The Foreign Service Journal, June 2008

62 F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L / J UN E 2 0 0 8 A F S A N E W S E ven casual readers of this columnwill already know that the AFSA-Commerce relationship during the last three years of my tenure as VP has been “less than fully suc- cessful.” If it takes two to tango, FCSmanagement has pret- ty consistently stayed in its corner and been unavailable for most dances, slow or fast. As I move on to a foreign posting next month and AFSA Representative Steve Anderson does likewise in August, this is our last message from these pages. There is a lot of unfin- ishedbusiness, thoughnot for lackof trying. Here are thedetails, at least fromamidterm proposal perspective. Since the fall of 2005, AFSAhas submitted 12midtermproposals tomanagement and signed twomemorandums of understanding. (The latter took 21months from time of submission to time of signing—a very slow dance!) See www.afsa.org/FCS/FCS Update062207.cfm for details. For the other 10 proposals, AFSA received very limited fixes and/or responses from FCS management. While a letter was drafted in July 2007 and sug- gestions weremade by AFSA for progress or at least dialogue, to date no response has been received. Meanwhile, management grew less responsive, even dysfunctional, requiring us to file grievances. Our spring 2006 proposals concerning Senior Foreign Service pay policies, improve- ments in employee performance and work plans, and a joint Standing Committee for Annual Review of the Precepts led to limited tinkering with some improvements on the first two items but no MOUs. We encountered a lot of resistance to work- ing with AFSA on behalf of our membership. Our fall 2006 proposals revisited the SFS issues, the Residential Transaction Allowance and compliance with the ForeignAffairsManual, and the Personnel Audit Report. Management did address two of the three SFS issues at least informally; but on the RTA provisions of the FAM, it simply withdrew its adherence without even consulting with AFSA. It ignored the third issue entirely. Our single spring 2007 proposal concerned domestic assignments to U.S. Export Assistance Centers and the seven-year rulemandating them. This seems to have par- alyzed our dance partner. No formal response, required by the collective bargain- ing agreement, was ever received and AFSA was eventually forced to file an institu- tional grievance, which is currently before the Foreign Service Grievance Board. Our fall 2007 proposals concerned better forms of management for appraisals and consultations to ensure regional, gender and racial diversity in the four selec- tion and promotion boards. Again, there has been no response frommanagement. As wemove toward a transition inAFSA, inmanagement and in administrations, one can only hope for a better future relationship, in which management organizes itself to identify the right partner for AFSA (to ensure it receives responses in a time- ly fashion, with true dialogue and progress) and to “get the job done” for our senior, mid-level and junior commercial officers who pay their dues and expect better from management. o V.P. VOICE: FCS n BY DON BUSINGER Unfinished Business AFSA NEWS BRIEFS There is a lot of unfinished business, though not for lack of trying. We encountered a lot of resistance to working with AFSA on behalf of our membership. AFSA FCS VP Position Open The AFSA Foreign Commercial Service vice president position was not placed on the FCS bid list, and thus all likely candi- dates have been assigned to other posi- tions. VP Donald Businger will resign this summer in order to begin his next over- seas assignment, so the AFSA Governing Board can appoint a successor. Basic qualifications are that the officer: be located within 50 miles of Washington, D.C., to be available for board meetings; not hold an FCS management position; and be able to spend at least 50 percent of his or her time on AFSA duties. Please contact AFSA as soon as possible if you are interested in the position. On May 7, the Governing Board appointed Rebecca Balogh as the new FCS representative beginning July 15. ISO DG Reporting Award Cables Retired FSO Raymond F. Smith is writ- ing a book, The Craft of Political Analysis in Modern Diplomacy . He would like to include, as case studies, examples of out- standing Foreign Service reporting (declas- sified). He tells the Journal that when he asked the Bureau of Human Resources for cable numbers of reports fromwinners and runners-up of the director general’s annual reporting awards, so he could request that they be reviewed for declassifi- cation, HR said it had the information, but that he would have to file a Freedom of Information request to get it. He did, and then was told that HR had destroyed the records shortly after telling him to file the FOIA request. Mr. Smith requests that anyone interest- ed in helping with this effort provide him with cable numbers of winning messages so that he can file declassification requests. His e-mail address is ray.smith531@ gmail.com.