The Foreign Service Journal, October 2003

4 AFSA NEWS • OCTOBER 2003 BOOKFAIR The 43rd annual BOOKFAIR of the Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide will open on the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 17, and continue through Sunday, Oct. 26. It will be held in the Diplomatic Exhibit Hall of the Truman Building on the first floor near the cafeteria. Entrance will be at C Street. Support for Foreign Service Youth The Foreign Service Youth Foundation is in need of your sup- port. The FSYF serves a key element of the Foreign Service community — the kids. The group offers workshops to help kids with transitions overseas and re-entry into the U.S.; pro- vides leadership, social and educational programs; and promotes global responsibility and volunteer service by Foreign Service youth. For more information, go to www.fsyf.org. To make a contribution, designate Combined Federal Campaign partici- pant #8488. Proposed Changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act Several specialists have drawn our attention to recent press coverage of the administration’s proposed changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act which, if adopted, will affect the eligibility for FLSA overtime of all workers, whether federal or private sector, in the domestic United States. At the outset, however, it is important to recognize that these proposed changes will have no effect on overtime paid under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, which is what governs payment of all federal overtime overseas, and all overtime for federal workers in the United States who are “exempt” from FLSA. Thus, almost all Foreign Service personnel will be unaffected by any of these changes. In addition to the foreign exemption, there are at present three basic grounds for exemption from FLSA: —Executive Exemption: For example, exercising discretion and independent judgment in work planning, and having AFSA Welcomes New Staff A warm welcome to two new staff members who joined AFSA in August. Charles Henderson is our new grievance attorney, taking Neera Parikh’s position. Charles can be reached at (202) 647-8160 or by e-mail: HendersonCH@state.gov. Au stin Tracy is our new executive assistant to the president. His e-mail address is tracy@afsa.org an d he can be reached by phone at (202) 944-5506. AFSA NEWS BRIEFS AFSA would like to alert readers to two recent BCA rulings. In the first case, an employee was on TDY in December in Bangkok for five days, and had only taken tropical lightweight clothing with her. While in Bangkok, she was ordered to travel to Beijing. On her way, she spent $477.22 in Hong Kong to buy winter clothes to cope with the freezing temperatures of Beijing in December. She requested reimbursement on her travel voucher when she returned to Washington, pointing out that her need to buy these clothes resulted solely from the department’s change in her travel itinerary to meet the needs of the Government. The BCA turned down her request, on the grounds that neither the Federal Travel Regulations nor the Foreign Affairs Manual provides for reim- bursement of personal expenses. Agencies, the board noted, may only reimburse employees for actual and nec- essary expenses for travel. In the second case, an employee and her tandem spouse had both been on long- term training in the Washington area. Her spouse’s per diem had paid for the rental of their temporary accommodation, while hers had been used to pay for utility bills, including cleaning. Some years later the department sought repayment of $511 that had been paid to her to cover house- cleaning costs, saying that since her tan- dem spouse had paid the rent, she did not have lodging costs. The BCA did not agree. On the contrary, the BCA pointed out, the regulations say that when an employee rents a house during a TDY, the employee is entitled under the FAM (and provisions of the FTR incorporated in the FAM) to a lodging per diem allowance whose daily rate would include those maid cleaning expenses as well as the util- ity and phone expenses (if normally included in the price of a hotel room in the Washington, D.C. area) she incurred as long as the daily lodging per diem allowance did not exceed the cost of rent- ing conventional lodging at a daily rate. Thus, if her tandem spouse’s portion of the per diem allowance was insufficient to cover more than just the rental costs, then the employee’s portion could cover the other costs that would normally be includ- ed in the per diem costs. Board of Contract Appeals Rulings Continued on page 5