F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

V.P. VOICE:
STATE ■ BY STEVE KASHKETT
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All Eyes on Her
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Judging from the wildly enthusiastic reception that the
employees of the Department of State gave to our new
boss upon her arrival in“The Building”on Jan. 22, there
can be no doubt that expectations of Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton are running high.
We in the Foreign Service know better than anyone how
much work this Secretary has ahead of her in repairing our
country’s relationships around the world, and in restoring
American diplomacy and leadership. We are keenly aware
that her substantive to-do list is quite long. It includes extricating
us from two protracted
wars and resolving serious conflicts
in multiple regions. It encompasses
finding common
ground with allies on strategies
for dealing with terrorism, proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction,
global climate change
and the worldwide economic crisis.
And it requires undertaking a
major repair job on the image of the United States. We also
know how much unfinished business this Secretary inherited
from her predecessor. So her plate is full on the policy
side.
But at the same time, we fervently hope that Secretary
Clinton will embrace the management side of her job description
as well. She has assumed responsibility for one of
the most important departments of the U.S. government,
whose thousands of employees have suffered serious neglect
for years. The dedicated professionals of the U.S. Foreign
Service assigned to our embassies and consulates all over the
world face unique, unprecedented challenges, many of
which place burdens on our careers and our families that
other federal employees never encounter.
By the time this column appears in print, we at AFSA will
have had our first meeting with the new Secretary and will
have set forth our suggestions for an ambitious management
agenda for her. Our overall message is that Sec. Clinton has
a historic opportunity to fix problems and right wrongs that
have plagued our diplomatic service for decades.
We will impress upon the Secretary that her management
agenda is also lengthy. For example, there is simply no reason
Foreign Service employees assigned overseas should continue
to be deprived of the basic locality pay that all other
federal employees receive — and to see that pay gap widen
Sec. Clinton has a historic opportunity
to fix problems and right wrongs that have
plagued our diplomatic service for decades.
every year until Congress and the administration act to correct
it. It is unconscionable that our nation’s military and
intelligence budgets continue to dwarf our budget for diplomacy
on a scale unseen in any other country, and that our
embassies and consulates are understaffed and strapped for
resources.
We hope to persuade Sec. Clinton to work with AFSA to
restructure the Foreign Service assignment and promotion
systems, placing the highest value on leadership skills, regional
and country-specific expertise, and diplomatic accomplishment
— not just on
willingness to serve in hardship
posts.
We will encourage her to collaborate
with AFSA in modernizing
— and humanizing — the
Foreign Service career to take account
of the personal and family
needs of its members who are
spending much of their lives in
difficult and dangerous overseas locales. She will surely
agree that we cannot continue to have a Foreign Service
where family members find most work opportunities
blocked, domestic partners who accompany our diplomats
abroad have no official status, and pregnant employees must
exhaust all of their vacation leave to cover a three-month
mandatory evacuation for childbirth, and whose regulations
are too rigid to accommodate loyal employees who need a
bit of flexibility in order to deal with a medical disability, a
dying parent, a sick child or any of the other family crises
that happen to people in the real world.
Addressing these management challenges is not just vital
for the people who serve our country overseas, but for the
health of our nation’s foreign policy.
With a Democrat in the White House and Democratic
leadership in both houses of Congress, Sec. Clinton can play
the decisive role in ending these disparities once and for all.
Responding to the feedback and suggestions from thousands
of our members in recent years, AFSA can provide a
long list of concrete proposals. If Sec. Clinton is willing to
give an open hearing to these ideas and to devote some of
her time, her formidable intellect and her political energy to
implementing them, she might well go into the history
books as the Secretary of State who brought the Foreign
Service into the 21st century. ❏
A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41