The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2019 27 is available online in The Foreign Service Journal archive as Part Two of the November 1968 issue.) The report attracted attention, including a detailed New York Times story, “Foreign Service Group Hopes to Gain Reforms Under Nixon” (Dec. 6, 1968, p. 2). Its grand ideas about the role of the Foreign Service did not advance, but the report’s concern with the life and work of Service members resonated in the ranks and caught the attention of the department’s managers. Yet the lasting contribution of the Young Turks was not their quixotic call for an independent Foreign Service. Their real leg- acy was the reform of AFSA itself, which under their leadership became more democratic, more atten- tive to the daily concerns of the entire Service, and more prepared to challenge the department and its managers. One can draw a straight line from the 1967 electoral coup to AFSA’s transformation, six years later, into an employee union. AFSA’s Union Movement Over those six years, a mostly new group of AFSA activists—call them Young Turks II—negotiated, organized and campaigned to make AFSA the exclusive representative of Foreign Ser- vice employees in every Foreign Service agency. By 1969, the AFSA leadership was directly elected. And by 1972, it had turned over completely—no member of the Group of 18 remained. Yet the two groups of reformers had much in common: they were bal- anced (State, USAID and USIA were all represented); they were volunteers (State Department funds would not support a position at AFSA until 1982); and they were focused far more on the needs of the membership than on the power or prestige of the Service as an institution. The board that took office in 1970 said it clearly: “The mandate is unmistakable,” the board wrote in the Journal . “The bedrock of AFSA’s concerns lies in the bread-and-butter issues which affect the conditions of work and daily life of every member.” In 1969, President Richard Nixon’s administration by execu- tive order relaxed restraints on participation by federal employ- ees in labor unions, and what had been a quiet debate inside AFSA’s leadership came into the open. Anti-union sentiment and pro-union militancy battled within AFSA’s membership, with many of the more militant members attracted to the orga- nizational efforts of the American Federation of Government Employees. In that contest the department’s top management officer, Deputy Under Secretary WilliamMacomber, favored AFSA. After difficult negotiations, in late 1971 the White House issued a new executive order that defined most Foreign Service members with super- visory responsibilities as employees (labor), not management. The shift increased the number of voters likely to prefer AFSA to the American Federa- tion of Government Employees as their employee representative. Organizing elections took place at State, USAID and USIA in 1973. AFSA won all three. When he reported to the member- ship in 1974, AFSA President Tom Boyatt had plenty to brag about. Membership was up in every Foreign Service agency. There were bread-and- butter victories: retirement benefits for Foreign Service personnel in USAID; overtime for secretaries and commu- nicators; a kindergarten allowance; more air freight for single employees; and other gains won from Congress, the agencies and post administrators. Defense of professionalism, however, was the heart of his report. AFSA’s union role, he said, had enhanced its capacity to pursue professional ends. AFSA had proposed legislation requir- ing ambassadorial nominees to report their political contribu- tions and protecting promotion lists against political manipula- tion: it passed. It defended Foreign Service personnel in Chile against charges that they had failed to protect American citizens during a military coup: members of Congress spoke up to praise the performance of the embassy in Santiago. The Old Turks needed the Young Turks to shake things up, and shake things up they did. Ambassador Tom Boyatt testifies on Capitol Hill in 2007. AFSAARCHIVES