The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

T he ever-widening overseas pay disparity remains the top concern for Foreign Service employees, increasingly frus- trated at having to swallowwhat has nowbecome a 21-per- cent cut inbase salary when they leaveWashington to take anover- seas assignment. It drags down morale and discourages people fromseeking foreignpostings. It is aglaring inequity thatCongress and the administration should have corrected long ago. While the pay gap may not yet be driving good people out of the Foreign Service in large numbers, what will happen in the next few years as it keeps widening? D.C. locality pay for feder- al employees usually increases by at least a couple of percentage points annually, so three or four years from now we will take a 30-percent drop in base pay to serve overseas. And how about five or six years fromnow, whenyouwill needamaximumhard- ship 35-percent differential posting just to earnwhat youwould have earned staying at a desk job inWashington? There will be a breaking point when this gross injustice starts seriously under- mining recruitment and retention. Yet this looming crisis facing our profession is barely on Congress’s radar screen and is widely misunderstood by Hill staffers, the media and the public. As AFSA lobbies constantly for overseas comparability pay—andwhenmembers raise this issuewithvisiting congressional delegations (andevenwith friends and family)—we confront the same yawningdisinterest andcyn- ical questions: Aren’t youdiplomats already overpaid compared to other government employees? Don’t you already get perks that nobody else enjoys? Andof course: Doesn’t your free hous- ing overseas make up for the pay cut? These questions reflect the myths we struggle against in try- ing to convince Congress to act. Debunking thesemyths is vital if we are ever going to get overseas comparability pay. All of us in the ForeignService need to speakout to set the record straight. Some thoughts on how to answer these questions: MYTH1:Overpaiddiplomats. The ForeignServicepay scale is directly parallel to the Civil Service schedule, and — as any- one trying to rise through the FS mid-level ranks can attest — our highly competitive promotions are slower than formostU.S. government workers. All other federal employees in the U.S., however, get locality pay added to their base salary as a way to bring professional government salaries a bit closer to those in the private sector. But because Congress never legislated an over- seas counterpart to locality pay, FS employees abroad simply do not get this adjustment. Why should foreign affairs profession- als serving in some of themost difficult hotspots around the globe be excluded? OtherU.S. government agencies, notablyour friends up the river, have adjusted their overseas employees’ salary struc- ture internally tocompensate for the loss of locality pay. MYTH2: ForeignService “perks.” The insinuation that other allowances authorized by the Foreign Service Act make up for the 21-percent pay cut is just plain offensive. Those allowances exist to address specif- ic costs and hardships unique to working for long years over- seas. Danger pay compensates for the extreme risks of living in a countrywrackedbywar, terrorism, political violence or endem- ic lawlessness. Educational allowances make it possible for FS members tocover theirkids’ schooling incountrieswherenoviable public schools are available. Cost-of-living allowances helpdefray the cost of food and other daily needs of life in countries where those things are vastlymore expensive than in theUnited States. These were never meant to obviate the need for the basic local- ity pay adjustment that all other federal employees get. MYTH3: Freehousing. Just because FSmembers are placed in government-suppliedhousingwhenpostedoverseas does not mean that they reap a financial windfall. Most of ourmembers own a home in the U.S. on which they have to pay a mortgage, upkeep, insurance andproperty taxes—and renting it out (often impossible) rarely covers all of these expenses and is itself a cost- ly proposition. Moreover, numerous “hidden” costs of over- seas service vastly outweigh any benefit fromgovernment hous- ing: • Pursuing an overseas career makes it virtually impossible for ForeignService families tomaintain twoprofessional incomes, which is the norm for domestic federal employees. Rarely can FS spouses successfully pursue a professional career whenmov- ing from one foreign location to another. Lack of opportuni- ties, licensing obstacles and language barriers often force FS fam- ilies intoa single-breadwinner situation, which translates into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income. • Numerous, frequent out-of-pocket costs of pursuinganover- seas career far outweigh any benefit fromgovernment-supplied housing. Examples: flying your familyback toOmaha fromsome remote central Africanpost for your brother’swedding, for your sister-in-law’s life-threatening illness, for abeloved relative’s funer- al, or formany other important family/friendoccasions not cov- eredby authorizedvisitation travel. These commonexpenses rou- tinely cost FS members thousands of dollars. AFSA’s latest briefer on overseas comparability pay is at: www.afsa.org/OCP2008Jan.pdf. Debunking thesemyths is abat- tle we all must fight, before it is too late. V.P. VOICE: STATE BY STEVE KASHKETT Overseas Pay Disparity: Debunking the Myths MA Y 2 0 0 8 / F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L 51 A F S A N E W S