Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I very much hope that your eloquent words will persuade Mr. Wick and others to back away from their attempt to misuse performance pay. We cannot permit section 405 of the act to be used to politicize the Foreign Service and to obviate the very intent of the act itself; namely, to strengthen the protections and incentives for a high-caliber career service whose professional competence and loyalty to the President and to the country must never be brought into doubt. You may wish to consider amending section 405 of this act in order to resolve this issue definitively.

It is not my purpose, Mr. Chairman, to reopen today the wellknown arguments for and against chiefs of mission who are not career officers, but there are several points which should be made in the context of the Foreign Service Act of 1980.

In the first place, section 304 of the act states that, "An individual appointed or assigned to be a chief of mission should possess clearly demonstrated competence to perform the duties of a chief of mission." We believe, Mr. Chairman, that the competence of many appointees nominated since passage of the act has been far from demonstrated.

Section 304, paragraph 2 states that given the qualifications in paragraph 1 positions as chiefs of mission should normally be accorded to career members of the Service.

I will not quibble over percentages, Mr. Chairman, but I do not believe any reasonable person could affirm that with nominations at this time being about half political and half career, that positions as chief of mission are normally being accorded to career offi

cers.

Finally, section 304, paragraph 3 states that contributions to political campaigns should not be a factor in the appointment of an individual as a chief of mission. Given existing limitations on the political contributions an individual may make, Mr. Chairman, this section and section 304(b)(2) are largely irrelevant. The era of largescale contributors becoming Ambassadors is over and we are now in the era of contributions in the form of campaign activism and management.

Management explicitly assumes a continuation of the "10-year historical average of 57 senior positions" being occupied by noncareer personnel, largely political ambassadors. However, the Department's figures of 57-the historical average-and 50-for March 1982-are seriously misleading. Although they purport to cover all noncareer senior appointments, subsequent discussions reveal that they include only Senior Foreign Service political appointments. They do not reflect the substantial number of nonpolitical Senior Foreign Service or any senior executive service appointments.

This confused misrepresentation completely obscures the real magnitude of noncareer senior appointments from all sources which mandates offsetting reductions in promotion and retention opportunities for the career Senior Foreign Service with a major cascade effect for the rest of the Foreign Service.

The actual figure in January 1982 for senior appointments affecting the Senior Foreign Service was 75. Since each noncareer appointment necessitates a reduction in promotions, retention opportunities, or stretch assignments, management will have to move

rapidly to get noncareer appointments down to historical averages, or else its entire scheme of promotion/senior attrition patterns may be impossible to achieve. In this regard the other Foreign Service agencies, AID in particular, are faced with the same pervasive pattern.

A final problem affecting the Senior Foreign Service, Mr. Chairman, is pay levels. As the Department has interpreted the act, there is no mechanism for upward movement from one Senior Foreign Service pay level to another within a Senior Foreign Service class, short of promotion and Senate reconfirmation.

Consequently, officers promoted early into the Senior Foreign Service are in the anomalous position of receiving a lower base salary than those promoted at a later date who benefit from carried-over step increases earned in their old class.

Moreover, as the system presently operates, an officer who held the grade of FSO-1 under the Foreign Service Act of 1946 and was converted to the ES-4 level pursuant to section 2103 of the 1980 act, will never again receive a pay raise unless he or she is one of the few eventually selected to become career minister.

As you are well aware, Mr. Chairman, the Department has submitted to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations a proposed amendment designed to correct this inequity. We support the objective of the Department's proposed amendment.

However, in order to avoid the type of situation with which we are faced regarding performance pay, we would have the statute unambiguously provide that adjustment to the basic salary rate of a member of the Senior Foreign Service shall be made either in accordance with the rankings and recommendations of selection boards established under section 602, or other such administrative procedure as may be negotiated with the exclusive representative. With regard to the new provision under title 5, United States Code, section 5928, dealing with the establishment of a danger pay allowance, management has refused to grant danger pay in Beirut unless a complete and total evacuation of dependents was in effect. This is far more restrictive than anything required by the act and has reflected the Department's fear that providing danger pay with any dependents at post would be unseemly and administratively unmanageable.

The allowance was granted this week when dependents were evacuated, but the association maintains that the total evacuation of dependents need not be a prerequisite to the granting of this allowance. Clarification of this issue by the committee might well be in order.

The special incentive differential was put in the act with no objection from the foreign affairs agencies in order to make it easier to recruit and retain employees in hard-to-fill positions. Despite 16 months of urging and the submission of a proposal of our own, management has refused to even discuss this allowance. A congressional nudge might help.

Implicit in chapter 7 of the act is a rationalization of the assignment process as part of an orderly personnel planning program, a career development function, and the concept of a career foreign service. AID and AFSA have reached agreement on an "open assignments" program. But it lacks one important ingredient-the

career development officers are not in place. We are urging AID to proceed with the rapid establishment of a career development counseling program.

Mr. Chairman, you may recall that our association proposed to your committee that the Foreign Service Act be amended to include provision for the Secretary to pay special allowances to Foreign Service personnel who are required by the nature of their assignments overseas to remain on duty on a regular basis for substantial periods of time outside normal duty hours.

The amendment was occasioned by the fact that many Foreign Service personnel, especially secretaries and communicators at small posts overseas, are required to remain on "standby duty" or on call for extremely long periods of time, but are not compensated except and to the extent that they are required during such periods to come in to work. The concept of the special allowance of a certain percentage of basic salary is an appropriate way to compensate personnel for such a substantial loss of free time.

In a formal statement to you, cleared by the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, the administration persuaded your committee not to include such a provision because it had discovered that it already had authority to compensate employees for standby duty.

Since early 1980, the association and Department of State management have been engaged in protracted, intensive negotiation. Any proposal that would have given relief to the extraordinary conditions faced by standby duty personnel overseas was claimed by management to be consistent with existing law under title V of the United States Code.

The regulations are so complex and restrictive as to exacerbate rather than improve an already intolerable situaton. Of the 200plus Foreign Service posts overseas, the Department has authorized payment of standby duty pay to only 30 posts, and fewer than 60 employees. Instead, the Department routinely required employees to remain on uncompensated "on-call" duty instead of compensable standby. The association urges that your committee prepare an appropriate amendment, and we will be pleased to assist your staff in any way.

We are distressed by AID's endeavors to evade the congressionally imposed requirement that it designate policymaking positions in Washington as Foreign Service positions and fill those positions from the ranks of the Foreign Service. In August 1981, AID amended its regulations to permit the Agency to fill Foreign Service-designated positions with non-Foreign Service employees. The amendment of AID's regulations is the subject of pending litigation. AID is currently considering further amending its position classification regulations under authority of section 501 of the act to classify as general schedule many positions currently classified as Foreign Service.

This action would permit AID to circumvent your committee's injunction in section 502(b) of the act that Foreign Service positions will normally be filled by the assignment of members of the Service.

The Foreign Service Grievance Board has promulgated regulations for its operation under the act, including provisions for inter

vention in individual grievances by the exclusive representative. The size of the Board has been expanded to enable it to handle its increasing workload. Grievants appear to be pleased with the way the Board is operating. The exclusive representatives and agencies are in the final stages of negotiation on regulations to implement the provision of chapter 11 at agency level.

One benefit Congress granted FSO's was compensatory time off since they may not receive overtime. In spite of repeated attempts to institute this benefit, a second summer is about to go by without it. Why? Because if compensatory time is not used in 16 weeks it converts to overtime, and overtime, by law, cannot be paid to FSO's.

While it may sound like Gilbert and Sullivan, the Legal Division, in a year and a half of what we are assured is rapt concentration, has been unable to solve this conundrum. Meanwhile, officers working long hours of overtime are unable to use this benefit in order to preserve their sick leave and annual leave benefits.

Members of our association are most grateful, Mr. Chairman, for the authorization provided in this section for the employment overseas of qualified family members of members of the Service.

Similarly, our members appreciate the training, particularly language training, which is made available to them in accordance with section 705. In the age of the two-income family employment overseas it is a very welcome authority, but I would draw attention at this time to the fact that although some palliative steps have been taken, the problems of the two-income family are profoundly affecting the Service and will, in our opinion, continue to weigh on many aspects of Service life.

The conversion of Foreign Service domestic employees has for the most part gone smoothly, but there has recently been a disconcerting reversal of a management agreement regarding security officers, somewhat over half of whom serve mainly in the United States. Since there are not enough positions available to rotate security officers overseas, some method must be found to handle those who are in fact Foreign Service and those who carry the Foreign Service designation but have not and probably will not serve

overseas.

Since management was undecided as to the best way to handle the Foreign Service/domestic split, and the pressing need for early agreement on conversion regulations, the union went ahead, inserting language which we were assured by management had been cleared and approved by all parties and would give security officers the protections other domestic-based Foreign Service personnel received when converted to civil service-such as protection against downgrading; retention of Foreign Service retirement, et cetera.

Now management has decided unilaterally that these provisions do not apply and that security officers are not in fact covered by this agreement. We are, of course, challenging this point of view. However, it is discouraging to have management repudiate its position months after negotiations have been concluded.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, let me repeat that while some features of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 have proved to be exceedingly hard to implement and although negotiations to that end have been tortuous and slow, the American Foreign Service Associ

ation is confident that progress will continue to be made. We may be less optimistic over the pace of developments than some of the other witnesses, but with good will and hard work this phase of implementing the act should be over relatively soon.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman,

Mr. FASCELL. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador, that report is exactly what we want. We needed to get the specifics, and if there is anything else that should be added to this, by all means, let us add it. I do not know if you had a chance to look at the status report that was submitted the other day on the progress of implementation on an item-by-item basis.

If you have not seen that, I would like you to look at it and comment on it in the same fashion as you commented here, in the manner in which management has itemized the progress and problems and their assessment. In other words, we want AFSA's assessment, also.

I particularly appreciate your delineation of the issues as you see them with respect to the problems. I think that is very important. I do not expect that we will sit as judge and jury in trying to resolve these matters, but there are some where we are certainly going to have to come down on one side or the other, and we will do that without any hesitation.

So, it will be very important for us to have a clear assessment of the problems as you go along. I would also suggest-while I am not inviting a great deal of trouble here—that perhaps we ought to be thinking about a mechanism that will not wait for annual oversight; some mechanism at the staff level whereby we can have some early warning on all of these matters as they progress.

Perhaps the way to do that might be as that progress chart and implementation is worked up from month to month or whatever, that we get this kind of input from AFSA and the other organizations with respect to the specific issues on where we are, so we can then judge what we need to do, if anything.

Now, on legislation, I do not have an immediate answer to that, it needs to be responded to. We supported the clarification on the Senior Foreign Service pay scales and hopefully we can get that enacted. As far as other changes are concerned, we will have to take the proposals under consideration and decide when we can move them. I have no immediate judgment on that. I will just reserve judgment on that. We will see. We will have to take all of them, not only the ones that you recommended here or suggested here but any others and then see if we have to establish some priority on those or whether we are going to deal with them as a package or what. We are not that far along yet.

So, I just want to put all of our cards on the table here. We are anxious to assist in implementation. We recognize that with five or six people on one side and two on the other, turf problems continue ad nauseam. I guess after all these years I should be accustomed to that-but I am not.

Some of the stuff that I look at in here just real quick as a third party on the outside makes me kind of ill, the fact that it takes 13 months to settle one issue, 9 months to settle another. You would think that seven or eight people of good will could do it in 1 day. But I guess that is too much to hope for.