Foreign Service Journal - September, 2009

STATE ■ BY DANIEL HIRSCH

Toward a More Perfect Union

A F S A

N E W S

AFSA has a new board, and the dramatic recent suc- cesses regarding overseas comparability pay and do- mestic partner benefits remind us that the State Department, and our nation, have a new, more supportive leadership. That leadership has made it clear that it values our mission, and has demonstrated its willingness to increase support for the people essential to perform that mission. The air is pregnant with potential.

Our task is to realize that potential and develop it into a relationship with management that will serve the Foreign Service not only in the good times, but in the bad. As in strengthening any relationship, this requires us to look hard at who we are, what we want and what we bring to the table.

The Foreign Service is a selfless group. Ours is a profession of national service. We serve our country, and in serving one’s country, one does not think of oneself. So when a matter arises that we perceive as unfair to our interests, we tend to suffer in silence.

That is as it should be in our relationship to our nation. But it is not the basis for a healthy relationship with management. Our willingness to subjugate our needs, in an effort to stress our readiness to serve, allowed the past administration to develop procedures and practices prejudicial to the members of the Service, and even to make political hay at our expense.

It is therefore important to redefine our relationship with management: to abandon old taboos, to establish better patterns of communication and to make it clear that we know the value of our own skills. We must build a relationship with management in which both sides, including our own, understand the one thing that we must understand in order to interact on a more equal basis:

The State Department is not the Foreign Service. We are.

We, the people of the Foreign Service (and our colleagues in the Civil Service), are not merely the State Department’s greatest resource; but in a very real sense, we are its only unique resource. Our abilities, our skills and our experiences are what the State Department brings to the table, whether that table is in the ministry of foreign affairs

of an overseas nation, in another agency, in Congress or in the White House.

And if we are distracted — if beneath our outward and legitimate pride of service there is an inner nagging sense that somehow, in some way, we are being wronged — then we, the tools through which the State Department’s mission is performed, will not operate as we should. A happier,

more effective Foreign Service will be better able to represent our country to the world, and our agency to the American people and to Congress.

This does not mean that we should be coddled, or that we should expect the department to give in to every individual desire. But it does mean that we should insist that the department follow its own rules and procedures, hold itself as accountable as it holds us,

and review or revise procedures that yield biased or unfair results.

AFSA should hold itself accountable, as well, and make itself more responsive to its membership. We are perceived by some as elitist, unresponsive and irrelevant. My immediate goal as State VP is to make AFSA more responsive to you: to make our activities and decisions more transparent. I intend to provide you with a greater opportunity to communicate directly to me and to the State representatives on the board, to place agenda items before AFSA’s board, and to serve (by e-mail if necessary) on advisory committees dealing with issues of interest to you.

Toward this end, I have redesigned the State vice president’s page on AFSA’s Web site. It is a work-in-progress that will be updated continually; but I want it to serve as a means of two-way communication, as a resource for information and as a bulletin board for AFSA members. On it you will find ways to contact your State representatives, links to useful information and even a space to post messages to other AFSA members.