The Foreign Service Journal, June 2003

could only come about once AFSA became a union. Although AFSA and State each had incentives to seek quick union elections, the path ahead was anything but smooth, as both sides grappled with the myriad difficul- ties in applying E.O. 11491 to the Foreign Service. For management, the hardest provision to swallow was that the Secretary of State would no longer be in complete charge of the Foreign Service, as provided for in the 1924 Rogers Act. Outside labor appeal and grievance boards, not just the tame, in-house Board of the Foreign Service, would be empowered to make decisions overturning the Secretary’s decisions. This was heresy. Parallel concerns surfaced for the many AFSA mem- bers who were uncomfortable with the idea of applying a Civil Service framework to the Foreign Service, and dis- liked the fact that the executive order placed the Foreign Service’s union in an adversarial posture to the Secretary of State, whom they saw as someone well above the give- and-take of the labor-management bargaining table. The view that a better executive order tailored for the Foreign Service could be crafted was accepted by AFSA “Young Turk” leaders Bill Harrop, Ted Eliot and Charlie Bray, and eventually by Under Secretary for Management Bill Macomber. Supported by Secretary of State William Rogers, Macomber led the fight within the administration (taking on OMB, OPM, the White House and Congress) for a separate executive order to address the unique cir- cumstances of the Foreign Service. (See sidebar.) There were many serious technical problems with E.O. 11491. Precisely because it was intended for Civil Service employees, its effect on overseas Foreign Service personnel was undefined. The executive order also excluded all supervisors (defined as anyone who signed off on annual leave) from being represented by the union, as well as anyone in intelligence or audit work — which potentially meant that over half of the Service would be excluded from union representation. Further, E.O. 11491 envisioned a grievance system in which the union represented each person in the bargain- ing unit on all cases unless it expressly waived that right. This was anathema to State’s management. It also envi- sioned many smaller functional bargaining units around the world, which made little sense in the Foreign Service with its tradition of “rank in person,” high mobility and centralized administration. Bargaining on small issues at every post in the world was not the model the Foreign Service wanted to adopt. F O C U S J U N E 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 11491, mandating that labor-management relations be conducted on a Civil Service model throughout the fed- eral government. Macomber recognized the need to create an alternative template to fit the unique Foreign Service personnel and administrative system, and worked with AFSA to achieve it. Another was an issue that Macomber (and his wife Phyliss) felt especially pas- sionately about: reversing the entrenched policies of gender discrimination within the Foreign Service, which still required female FSOs to resign upon marriage. Macomber’s personal commitment to reform was enhanced by his detailed, hands-on knowledge of the department and embassy operations. Although he held many of the “gentleman’s” views of his generation about the absolute primacy of service to the president and the Secretary of State, he also recognized the fail- ings of the department’s management systems. In the end, he was able to orchestrate and energize the resources of the department to outflank the frozen deci- sion-making channels of the “old boy” system. In all these battles, AFSA was Macomber’s strate- gic ally, but sometimes his tactical enemy. For exam- ple, AFSA strongly supported the grievance legislation introduced by Sens. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., and John Sherman Cooper, R-Ky., in response to the tragic sui- cide of FSO Charles Thomas, while Macomber was an implacable foe. But while such bureaucratic conflicts were always fiercely fought, they were waged deep inside the new territory of reform. I remember a one-on-one meeting I had with Macomber to discuss the need for an impartial griev- ance system. We ended up shouting at each other at the top of our lungs, and the veins stood out in his neck in anger. As I left his office, his staff aide rushed up and told me angrily, “You don’t talk to the under secretary of management that way.” But the next day Macomber approached me in the cafeteria, slapped me on the back, and commented on what a good discussion we’d had. He then exclaimed that we needed to meet again soon. We did. Bill Macomber was a great piece of work. He cared. And the State Department and the Foreign Service are the better for it. — Tex Harris