102 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL margins. AFSA Chairman Harrop was formally notified by the agency heads that AFSA was the certified union in each of their agencies. Harrop quickly initiated development activities in four critical areas, which have endured and evolved over the last 50 years to give AFSA a good chance of success in meeting the challenges of today. Those areas are robust negotiations; political power; financial independence and strength—a fortress balance sheet; and maintenance of professional and Foreign Service imperatives. Robust negotiations. Uniquely among federal unions, AFSA negotiates personnel policies and procedures agencywide. That includes bread-and-butter issues, like language incentive pay, as well as major professional issues such as promotion precepts. Further, the broad negotiating mandate in the Foreign Service Act of 1980 enables AFSA to defend the act’s special Foreign Service provisions (e.g., “robust and impartial” entrance procedures, peer performance reviews, worldwide service, rank in person, and promotion up/selection out) from efforts by personnel bureaucrats to alter these provisions or shift decision-making power to themselves. For 50 years, beginning under Chairman Harrop, AFSA has pursued negotiations with management to produce the most effective diplomacy possible to serve the American people. Political power. After AFSA’s representation election victories, Harrop testified in the Senate against the confirmation of an unqualified politically appointed ambassador. From there, AFSA moved on to participating informally in the authorization and appropriation processes in both houses of Congress. Today AFSA has a fully staffed office to deal with Senate and House staff as well as our own political action committee (AFSAPAC), which facilitates personal contact with members of Congress. In terms of wholesale politics, AFSA has significant public outreach, including a speakers program supplemented by similar efforts by other Foreign Service groups such as the American Academy of Diplomacy. Financial independence and strength. At Harrop’s direction, AFSA’s initial negotiations included a member dues checkoff. In the 50 years since then until April this year, management collected AFSA dues at the end of every two-week pay period and sent the funds to AFSA. In addition, since the 1990s, AFSA has been governed by private-sector management norms. Our objective is an excess of annual income over costs. These “profits” are then deposited in the General Fund, which serves as a war chest and a general financial reserve. The General Fund, currently at about $4 million, is there to confront the existential threat we now face. Maintenance of professional and Foreign Service imperatives. When it became clear in 1970 that AFSA would compete in union representation elections, the membership divided sharply over whether AFSA should compete exclusively as a union or in its dual capacity as a union and professional organization. The 1971 AFSA Governing Board elections were fought over this issue. Harrop formed the “Participation Slate,” which argued forcefully that the union and professional dimensions would be mutually reinforcing and make AFSA the strongest possible voice of the Foreign Service. The other slate argued that the union and professional organizations should go their separate ways. In the event, the Harrop slate won every AFSA board seat. The new AFSA board promptly and unanimously elected Harrop the chairman and CEO of AFSA, and filled the other officer and committee chair positions with members of his slate, mostly “Young Turks.” A Time of Heroes Over the last half century, Harrop ensured that AFSA’s actions and statements met the highest standards of professionalism and service. Actions do speak louder than words. For the last 50 years, AFSA members in their union negotiations activities have strongly defended the promotion up/selection out system, which guarantees that about 65 percent of the same members will not reach their highest aspirations for rank and income. Think about that. A few years ago, then–AFSA President Eric Rubin declared that the decade of the 1970s was AFSA’s “Heroic Age.” The comment stimulated my thoughts about an earlier heroic age described by a series of poet/singers around 1000 BC in The Iliad. Late in that song, after the Greeks had prevailed over the Trojans, Odysseus, the wisest of the Greek warlords, sacrificed to the gods and gave thanks. He did not give thanks for victory; nor did he give thanks for his survival. He gave thanks that the gods had caused him to live in a time of heroes. Odysseus exalts, “I lived in the time of Ajax. I lived in the time of Hector. I lived in the time of Achilles.” And so I give thanks and exult that I have lived in a time of Foreign Service heroes. I lived in the time of Charlie Bray. I lived in the time of Tex Harris. And I lived in the time of Bill Harrop. n
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