The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2015 47 A fter three years of consultations, hearings and research, Congress passed the new Foreign Ser- vice Act, beginning the long process of imple- mentation. Congress provided new benefits for the men and women of the foreign affairs agencies, but they were provided so that the Foreign Service could be more responsive to the demands made upon it—not simply to add more perquisites to the supposedly already easy life of those who serve their country at missions abroad. Along with these benefits came a reorganization of the Service, including a mechanism to regulate the trade-off between job tenure at the senior levels and promotion opportunities for mid-career junior personnel, the provision of performance pay to circumvent the pay cap for those in the potentially riskier Senior Foreign Service and application of selection out to the Staff Corps. To those of us in AFSA and, we believe, the congressional committees who worked so hard and so long to produce the best possible law, the act was a package—with new benefits balancing new risks and responsibilities—designed to restruc- ture the Foreign Service in light of modern conditions and needs. For the association, the last 12 months have been particu- larly frustrating and disillusioning. A year ago we approached the implementation of the provisions of the act imbued with a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that Congress had recognized the special problems and needs of the Foreign Service and had gone a long way toward meeting them. We felt that the easier and more satisfying part of the job was ahead of us—negotiating the implementation of the legislation intended by Congress to achieve: ■ a career Foreign Service characterized by excellence and professionalism, representative of the American people and operated on the basis of merit principles; ■ a more efficient, economic and equitable personnel administration and more effective and flexible management; ■ mitigation of the special impact of hardships, disruptions and other conditions of service abroad; and ■ maximum compatibility among the five foreign affairs agencies. Implementation Roadblocks While there had been—and still is—controversy over certain provisions of the act, no one had disagreed with the basic overall objectives. If the implementation were to go well, the Foreign Service community would be strengthened and the American government and people well served. But the imple- mentation has so far not gone well at all. From the first day of negotiations, there have been prob- lems. First, hardly any of the draft regulations implementing the act were in a form ready to be presented to the unions for nego- tiations. This was at least in part because the new administra- tion wanted to review recent legislation before proceeding. Second, the foreign affairs agencies themselves seemed to have trouble reaching a common position. All five were headed by new managers who had different ideas of changes they wanted to make in the organizations they were taking over and, therefore, different interpretations of the provisions of the act. Third, for the new administration, this was the “year of the budget.” Rather than looking at the bill as the package it was intended to be, management has tried to cut costs whenever possible and attempted to negotiate restrictive regulations on the incentive side of the act, which would result in uneven implementation contrary, we believe, to the intent of Congress. Last, perhaps the biggest problem has been the negotiating process itself. To meet the objective of “maximum compatibil- ity among foreign affairs agencies” a majority of the regulations are joint, requiring five-agency, two-union negotiations (AID, State, ICA, Commerce and Agriculture are the agencies; AFSA represents AID and State, and the American Federation of Gov- ernment Employees represents ICA). These negotiations are proving to be cumbersome, unbelievably slow and perilously close to unworkable. While the unions have presented a united front and attempted to be cooperative, it appears that the real difficulty The View from AFSA in 1982: Negotiations Have Been Frustrating and Disappointing