The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 35 To her credit, Administrator Samantha Power called out these workforce shortcomings in her November 2021 speech, “A New Vision for Global Development.” USAID has created unsustainable workarounds to fill staffing shortfalls, she acknowledged—some 90 percent of our positions in our Global Health, Humanitarian Assistance, and Conflict Prevention and Stabilization bureaus are on short-term contracts. “To this end, we will seek to increase our career workforce over the next four years,” she vowed. “To build a brighter future, we need to staff our agency for the future.” The agency’s “Transforming the Workforce Report to Con- gress 2022” further affirms the problems facing the agency vis-à- vis career employees, though it does not offer robust solutions: “USAID has long relied on a range of term-limited, non-career, and often NDH [non-direct-hire] mechanisms to staff needs that are not limited in duration. Those positions have included climate scientists, civilian-military liaisons, nutrition specialists, elections specialists, programmanagers, epidemiologists, and long-term institutional support for humanitarian assistance. “This reliance on a hodge-podge of non-career and term- limited mechanisms … puts at risk the institutionalization and oversight of some of the Agency’s highest-priority initiatives. For too long, we have relied on USAID’s creative approaches to meet our staffing needs amid growing program budget and respon- sibilities. This has resulted in costly inefficiencies and staff who are working side-by-side under managers who must deal with different pay, benefits, and performance systems.” Shocking numbers and welcome words. Happily, the agency and Congress have modestly increased USAID’s Fiscal Year 2022 OE budget to hire additional career employees with commit- ments for more—let’s hope! And yet, the agency is increasing hiring of non-career staffing mechanisms at a faster rate , further diluting and unbalancing the career cadre—a far cry from the president’s policy to “protect, empower, and rebuild.” AFSA is tirelessly working to advance the president’s agenda within the agency and work with agency colleagues to translate USAID’s own commitments into action. A Tale of Two Administrations I have served as AFSA VP under two administrations that are on opposite ends of the labor-management spectrum, at least rhetorically. Under the previous administration, despite a White House that issued anti-union executive guidance and sought to end the country’s nonpartisan Civil Service, AFSA enjoyed solid, respectful, and often productive relations with the previous USAID leadership. Indeed, then–USAID Administrator Mark Green and his front office team neither touted the talking points nor leaned into many of the anti-union and anti-employee actions pushed by the White House. To be sure, it was no golden age of labor- management harmony, but agency leadership consulted with employees, valuing their professional technical skills, field knowledge, and perspectives as development professionals. USAID Inspector General findings on workforce concerns were acted on quickly, and a historic agency reorganization was informed and influenced through union consultations. The counselor, the agency’s highest-ranking career employee, was treated as an integral part of the front office team, and was regularly present, active, and respected in leadership fora and in helping to shape institutional change. There was even historic progress in advancing integration of career Foreign Service and Civil Service employees into those challenging bureaus cited by Administrator Power, i.e., the contractor strongholds of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and the Bureau for Con- flict Prevention and Stabilization, with commitment to future progress. Remember, this all took place under an administra- tion that sought to implement “Schedule F,” a new employment classification system that would have transferred thousands of career public servants into a new job category where they would lose much of their Civil Service protections, becoming de facto “at-will” workers. Fast forward to 2021 when, on his second day in office, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14003, “Protecting the Federal Workforce.” This was followed by additional exten- sive direction to executive agencies, including the February 2022 report “White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. ” That report stated: “When federal employees organize a union, they should have an effective voice in work- place issues through their union, and federal management should work closely with these unions to solve workplace issues in a manner that advances agencies’ missions and produces high-performance workplaces.” The White House continues to issue complementary guidance. And yet the current USAID front office has never overtly acknowledged President Biden’s employee- and union-focused executive order and, in fact, rapidly took a number of actions more in line with a Schedule F agenda. For example, the agency created and filled a new political position, the “Assistant to the Administrator for Human Capital and Talent Manage- ment,” overseeing the CHCO and HCTM. This action raised both eyebrows and questions: Why would USAID, particu- larly under the Biden-Harris administration, politicize the career federal workforce? Indeed, as one concerned coalition