The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2017 63 It’s Hard Out There for a Spouse If you’ve been a Foreign Service spouse for any length of time, you know all about resilience and creativity in the face of under- employment. You’ve been rejected for jobs that you considered beneath you, given your educational background, but wanted anyway. You’ve been told to be happy that “your housing is free” and you don’t “need” to work. You’ve likely spent days prepping for an important reception only to be ignored by most of the guests because you’re nobody important. But even the veteran spouses, the ones who’ve learned to navigate this strange world with smiles on their faces, say they haven’t seen anything this bad before. One spouse laments the “inconsistent and often contradic- tory updates and messages” coming out of HR and the front office at her post. Another remarks that she knows of “at least two spouses who are seriously considering going on SMA [separate maintenance allowance] and returning to the States simply to be able to work.” In both cases, she says, “college expenses are a major factor.” Even overseas, where costs can sometimes be lower, it isn’t always easy to make ends meet on one salary. And it’s even worse in D.C. One FSO who recently returned to the States planned to stay here for the next four years to get his son through high school. But with the freeze in place, his wife can’t find a job in her field, and the family can’t afford to live on one salary in Northern Virginia. They are looking to bid out again as quickly as possible, before they plow through all of their savings. Another spouse, the wife of a D.C.- based DS agent, says she and her husband bought a house after she was hired into a Civil Service job. But the freeze went into effect before her job started, and now the couple is trying to figure out how to make their mortgage payments when half of their expected income has suddenly vanished. What about Unaccompanied Posts? The situation is bad enough if you’re preparing to move to a traditional post this summer. But for FSOs getting ready to transfer to an unaccompanied post, some of whommade the decision to do an unaccompanied tour because they knew they could bring their spouses along if the spouses could find work at post, the situation looks even more dire. If you lined up an EFM job, for example, in Baghdad, you would be organizing a packout and getting ready to uproot your family. But now that your promised EFM job has disappeared, can you even go to post with your FSO spouse? One couple lined up a job for the FSO and a job for the spouse before enrolling their children in boarding school and making plans to be away for a year. But as of press time, the spouse has been told not to come to post. “We’re straddling options at this point,” says the FSO. The couple is scheduled to depart for post this summer, and they decided to “go the boarding school route” for the kids. But then, says the FSO, “the hiring freeze kicked in”—leaving all of their plans up in the air. “At this point, for us, we just need to know so we can make decisions. It’s a whole lot more uncertainty than any of us would choose.” One long-term spouse currently overseas says “there is absolutely no indication that this admin- istration has any interest inmission staffing, from either a practical or amorale perspective.” She encour- ages spouses at her post “to bemoving to Plan B right now: teleworking, freelanc- ing, working on the local economy or, if those are not possible, obtaining certifica- tions and degrees toward such a time as they will be able to work.” “I’ve been a Foreign Service spouse for 24 years, and I can’t remember there ever being a freeze like this,” writes a D.C.-based spouse. “It is devastating for families and demoralizing for those blocked out of positions.” She says someone needs to “remind management that hiring spouses saves money!” Hiring Spouses Saves Money But HR already knows that hiring spouses makes financial sense. “We need our family members,” says Mike Tulley, director of the Office of Overseas Employment (HR/OE). He notes that hiring an EFM is a cost-effective use of resources at post. Family members, he says, have broad overseas experience and can be up and running quickly in any new job at a new post. And make no mistake: the jobs they do aren’t busywork. EFMs overseas maintain and repair both classified and unclassified computer networks. They dispense medicines and give inoculations. They Spouses are typically the backbone of the community: they are the ones who volunteer in the schools, manage the commissaries and welcome the newcomers.