

But as this landmark legislation marks its anniversary, the U.S. Foreign Service, now in its 101st year, faces challenges to its statutory basis that no one could have foreseen even a couple of years ago.

In the following we review highlights of the FS Act of 1980’s history, including AFSA’s unique role in its passage. We will then discuss current trials and what lies ahead.

A Transformative Accomplishment

The foundations of the modern Foreign Service—especially the fundamental concept of rank-in-person—had been created in 1924 by the Rogers Act, and that institutional underpinning was set in stone by the Foreign Service Act of 1946.

“Anyone involved with the Foreign Service at the time of its passage knew that the Act of 1980 was a great and transformative accomplishment,” Foreign Service historian Harry W. Kopp rightly observed in his September 2015 retrospective FSJ article titled “The Foreign Service Act of 1980 Turns 35.”

The FSA created the Senior Foreign Service, reduced the number of Foreign Service personnel categories, established a single Foreign Service pay schedule, added new benefits and allowances, authorized union activity, and set parameters for a grievance system. The act also strengthened congressional oversight by requiring regular reports from the Department of State on affirmative action, professional development, workforce planning, language skills, ambassadorial nominations, operations of the inspector general, and other matters.

The legislation was not widely welcomed in its entirety by the broad sweep of Service members at the time. Many viewed the provision for a separate Senior Foreign Service as divisive, and its little-understood “threshold window process” resulted in the forced retirement of nearly 200 first-rate officers seven years later, when those who had “opened their windows” at the first opportunity collided en masse with the ceiling of promotion opportunities. A class action grievance brought no relief.

Others were concerned that, in addition to creating a two-tier Foreign Service, the FSA stripped non-senior ranks of part of the status that had set the FS apart. The right (under the 1924 and 1946 acts) to have one’s name sent to the Senate with every promotion—a right every military officer continues to enjoy—was abolished, and all promotions below the senior threshold were to be approved administratively by department management.

This willingness to work together to fashion a “unified State Department position” created a precedent for AFSA’s relationships with the department.

But the FSA unquestionably brought a number of improvements, the most important of which is that it broke new ground in labor-management relations, recognizing the value of labor organizations and codifying collective bargaining in the Foreign Service. AFSA had become a union in 1973, while continuing to serve as the professional association it had been since 1924. AFSA played a distinctive role in the FSA’s development.

As Robert H. Stern, a retired FSO who was an AFSA State representative from 1978 to 1980, explained in a letter to the editor (November 2015 FSJ): “When the [AFSA] Governing Board first weighed in, State management told us that legislation was not a bargaining item; an administration had the right to seek legislation, and AFSA had no right to contest it. Essentially, shut up, kid, and go home.

“Unwilling to take no for an answer, senior board members met with senior management officials and pointed out that while we had no legal standing, our input would provide Congress with a unified State Department position as opposed to our testifying against the proposed act. They agreed, and for the next two years, we met informally and unofficially on evenings and weekends with management, going over the proposed language line by line. … At the same time, we cultivated staffers on the key committees and testified before the Senate.”

This willingness to work together to fashion a “unified State Department position” created a precedent for AFSA’s relationships with the department—namely, assertion of AFSA’s rights as a union where necessary, coupled with a willingness to constructively engage on areas that are not subject to mandatory union negotiations (although this varied depending on the administration in charge).

The Act of 1980 in Practice

Over the next 45 years, the act would guide the unique facets of the Foreign Service and the updated relationship between successive administrations and the Foreign Service. The FS as a unique personnel system with its own policies and benefits, and especially the fundamental concept of rank-in-person, all established and codified by the Rogers Act of 1924, became the accepted norm.

As the official bargaining unit of the FS with defined areas of responsibility, AFSA would negotiate those aspects of the Foreign Service career deemed to be “mandatory” negotiating areas: assignment procedures, evaluation and promotion procedures, grievance procedures, procedures governing disciplinary action, and so on.

In addition, agencies frequently met with AFSA to discuss those areas that were nonmandatory, to craft practical Foreign Service–specific policies. An example of this were the criteria by which someone from outside the FS could fill an FS position overseas. The State Department can, but doesn’t have to, negotiate so-called permissive areas of bargaining—but once signing an agreement, the department is bound by it.

As a matter of practice, AFSA represented the interests of all bargaining unit members (those who were dues-paying members as well as those who were not) when it negotiated and consulted with management regarding conditions of employment. AFSA also represented the interest of all bargaining unit members when it testified on Capitol Hill.

In rescinding these rights, the administration has demonstrated its contempt for that congressional imperative.

AFSA President Eric Rubin used his March 2020 President’s Views column to mark the 40th anniversary of the FSA and to call for a return to the consensus underlying the act’s passage: “The Foreign Service needs to be at the center of the U.S. foreign policy process. It was widely accepted that good policy could not be made without professional expertise and advice.” Ambassador Rubin acknowledged: “We’re in a different era, and we need to engage with members of Congress and congressional staff to ensure that the core elements of the Foreign Service Act are protected and reinforced, while at the same time being prepared to innovate and modernize.”

That same year, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs published “A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century,” a study led by retired Ambassadors Nicholas Burns, Marc Grossman, and Marcie Ries that called specifically for a revision to the FS Act. Among the changes sought by the report was an increased focus on training and greater numbers of employees supporting increased training time, adoption of a ROTC-like educational program, adoption of a requirement for rotational assignments in other agencies, establishment of a Diplomatic Reserve Corps, and approval of a new name: the United States Diplomatic Service.

A follow-up report in 2022, this one sponsored by Arizona State University, called for amendments to the FSA that strengthened the role of career chiefs of mission overseas, expanded training opportunities including an enhanced training float, and furthered promotion of diversity and recruitment for specifically needed skills.

The FS Act Undermined

With the arrival of a new administration in January 2025, direct attacks on the Foreign Service Act of 1980 and the Service itself began. Government employees who swore an oath to the Constitution and not to any administration were described as a threat to an ideologically driven agenda. The demolition of USAID began in January, and dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (including Voice of America) followed, along with reductions in force (RIFs) at the State Department in July.

A March 27 executive order, “Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,” set out to ban union activity among federal employees deemed to be involved in “national security” work—without any evidence of such a threat. The State Department, USAID, and USAGM were included in the order, but not the Commerce or Agriculture departments.

This was directly counter to Section 1001 of the FSA: “The Congress finds that … labor organizations and collective bargaining in the Service are in the public interest and are consistent with the requirement of an effective and efficient Government. The provisions of this chapter should be interpreted in a manner consistent with the requirement of an effective and efficient Government.”

In rescinding these rights, the administration has demonstrated its contempt for that congressional imperative by cynically exaggerating and misapplying the carve-out exceptions of Section 1003(b), which provide that “the President may by Executive order exclude any subdivision of the Department from coverage under this chapter if the President determines that—(1) the subdivision has as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work, and (2) the provisions of this chapter cannot be applied to that subdivision in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.”

Section 1003(c) further provides: “The President may by Executive order suspend any provision of this chapter with respect to any post, bureau, office, or activity of the Department, if the President determines in writing that the suspension is necessary in the interest of national security because of an emergency.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has indicated its intent to consider structural reforms to the Foreign Service and the FSA of 1980.

Neither of those conditions apply, nor have they ever applied to the department, any of its subdivisions, or the Foreign Service.

The executive order had four immediate effects on AFSA: (1) elected active-duty members of the AFSA board could no longer use official time to serve in their AFSA roles; (2) AFSA lost access to its offices on the second floor of the Harry S Truman Building; (3) member dues were no longer deducted from employee paychecks and annuity payments; and (4), most important, the executive order stripped AFSA of its right to collectively bargain on behalf of FS members.

Reductions in Force

As a result, human resources offices at the affected agencies, most particularly the Bureau of Global Talent Management at State, will no longer meet with AFSA unless it is as the legal representative of an individual member. These offices will no longer engage on matters that were once the province of collective bargaining, such as promotion board membership and precepts and changes to the Reduction in Force (RIF) provisions of the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM).

The Trump administration has made no secret of its intent to put a halt to federal union activity and reduce the size of the federal workforce. Without collective bargaining activity and support by unions, there is no check on the administration’s ability to weaken or eliminate workplace protections and impose new politically motivated policies, such as hiring questions designed to measure “patriotism” or evaluation standards based on “fidelity.”

Further, the rapidity with which the administration moved to change the RIF provisions of the FAM, as well as parts of the FAM dealing with promotion boards, harassment policy, and other areas related to the working conditions of our members, demonstrates its determination to supersede long-established safeguards for fairness, transparency, and accountability.

It is worth recalling that in the late 1990s when reductions in force were imposed on the State Department as an amendment to the 1980 Act via an appropriations bill, the new Section 611 of the FSA specified that implementing regulations must “give due effect” to documented employee knowledge/skills/competencies, tenure of employment, documented performance, and military preference. An update to 3 FAM was made to establish, in effect, reverse retention boards in grades / skill codes identified for reductions. Now, having sidelined labor-management negotiation on this issue, the department unilaterally revised 3 FAM to permit RIFs targeted at incumbents of designated positions—a perversion of the rank-in-person provisions first established by the Rogers Act and a direct violation of the 1980 Act.

Inevitably on the horizon, the Dissent Channel protections enshrined in Section 105(b)(3) of the 1980 FSA may be on the chopping block in the wake of the early July suspension of dissenting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees. Stay tuned.

AFSA is fighting back in the courts, but as of early July, the outcome was still unclear.

A Pivotal Moment

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill interest is growing in efforts to redefine the Foreign Service. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, under the leadership of Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.), has indicated its intent to consider structural reforms to the Foreign Service and the FSA of 1980, including possible changes to personnel training and alteration of the promotions and assignments processes.

Also pending are proposals that would consolidate the Foreign Service in the Department of State by moving the Foreign Commercial Service (Department of Commerce) and the Foreign Agricultural Service (Department of Agriculture) into the Department of State. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee could also pursue options to reform the FSA of 1980, but the House has been clearer about its intent in the near future.

While AFSA continues to fight for its members’ rights and its status as a union, the association will also be looking at this pivotal moment in the history of the Foreign Service and the possibility of revisions to the laws governing the Foreign Service. The association will continue to identify what is distinctive about the Foreign Service and the elements that must be retained in the Service of the future.

Steven Alan Honley was editor in chief of The Foreign Service Journal from 2001 to 2014. Prior to that, he was a Foreign Service officer from 1985 to 1997, serving in Mexico City, Wellington, and Washington, D.C. He is the author of FSI at 70: Future Forward—A History of the Foreign Service Institute (Arlington Hall Press, 2017).

 

Lisa Heller is AFSA’s director of professional policy issues. She served as a Foreign Service officer from 1991 to 2024, with assignments in China, Pakistan, Korea, Ukraine, and Washington, D.C.

Read More...

• “The Foreign Service Act of 1980 Turns 35,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015
• “The Foreign Service Act, Our ‘Constitution’” by Julie Nutter, The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021
• “AFSA and the Evolution of the Foreign Service Career” by John Naland, The Foreign Service Journal, May 2024