The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2023

28 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA’s Powers In becoming a union, AFSA did not cease being the profes- sional association of the Foreign Service; but it gained new pow- ers to influence the personnel system and safeguard the interests of career diplomats as they work to promote U.S. security, prosperity, and democratic values. As a union, AFSA has the right to negotiate with agency man- agement over personnel policies and procedures affecting condi- tions of employment. Once a collective bargaining agreement is reached, an agency cannot ignore it. If agencies try to do that, the agreement is legally enforceable by AFSA appealing to third-party adjudicatory bodies such as the Foreign Service Grievance Board. AFSA can also file cohort grievances on behalf of specific groups of employees—for example, compelling the State Department to pay Meritorious Step Increases as AFSA did in the mid-2010s. AFSA can even force agencies to follow rules adopted in permissive nego- tiations outside of required collective bargaining—for example, securing a ruling that the State Department violated a negotiated agreement when it assigned a Civil Service employee as a deputy chief of mission over 12 Foreign Service bidders in 1999. Significantly, the Foreign Service Act of 1980 gives AFSA a formal role in selecting the members of two of the third-party adjudicatory bodies to which AFSA may appeal: the Foreign Service Grievance Board (which rules on individual and cohort grievances and implementation disputes alleging breach of a collective bargaining agreement) and the Foreign Service Labor Relations Board (which rules on unfair labor practices, negotia- bility issues, and appeals of implementation disputes from the Grievance Board). In addition, AFSA has long been consulted on selecting members of the Foreign Service Impasse Disputes Panel (which rules on negotiating impasses arising during col- lective bargaining). As union officials, the AFSA president and agency vice presi- dents have the right to speak independently to Congress with- out getting agency approval or violating the Anti-Lobbying Act. For example, as AFSA president in 2008, I testified before a Sen- ate appropriations subcommittee about the need to increase Foreign Service hiring to refill positions transferred to Iraq from posts worldwide. Also testifying was the principal deputy assistant secretary of State for human resources. Before the ses- sion, when I asked her if she planned to request more staffing, she replied: “No, I must articulate administration policy, which is not asking for increases.” But empowered by my indepen- dence as a union official, I did forcefully articulate that need in my testimony. A few months later, Congress approved funding for a major staffing increase. The freedom to directly lobby Congress is one of AFSA’s criti- cal strengths as a union. The list of legislation over the past 50 years for which AFSA was the leading proponent or played an important advocacy role is a long one. It includes: creating the Foreign Service grievance system, exempting Foreign Service members from capital gains taxation on the sale of their primary residence after overseas service of up to 10 years, establishing Overseas Comparability Pay, helping to convince Congress not to move the visa function to the Department of Homeland Secu- rity after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, building a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill to block massive budget cuts to diplomacy and development during the Trump presidency, and gaining parity with the military for the Foreign Service on a range of benefits including in-state college tuition rates. AFSA leaders may also speak independently to the media. For example, after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson decapitated the Senior Foreign Service in 2017 by slashing promotions and telling some of our most senior FSOs to clear out their desks, he gave the media erroneous statistics that understated the cuts. But AFSA obtained authoritative details on how many career ambassadors and other senior officers had been purged, and AFSA President Barbara Stephenson gave that information to the media, which reported the true numbers showing the damage. Her President’s Views column in the December 2017 Foreign Service Journal , “Time to Ask Why, ” laid out the details and was quoted by most major media outlets. As soon as Tillerson was fired in 2018, promotions and hirings increased. As a union, AFSA has assisted tens of thousands of members over the decades with grievances, investigations, discipline proposals, security clearance suspensions, and Equal Employ- ment Opportunity complaints, as well as assignment, leave, medical, and other issues. AFSA has represented hundreds of members in Diplomatic Security, Office of Inspector General, and FBI interviews, and before Accountability Review Boards and congressional committees. AFSA’s status as a union allowed it to pay more than $485,000 in legal bills for Foreign Service The personnel system was run by an old boy network of senior officers who managed the Foreign Service as they saw fit.