The Foreign Service Journal, April 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2023 11 Ambassador Tom Boyatt and John Naland deserve special praise for their excellent descriptions of how lightning came to strike twice and what that meant for members of the Foreign Service, the State Department, and American foreign policy. And I also thought Bruce Greg- ory’s letter provided interesting details of the origins of the grievance system. Kudos, my friends. As one who was involved in these events at the margins, I noted that Tom failed to mention one rather important subgroup he formed in the post-election period to plan strategies for negotiating the labor-management agreement with the department. He waggishly labeled it the NSC (Negotiations Steering Commit- tee), and I was privileged to serve on it. The NSC had, as I recall, an ad hoc membership, depending on the issue. Among the members I recall were Tex Harris, Rick Melton, and Frank McNeil. There were several others, but I no longer recall their names (my apologies). I believe the results demonstrate both the value and relative success of that sub- group’s work. Kudos! Jack R. Binns Ambassador, retired Tucson, Arizona Protecting VOA Engineers Ambassador Tom Boyatt’s article, “When Lightning Struck Twice, ” in the January-February Foreign Service Journal reminded me of an episode I experienced and the support I received fromAFSA President Tex Harris in 1995-1996. I was AFSA vice president for USIA, and I and my colleagues were engaged in protracted negotiations with Voice of America management over its move to eliminate nine VOA engineer positions. AFSA fought hard and long to keep these positions. VOAmanagement thought it could engage in perfunctory negotiations with AFSA; but as it turned out, we negotiated for nearly three months with a federal mediator helping to reach an agreement. Though the posi- tions were eliminated on paper, every engineer was restored to his job by the end of calendar year 1996. These negotiations came around the 1995 government shutdown that had kept most State, USIA, USAID, and Depart- ment of Commerce employees from working. During this time, Tex Harris and the respective AFSA vice presidents worked to protect all Foreign Service positions from being eliminated. This included VOA engineers, most of whom worked at overseas locations. In my negotiating experience with VOAmanagers, I learned that they were every bit as tough and resistant as those in private corporations. AFSA persevered, and we succeeded in protecting the employees despite efforts to “right-size” Foreign Service jobs to meet White House mandates to save money and demon- strate to Congress that downsizing was an attainable goal. Bruce Byers USIA FSO, retired Reston, Virginia “When Lightning Struck Twice”—The Author Responds I’m impressed by the degree to which the letters to the editor are expanding on the history of AFSA unionization. I am very grateful to Ray Smith and Jack Binns for their kind words regarding “When Lightning Struck Twice, ” and for extending the story to include the Boyatt Board years (1973-1975). Because of space constraints and the need to bring the narrative into the pres- ent, I had summarized the achievements of my board briefly by noting the number of contract agreements reached. Ray and Jack remedied the lack of detail by explor- ing our two major achievements. First, as Ray detailed, in 1973 we reached out to our former competitors in JFSOC, asking them to nominate someone to run on our slate. This brilliant coup was conceived by AFSA Counsellor Rick Williamson, a tower of strength during my tenure as chairman/president. JFSOC sent us Raymond Smith, who performed very effectively as a board stalwart, successful negotiator, and an amusing and loyal companion and friend. I also reached out to DACOR and asked them to nominate two of their members to serve on the AFSA Board. Our goal was to court the two constituencies most opposed to the “Achievement slate”—the JFSOCers and the retirees—to heal the breaches and to confront management as a single force. We needed to have the tribe’s young warriors and its elders inside the tent. Eventually, we and later boards succeeded. Second, Jack Binns refers to the activi- ties of our NSC (Negotiations Steering Committee), the driver of our very suc- cessful initial negotiations with manage- ment. Neither AFSA nor management had any experience in negotiating “personnel policies and procedures.” The NSC established important procedural precedents: specifically, that AFSA, as well as management, could table changes to personnel policies to be negotiated to produce permanent agree- ments, and that the parties could agree on separate contracts via “linkage,” i.e., you agree to my proposals, and I will agree to your unrelated proposals. Of the many contracts negotiated in those years, the dues checkoff agreement stands out. Under these procedures,