The Foreign Service Journal, April 2005

A P R I L 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 They don’t call them intelligence agencies for noth- ing. Those CIA, DIA and NSA officials who real- ized they were asking employees assigned overseas from Washington to eat a base-pay cut of around 15 percent did the smart thing. They said, “It makes no sense to penalize an employee for overseas service.” Therefore, they ensured that their employees going from Washington to Maputo, for example, continued receiving the same base salary. Why did they do it? I don’t think their management officials are any more benevolent or generous than ours. They simply applied logic and good management, which demand that when asking colleagues to take their families to Kinshasa or Tirana, for example, you should not ask them to take a pay cut to do so. Kudos to those officials! Sounds simple enough, right? We in AFSA thought so, too, until we made our case, both to Congress and the agencies, for the same overseas pay equality for the Foreign Service. While many we spoke to were cooper- ative and supportive, we also encoun- tered reactions that we might call, with some tact, unhelpful. Locality what? Some of our interlocutors didn’t know what locality pay was, or imagined it was a cost-of- living allowance. We explained that its purpose is to compensate for pri- vate-public sector pay disparities in different regions of the U.S. It does not compensate for a high cost of liv- ing or hardship conditions. Since over 90 percent of Foreign Service person- nel stationed in the United States are in the Washington area, today each receives 16 percent extra pay based on that location. What’s the problem? Another reaction we encountered was: “Show me how the disparity hurts Foreign Service morale and effectiveness. Show us you cannot staff your hard- est posts because of this situation.” In all honesty we cannot show (today at least) a direct correlation between pay differences and staffing. And even if we could, the same skeptical officials might say, “So Foreign Service people are unwilling to serve in the toughest places.” What we do know, however, is that for the sum- mer 2005 assignment cycle, the State Department lists 83 posts (about 30 percent of the total) as “Historically Difficult to Staff.” Equity: Who cares? We think equity is our strongest argument, but it is a hard sell with Congress and OMB. We now have senior Foreign Service employees and intelligence agency personnel receiving 16 percent more pay than junior colleagues from other foreign affairs agencies at the same post. We now calculate that a Foreign Service employee starting work in 1995 will, over a 27-year career, lose about $450,000 in pay, differentials, and retirement (Thrift Savings Plan) savings. (These calculations are on our Web site, www.afsa.org .) Oliver asked for more! When all other arguments fail, we hear, “But, you already live well overseas, with your hardship differentials, housing, cost-of-living allowances, education benefits, etc. What more do you want?” In reality, employees overseas, in both the public and private sector, have received their housing and furni- ture for a long time. Given cost dis- tortions in many countries, a year’s rent and utilities for (modest) apart- ments overseas often cost more than a year’s salary for many of our members. When pressed, congressional staffers admit that the Foreign Service men and women they visited in many over- seas posts are not living right, but doing heroic work under very difficult and dangerous conditions. Carthage eventually was destroyed. AFSA will keep up the fight, but we need your help. We continue to raise the issue at every opportunity with agency manage- ment, Congress and the media. Overseas colleagues should make our case to visiting codels and staffdels. One Senate staffer, who was not even aware of the locality pay issue, had high praise for the Foreign Service men and women he met at a historically difficult-to-staff former Soviet post. We reminded him that those professionals he met were serving our country, and defi- nitely not doing it for the money. ■ P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS Selling Locality Pay B Y J OHN L IMBERT John Limbert is the president of the American Foreign Service Association.