The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 5 Greetings from your new AFSA president. I join with the 24 other members of the new AFSA Governing Board in pledging to tenaciously defend and advance the interests of the Foreign Service over the next two years. I thank my pre- decessor, Ambassador J. Anthony Holmes, and the members of his Governing Board for their strong, principled advocacy of AFSA mem- bers’ interests over the past two years. This is a critical time for our profession. Conditions of service have deteriorated. More posts are danger- ous and unhealthy. The number of unaccompanied positions has soared. Longstanding physical security policies have been abandoned in order to staff war zones. Many posts and offices are understaffed and overworked. The Service has become less family- friendly. The lack of Overseas Com- parability Pay is an ever-growing finan- cial disincentive to overseas service. Gains made earlier this decade in strengthening diplomatic readiness have been overwhelmed as staffing demands in Iraq have far outpaced appropriations for personnel. There is a growing deficit between the missions assigned to the Foreign Service and the resources available to carry out those missions. AFSA has many tools with which to confront these challenges. As a union, AFSA has the legal right to negotiate with agency management over many conditions of service. Speaking as a pro- fessional association with an 83-year track record as the voice of the Foreign Service, AFSA can often influence even non-negotiable agency policies. AFSA frequently testifies on Capitol Hill, has a full-time director of legislative affairs, and operates a political action committee, AFSA- PAC. We have an active communi- cations outreach program that gets AFSA’s views cited by major media outlets and arranges speaking events around the country to explain the importance of diplomacy to tens of thousands of citizens each year. Our greatest strength, however, is you. AFSA’s active-duty members are our eyes and ears around the world, alerting us to the good, the bad and the ugly in agency practices. Our retiree members play a key role in lobbying Congress for resources for diplomacy and educating our fellow Americans about the role of the Foreign Service. And all members, through their dues, support AFSA’s talented professional staff, who work hard each day to advance your interests. This, then, is our Team AFSA: Governing Board, professional staff, and rank-and-file members. Working together over the next two years, we can help realize AFSA’s mission of making the Foreign Service a more effective agent of United States international leadership — while simultaneously making it a better- supported, more respected and more satisfying place in which to spend a career. As we move forward, I promise to maintain an active pace of outbound communications, not only through this monthly column, but also via frequent e-mail updates sent via our free listserv, AFSAnet. If you are not among the nearly 10,000 subscribers to that ser- vice, you may sign up at www.afsa.org/ forms/maillist.cfm. If you are a subscriber, you will have seen my initial updates laying out the new AFSA Governing Board’s starting agenda, which includes the following objectives: secure Overseas Comparability Pay; obtain more resources for diplomacy; improve overseas security; influence Foreign Service reform initiatives; preserve and strengthen USAID; defend the Foreign Service against outside critics; expand professional training; improve overseas living conditions; in- crease WAE opportunities; defend and expand retiree benefits; expand diplomatic privileges for specialists; improve administrative accommoda- tions for members of household; update contact reporting and security clearance suspension procedures; and assure fair and equitable standards for assignments. I also welcome your comments, suggestions and — as may be appro- priate — complaints. You may contact me by e-mail at naland@afsa.org; by mail at 2101 E Street, NW, Washington DC 20037; by phone at (202) 338- 4045; or by fax at (202) 338-6820. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS Team AFSA B Y J OHN K. N ALAND John K. Naland is the president of the American Foreign Service Association.