72 JULY-AUGUST 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA TERM REPORT their benefits questions and, when necessary, contact State Department retirement officials on their behalf to resolve bureaucratic glitches. In one case, she assisted a retiree in getting reimbursement of more than $450,000 that had been incorrectly deducted from his annuity. In another case, she secured the reimbursement of more than $50,000 in Federal Employees Group Life Insurance excess premiums that had been deducted from a retiree’s annuity over many years. The AFSA retirement services team also met on a regular basis with senior managers in the Office of Retirement and the Bureau of the Comptroller and Global Financial Services to discuss issues affecting all Foreign Service retirees. To protect our earned retirement benefits, AFSA continued to work with other members of the FederalPostal Coalition—a group of 30 organizations representing 2.7 million federal employees and 2.6 million federal retirees. The coalition sends letters to Congress, with AFSA as co-signer, and holds monthly meetings, with AFSA participation, to plan advocacy efforts. In late 2024, that advocacy achieved the repeal of two longstanding laws—the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset—that had reduced Social Security benefits for some retirees in the Foreign Service Retirement and Disability System. In early 2025, the Coalition increased efforts to oppose legislative proposals to cut federal retirement benefits. At the state level, AFSA expanded its advocacy to urge states that provide tax exemptions to uniformed military pensions to extend similar treatment for Foreign Service annuities. Bills are pending in Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island. These multifaceted efforts to provide members with value for their dues produced a rise in AFSA retiree membership to its highest level in at least 10 years. U.S. Agency for International Development Prior to Jan. 20, 2025, relations between AFSA and agency leadership were solid and increasingly close. A concerted effort over the past two years to improve linkages had yielded several promising results, such as increasing AFSA’s presence with front office decision-makers and successful engagements on reorganizations and operational policy (ADS) updates. Additional efforts included outreach to Foreign Service Limited officers, continued focus on recruiting career candidates to join AFSA, and outreach and support to employee resource groups (ERG). Finally, AFSA along with our counterparts at AFGE and Employee Labor Relations (ELR) negotiated and signed a labor management forum agreement that provided an avenue for discussion on common issues and preparing joint solutions. Notably, in January 2024, AFSA met with Deputy Administrator Paloma Adams-Allan to discuss how best to capture diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) as part of USAID’s multisource ratings (MSR) survey. Prior to the meeting, AFSA and the performance management team had successfully negotiated meaningful changes to the MSRs to properly capture and rate FSOs on DEIA. Additionally, starting in September 2023 and continuing through the summer of 2024, AFSA and the USAID Counselor worked in partnership to develop a mental health strategy for USAID staff. This major initiative included an AFSA-sponsored mental health service survey, USAID sponsored working groups, the development of a mental health strategy, and the co-authoring of an article in the July-August FSJ focus on mental health. Further, working with counterparts on the USAID performance management team, several changes were agreed to regarding submission frequency of promotion materials for FS-1s not eligible for promotion to the Senior Foreign Service. These changes would result in time and cost savings for the FSOs, their raters, and the promotion boards. During this time, more than 10 ADS policies were discussed, negotiated, and amended. These included important changes to policies covering performance management, appointments, tenure, disciplinary actions, and DETOs/remote work/telework. Since August 2023, the AFSA VP for USAID, AFSA president, USAID board representative, and other AFSA staff met with incoming classes of career candidates as part of their orientation. These outreach efforts were very successful in recruiting new AFSA members. USAID Board Representative Chris Saenger held multiple outreach meetings with all USAID ERGs during this time. These efforts were particularly successful in building trust with the gender and sexual minority ERG. Unfortunately, since Jan. 20, 2025, relations between AFSA and the agency have soured to the point where the agency no longer engages in any dialogue with AFSA. Requests for meetings with new leadership have
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