The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2017

62 JULY-AUGUST 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL gram and the Family Member Reserve Corps—all of which have been helping create jobs for qualified family members—will lose momentum as the freeze drags on. The Freeze Hurts Worldwide Productivity Of course, this freeze doesn’t just affect individual and family morale. The freeze on EFM hiring has a profound impact on posts worldwide. Family members typically take on jobs that keep posts moving forward. According to statistics compiled by the Family Liaison Office, at the end of 2016 there were 3,501 adult family members employed at missions overseas. (Another 6,688, or 56 percent of EFMs, were unemployed at post, while just 1,652 found work outside of the mission.) These working family members manage mailrooms, staff medical units, ensure that local housing meets security standards and work as security escorts, overseeing infra- structure repairs and main- tenance. Without anyone to fill these roles, the work will either go undone, or it will fall to Foreign Service officers themselves to do. FSOs at some posts have already been asked to spend a specified number of hours each week helping out with some of these vital jobs, taking them away from the work they were hired and trained to do. As the summer transfer season begins, community liaison officers (CLOs) are packing up and leaving post; when they leave, their mission-critical jobs will remain unfilled. A good CLO has multiple roles within a community: not only do they help new families transition to post, but they advise on school issues, help family members with personal or mental health issues, organize community events, work with the regional security office to ensure all family members are accounted for in emergencies, and keep the Front Office apprised of situations that could adversely affect morale at post. According to Susan Frost, director of the Family Liaison Office, FLO is actively trying tomanage the expected reduction in CLO services. “We are looking at what absolutely must be done by our CLOs at post. Safety and security; welcome and orientation; these are the most critical things for us to keep up.” Somemanagers worry that without EFMoversight, theremay be increased incidents of fraud and theft. In some bureaus, family members constitute 20 to 30 percent of the American workforce. Through their work, they provide oversight and control of embassy resources, ensuring, for example, that unscrupulous contractors don’t skimmoney fromemployee association accounts, or making sure that when the embassy buys something like heating oil on the local market, the oil is actually delivered as promised. Without this oversight, gas canisters, building supplies, grocery shipments and even cash can gomissing, costing the State Department large sums of money. Happy Spouses Make Happy Posts Not everyone wants or needs to work at post. But for those who do, there is nothing more demoralizing than showing up at post and being told nobody needs you. Spouses are typically the back- bone of the community: they are the ones who volunteer in the schools, manage the com- missaries and welcome the newcomers. When spouses lose interest in community involvement, the entire community suffers. Many spouses are cur- rently trading stories of arriving at post and being offered a job, only to be turned away because their clearances didn't come through before the freeze went into effect. These spouses, who expected to begin work- ing, are now stuck in a frustrating holding pattern, waiting to see if something shakes loose inWashington, D.C., in time for them to start. Some are considering leaving post and returning to the United States to find employment in their given fields. Says one spouse, a second-tour EFMwho lost a promised job in Central America when the freeze began, “I think the biggest hit was tomy self-esteem. I don’t like being a ‘JEFM’ (Just an EFM). I don’t have kids and since this is a very family-friendly post, everyone else who is not working is involved with kid-related activities. It’s lonely and harder to feel a part of the larger community when you don’t have a job or a purpose at post.” She says her post’s management team is taking it harder than most of the spouses, “who are used to getting screwed over after the super-long waits for clearances, so we mostly just shrug and try to find other things to do.” But management, she says, is “super worried” about the “huge gaps in a lot of offices” after this sum- mer’s transition. In some bureaus, family members constitute 20 to 30 percent of the American workforce. Through their work, they provide oversight and control of embassy resources.