THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 21 Employees, a “real” union with a reputation for militancy. AFGE believed in equal pay for equal work, a concept incompatible with rank-in-person, and held that “Foreign Service personnel should be treated at home as domestic civil servants.” Whether AFGE or AFSA would become the exclusive employee representative—the union—for the Foreign Service would be decided by elections in each agency. AFSA’s leadership joined with Bill Macomber at State to persuade the White House to set election rules incorporating a broad franchise that worked in AFSA’s favor. Board member Tom Boyatt guided AFSA’s multiple campaigns, which through many legal twists and turns ended in 1973 with victories over AFGE at State, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA, established 1953), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID, established 1961). First- and third-person accounts of these transformative battles appear in the Journal editions of June 2003, April 2013, and January- February 2023, on the 30th, 40th, and 50th anniversaries of the events, respectively. [All editions can be found online at https://afsa.org/fsj-archive.] The Path to the Act of 1980. Boyatt, forceful and feisty, became AFSA’s first directly elected president in 1974. He was a vigorous defender of dissent (and was himself a notable dissenter, over U.S. policy in Cyprus). He and Bill Harrop testified in the Senate against the confirmation of egregiously unqualified political appointees. He defended the American embassy in Santiago, under attack in the media and Congress for its performance during the coup that toppled President Salvador Allende. “We will never again,” he said, “permit McCarthyism or any other threat to impinge upon our integrity or to silence our dedication to the national interest.” Ambassador Carol Laise, Director General (DG) of the Foreign Service from 1975 to 1977, found that her role had changed: “Tom Boyatt made it very clear to me that [AFSA] represented the Foreign Service on policy issues with management,” she said. With unionization and the rise of AFSA, the DG no longer had a constituency. Backlash. Maybe AFSA’s many achievements—extending the education allowance to kindergarten; overtime pay for secretaries, communicators, and other staff; protection of selection-board recommendations from political interference—had come too easily. Many rank-and-file members remained dissatisfied and eager for On Oct. 1, 1967, control of AFSA passed into the reformers’ hands. Transformation: 1967-1983 As the gray-flannel 1950s gave way to the tie-dyed 1960s, the spirit of dissent and rebelliousness that spread across the country came to affect the staid Foreign Service. A group of mostly young, reform-minded officers chafed at their lack of influence and came to realize that AFSA could become a vehicle for change. AFSA, they said, “can and should be heard” on matters of personnel, leave, transfers, health benefits, and the like. The message resonated. Led by mid-level officers Lannon Walker and Charles Bray, the reformers won all 18 seats on the electoral college that, under AFSA’s odd rules, chose a board of directors that then chose its own chairman and officers. On Oct. 1, 1967, control of AFSA passed into the reformers’ hands. The reformers, called the “Young Turks” after the Ottoman revolutionaries of the early 20th century, brought new ideas and new energy. They replaced the electoral college with direct elections. They testified on the Hill. They raised money: funds from John D. Rockefeller III and the Harriman, Rivkin, and Herter families let Charlie Bray devote full time to AFSA on leave without pay, financed publication of the reform manifesto Toward a Modern Diplomacy, and launched the AFSA awards program, including the awards for constructive dissent that after more than 50 years remain unique in the government. Bray and AFSA Vice President John Reinhardt went to the 1968 Republican convention and secured a statement in the party’s platform: “We strongly support the Foreign Service and will strengthen it by improving its efficiency and administration and providing adequate allowances for its personnel.” Nothing remotely like that had happened before. The State Department was hostile. Soon after Walker took office as chairman of AFSA’s board, the department’s top management official, Idar Rimestad, called him in and told him: “Just who the [expletive] do you think you are? You don’t represent anybody, and you’re not going to get anything.” AFSA responded with an open meeting that packed the department’s auditorium with a noisy and approving crowd. The era of passive deference was over. The department’s refusal to work with AFSA impelled the association to transform itself into a labor union with which management would be compelled to deal. There were new players—William Macomber took over as chief management officer at State; Bill Harrop, Tom Boyatt, Tex Harris, and Hank Cohen formed the leadership at AFSA—and a White House open to change in employee-management relations across the federal government. AFSA’s leadership had to find a path between those in the membership who believed that commissioned officers should join no union and those (the greater number) who would reject AFSA in favor of AFGE—the American Federation of Government
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