The Foreign Service Journal, April 2013

the Foreign Service journal | April 2013 33 U nless you have served on the AFSA Governing Board, you may not fully appreciate the extent to which AFSA’s officers and professional staff members work behind the scenes to advocate for the interests of the Foreign Service. Sometimes agency management officials propose major changes to personnel policies to address a real or perceived problem. When such a proposal would harm the long-term health of the Foreign Service, AFSA steps in to advocate against short-sighted measures. For instance, it became clear by 2001 that the cumula- tive effect of hiring below attrition during the mid-1990s was massive mid-level staffing gaps. State management responded by proposing to discontinue promotion boards for general- ist FS-4s, instead automatically promoting them all after two years in grade. AFSA pointed out that there would inevitably be at least some officers who had not demonstrated their readiness for increased responsibilities, so promoting such individuals would undermine the up-or-out system on which the Foreign Service is based. State reconsidered and set the generalist FS-4 to FS-3 promotion rate that year at 90 percent instead of 100 percent. That same year, after Secretary of State Colin Powell said that all Foreign Service members should take leadership and management training prior to promotion, State proposed to AFSA that the promotion precepts be revised to allow a relatively long phase-in of the new requirement. We opposed the delay in implementation, noting the likelihood that the employees who needed such training the most would put off taking it unless motivated by a looming deadline. State agreed to accelerate the phase-in. In both these examples, please note that AFSA—although a union—temporarily disadvantaged a few of its members in order to advance the long-term interests of the profession. Throughout AFSA’s existence as a union, its quiet, behind- the-scenes advocacy has also been active on Capitol Hill. Well-known examples include lobbying to narrow the overseas pay gap and to increase funding for Foreign Service staffing embassy security. Another, now almost forgotten, example is AFSA: Advocate for the Foreign Service By John K. Naland Donna Ayerst Employees from the foreign affairs agencies joined AFSA in a “Rally to Serve America” in April 2011.