AFSA President's Update

AFSANET: AFSA President Update: November 4, 2005
-- Overseas Comparability Hopes Expire and a Readout of S Meeting --
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Here is late breaking news from AFSA headquarters. I have included news of and comment on last night's (11/4) outcome of the House/Senate conference on the State Department portion of the FY-06 Appropriations Bill and woven it into the cable I'd already written to report to AFSA members on our meeting last week with Secretary Rice that focused on the Overseas Comparability Pay (OCP) issue. As always, we welcome your comments, questions and suggestions. You can reach me (Tony Holmes) by e-mail: holmes@afsa.org, by telephone: (202) 338-4045, ext. 502, or by fax: (202) 338-6820. I look forward to hearing from you.

Overseas Comparability Pay Dead for this Fiscal Year

Despite a six-week-long full court press by AFSA that generated enough progress to keep our hopes up until literally the last minute, the House/Senate conferees did not include the provision we'd been seeking granting OCP to all FS members overseas this year. At the end of the day, according to people in the meeting, it was the Administration's and Department's complete lack of support that doomed our efforts. The only way you're realistically going to get this, we were told, is if you bring the Administration along with you. The lesson we learned is that when Congress and the White House are controlled by the same party, it is exceedingly difficult to get something passed in the face of its opposition.

What's Next? A Department Attempt in FY-07 as Pay for Performance
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Department management had long given up on OCP in FY-06. The OMB veto in last December's budget request "passback" was definitive. The only way the White House will even seriously consider it, we've been told, is if it is part of an initiative to convert the entire FS personnel system to "pay for performance." Management has told us that OCP is in its FY-07 budget request now at OMB; the passback from OMB is expected before Thanksgiving. If, and it is a big if, this proposal is included, the chances of getting OCP would rise significantly. However, there also would be some big tradeoffs in the equation. All FS employees would lose their annual three percent step increase in return for a pool of performance pay money. Whether this tradeoff would be good for FS employees depends on some key assumptions, the most important of which is whether Congress would fund the performance pay line item in the Department's future budgets at levels that equaled the lost three percent step increases. If OMB agrees to the Department's request, you'll be hearing much more about all this in coming months. If it doesn't, you can be assured that AFSA will play the legislative game again next year. The fact remains that OCP is in the authorization bill the House passed earlier this year and that is a "two year bill," which means that it remains valid through the present Congress. To become law, though, we'd need a Senate companion bill.

Meeting with Secretary Rice -- OCP
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AFSA State VP Steve Kashkett and I had our first meeting with Secretary Rice last Thursday (11/27), in which we sought to outline the primary concerns of the 8,200 State members of AFSA. Our main priority was to get the Secretary to signal her personal support of OCP to key Hill players, while duly noting the Administration veto of it this year. We emphasized to her that our recent survey of active duty members added unprecedented credibility to our agenda and provided a strong base for present and upcoming AFSA initiatives and proposals to Management.

We had signaled to senior Department officials for the past seven weeks that we would use our first meeting with the Secretary, to stress that the current 16% salary reduction suffered by all FS employees below the senior ranks when they go overseas is unfair, illogical, and unacceptable at a time when we need to encourage people to serve in increasingly difficult -- and difficult to staff -- foreign posts. We informed her that our survey, as well as direct contacts with our members, left no doubt that this is the number-one issue for the Foreign Service. I described the tremendous progress that AFSA has made in lobbying the Hill to get comparability pay passed in FY06, including finding a champion in the Senate who was willing to put his support in writing in an important letter to the key appropriations subcommittee chairman.

I told the Secretary that our members had heard her assert her support for the Foreign Service and how her key deputies have told us that OCP for employees at the FS-1 level and below is the Department's highest personnel-related priority. I asked the Secretary to use her personal influence to make it happen and to get the White House on board. I specifically asked her to make a phone call to a key Member of Congress to show her support of OCP in principle, something that would have greatly improved the chances for passage of OCP this year. Secretary Rice reaffirmed that OCP is in fact a top priority and she said that she had personally spoken to the Director of OMB on several occasions to seek his concurrence. (In the end, though, her chief of staff told me last night that she had been unable to make the call because OMB would not clear it. However, she still supports OCP, he said, and she would work on OMB to get it in FY-07. I told him that her willingness to use her personal political capital and relationship with the President to get OCP is seen as the litmus test of her support for the Department's employees.

Professional Issues: Getting the Truth Out

Steve and I also reminded the Secretary that in addition to "bread-and-butter" issues, Foreign Service employees care deeply about the Foreign Service as a profession with a vital role to play in the foreign policy process. We noted that the Foreign Service continues to come under fire unfairly from certain quarters, including accusations of disloyalty to the President's agenda of transformational diplomacy, alleged unwillingness to serve in difficult places and handle tough tasks, favoring foreign over American interests, and even compromising our nation's interests in an effort to create lucrative post-FS employment.

We told the Secretary that, while AFSA puts out its own statements in an effort to answer these "cheap shots," it would be considerably more effective if, on occasion, she would personally respond to particularly egregious and inaccurate criticism of the Foreign Service. A first-person statement or op-ed piece reaffirming the Secretary's confidence in the loyalty, courage, and professionalism of FS employees would go a long way towards undermining our detractors.

The Secretary responded that, although she does not believe it effective to react to every slight, she regularly defends the Foreign Service and speaks highly of its employees in her public speeches. AFSA has asked the Bureau of Public Affairs to select a number of quotes from the Secretary's past speeches which AFSA can cite in our public statements.

Museum of American Diplomacy Going Forward

Finally, I asked about the status of plans for the Museum of American Diplomacy that will be located near the 21st Street lobby in Main State in space currently under renovation. AFSA had heard rumors that this important project, which is a much needed boost to the Department's public affairs efforts and can help project an accurate image of diplomats and diplomacy, was under threat because of concern over its future running costs and competing demands for the space. The Secretary reiterated her commitment to the Diplomacy Museum project and her determination to begin a campaign to attract the private funding needed to launch it.

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